A 20-year-old reclusive engineer who worked in the dining room of a nursing home outside Pittsburgh, described as aloof, intelligent, interested in computers and video games and perhaps traumatized by harassment. A 58-year-old North Carolina builder of sheds and roofs with a long criminal record who said he wanted to recruit Afghan refugees in Iran to fight in Ukraine, had invited North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to Hawaii and offered to mediate. had endorsed various Republican candidates and devoted himself to interviewing Elon Musk, Elton John and a former pro-Russia Democrat who now advises Trump.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, who shot Trump in July at a rally and was fatally shot by police, and Ryan Wesley Routh, who was arrested after hiding with a sniper rifle near the former president’s golf club, fit common profiles among the perpetrators of several mass shootings in the United States. They are almost all men — 97% of those counted since 1966, according to the Violence Prevention Project, the most comprehensive database — the majority are white — though blacks are overrepresented relative to the general population — and they share a common trait of aggression, isolation or loss of touch with reality. But the determining factor for Crooks and Routh, as for most shooters, is easy access to the deadliest weapons.
The imminent ban
Crooks and Routh were carrying assault rifles, machine guns that are considered war-related and have been legal in most parts of the United States since their ban expired in 2004 and Congress refused to renew it.
Since then, opposition has grown from Republicans (in 2004, then-President George W. Bush said he would support it) and Democrats. The most serious last attempt, by President Barack Obama in 2013, a few months after the murder of children at a Sandy Hook elementary school, failed because of the Senate gridlock. 44 Republican senators, 15 Democrats and one independent opposed the renewal of the veto.
Nine states ban these types of assault rifles, but those do not include Pennsylvania, Hawaii (where Routh now lived), or Florida. In Crooks’ case, the minimum age to purchase such a weapon in Pennsylvania is 18, so at 20 he could have acquired it, even though the one he was using belonged to his father, who legally owned a half-dozen guns in the home. In Routh’s case, his lengthy criminal record for barricading himself in an apartment building with a rifle, robberies, and multiple traffic and weapons violations could have prevented him from owning an assault weapon.
The first two charges brought against him on Monday are in fact related to the possession of the rifle: he is accused of possessing a weapon after being convicted and having the serial number removed, which are considered federal offenses punishable by prison.
The problem often comes down to background checks on the buyer before a sale. The Republican Party, through legislation and court challenges, has blocked any attempt to expand requirements that gun sellers conduct background checks, such as at gun shows.
“Republican lawmakers have made it easier for a dangerous man with a long criminal history to get an AK-47,” said Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control organization Moms Demand Action, referring to Routh’s assault rifle. “The same profile, the same warnings, the same story over and over again in America.”
Millions of weapons of war
In the United States, one in 20 adults, or about 16 million people, say they own at least one assault rifle — the most common is the AR-15, like Crooks’s — according to an Ipsos survey for him. Washington Postwhich has studied the impact of this type of weapon extensively (and won a Pulitzer Prize this year for it). In 10 of the 17 deadliest shootings in the United States since 2012, the killer owned at least one of these guns, according to data collected by the organization. job.
Gun manufacturers make their own versions of the rifle, which has been in use by the U.S. military since the Vietnam War, and some extremists see the rifle as a symbol that has roots in the old pioneers that the National Rifle Association emphasizes.
The industry also alludes to the supposed masculinity associated with these submachine guns in its advertising with slogans such as owning such a rifle “renews your man card” or “be a man among men.” Some of the Capitol invaders on January 6, 2021, carried flags with images of the rifle.
Industrial strategy
The transformation of a military weapon into a mass marketing icon “was the product of a sustained and intentional effort,” according to the Justice Department investigation. job based on interviews with 16 gun industry executives and internal reports. “The rise of the AR-15 over the past two decades has been driven by a sea change in strategy by the largest gun companies to invest in a product that many in the industry considered anathema… The gun industry,” he said, “began to view the gun’s political and cultural significance as a marketing advantage while seeking new revenues,” the newspaper’s investigation explains. In particular, the ban on assault weapons coincided with the rise of “military glorification” after the 9/11 attacks and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2020, these assault rifles made up a quarter of all guns manufactured in the United States, and their owners were overwhelmingly white men, according to Ipsos data. In February 2023, Alabama Republican House Representative Barry Moore, with the support of other Republicans (including the expelled George Santos), introduced a bill to declare the rifle “the national weapon of the United States,” though the idea was not considered for a vote.
political inaction
Politicians and the media often focus on finding the “motive” of the shooter, even though it’s usually hard to establish such a thing as cause and effect. In fact, two months after the July attack on Trump, there’s no clear explanation for what drove Crooks. In Routh’s case, in recent months he appears to have shown more antipathy toward Trump than Biden and Harris on social media, and according to records, he voted in the Democratic primary in North Carolina (which allows registered voters as unaffiliated). But his trajectory seemed erratic. He publicly supported Ukraine and said in interviews that he was attempting recruiting operations for the Foreign Legion, which he warned in June that he had no ties to and that the man presented himself as a recruiter when he was not.
While the possible motivations or ideological inclinations of the protagonist usually focus questions about what happened, attention to the deadly weapons used usually fades within hours of the shooting or incident.
After the July attack, President Joe Biden again called for approval of a decade-long ban on assault weapons.
Vice President Kamala Harris also defends trying the veto again, the need for which is shared by the majority of the population but not by the majority of her representatives in Congress. “I am convinced that it is consistent with the Second Amendment to say that we need a ban on assault weapons. “They are literally tools of war that are designed to kill large numbers of people very quickly,” Harris said a few days ago in an interview with ABC local television in Pennsylvania.
Most Americans support renewing the weapons ban and other controls such as limits on people with a history of mental health problems, but there is a gap among voters who identify as Republicans, who are more resistant to some of these measures, and the rest. Majorities remain in favor of support-based controls, particularly among those who identify as Democrats or have no party affiliation.
