Assassinations and shootings of politicians show political violence is becoming part of life in the United States

For months now, Greg Landsman, a Democrat from Ohio, has been haunted by the thought that he could be shot and killed. Every time he campaigns at a crowded event, he said, he imagines himself bleeding on the ground.

“It’s still in my head. I don’t think it will go away,” he said of the nightmarish vision. “It’s just me on the ground.”

The image underscores a duality of political violence in America today. Like school shootings, it is both sickening and becoming almost routine, another fact of living in an anxious and dangerously polarised country.

Trump was the victim of two assassination attempts during his campaign last year, during a speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet grazed his ear, and two weeks later in Florida, when a man stalked him with a semiautomatic rifle from outside his golf course.

Violent threats against lawmakers hit a record high last year, for the second year in a row. Since the 2020 election, state and local election officials have become targets of violent threats and harassment, as have federal judges, prosecutors and other court officials. As of April, there have been more than 170 incidents of threats and harassment targeting local officials across nearly 40 states this year, according to data gathered for the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.

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Even in the stretches between acts of actual violence, the air has been thick with violent and menacing political rhetoric.

Over the past five days — in which a senator was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed for trying to ask a question of a Cabinet secretary at a news conference — a governor was threatened with arrest by the president and with being “tarred and feathered” by the speaker of the House.

And as tanks prepared to roll down Constitution Avenue in Washington in a political display of firepower, the president warned that any protesters there would be met with “heavy force”.

Political violence has been part of the American story since the founding of the country, often erupting in periods of great change. Four presidents have been killed in office, and another was shot and seriously wounded. Members of Congress have been involved in dozens of brawls, duels and other violent incidents over the centuries.

Today, while most Americans do not support political violence, a growing share has said in surveys that they view rival partisans as a threat to the country or even as inhuman.

Trump has had a hand in that. Since his 2016 candidacy, he has signalled at least his tacit approval of violence against his political opponents. He encouraged attendees at his rallies to “knock the hell” out of protesters, praised a politician who body-slammed a reporter and defended the rioters on January 6, 2021, who clamoured to “hang Mike Pence.” One of his first acts in his second term as president was to pardon those rioters.

On a day when “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration were taking place across the country, the shooting’s impact already extended into the political realm in practical ways. In Minnesota, where a search was underway for the shooter, law enforcement officials urged people to avoid the protests “out of an abundance of caution.”

And in Austin, Texas, the state police shuttered the state Capitol and surrounding grounds after receiving a credible threat against lawmakers planning to attend protests there Saturday evening.

“One of the goals of political violence is to silence opposition,” said Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies violence and political partisanship. “It’s not just the act against a few people or victims. The idea is that you want to silence more people than you physically harm.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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