Wednesday, July 24, 2024

The American Gun Protection Fantasy and the Secret Service....

 3D Trump Rally Map


Ten days ago, a lone shooter attempted to kill former President Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. About 6 minutes after he began speaking, Trump is noticed to turn his head to the right and then grab his right ear and drop to the ground. He is swarmed by Secret Service agents and after a period that seems too long is escorted off the stage and taken to a local hospital for assessment and treatment.  Three people in the audience are shot – one dead and two seriously wounded.  They were all in the line of fire seated behind Trump.  About one minute later the Secret Services Counter Assault team returns fire fatally wounding the shooter.  Weeks later it is learned that the shooter may have fired as many as 8 rounds based on shell casings found near his body on the roof.

There is immediate speculation and controversy about the incident. Quite incredibly several members of the Republican party blame the incident on Democrats even though they are the party that has been espousing political violence and gun extremism. Preliminary reports suggest that although the shooter is a registered Republican – he donated $15 to a liberal cause a few years earlier.  The shooter was using an AR-15 rifle that he borrowed from his father and he had purchased 50 rounds of ammunition.  At the time of this post there is no information on whether he was using a high-capacity magazine or not.  The state of Pennsylvania has no prohibition on assault rifles or high-capacity magazines.

We subsequently learn that the shooter did not make the cut for his high school shooting team, but did belong to a local shooting club.  He was described as a loner who was bullied in school. Some people described him as bright and eccentric.  All agreed that there was no suggestion that he was a potentially violent individual and nobody ever heard him make any threats. It was later learned that he did some drone surveillance of the site and had saved materials on several people from both parties.  To at least one analyst this data suggested that his goal was a mass shooting rather than an assassination.  Others speculated that it may have been a “suicide by cop” scenario.  Some information leaked from the preliminary investigation suggested he was searching “major depression” on the Internet. 

We also learn that the shooter had a picture of a recent mass school shooter whose parents were also convicted for allowing him access to firearms.  The shooter in this case places his father in the same predicament, although there have not been any statements from the parents.

At this point there are signs that there were significant security lapses.  That led to Congressional testimony by the Director of the Secret Service on July 22.  Several members of Congress demanded an immediate resignation and she subsequently resigned on July 23. She did accept full responsibility for the security lapse, an administrative maneuver that is apparently expected only in the government.  She resigned at a time when the results of the investigation of the incident are still pending.

The public has been presented with interviews of people who saw the shooter on the roof and tried to get the attention of law enforcement including the counter assault team without success.  The shooter was approached on the roof by a police officer who apparently had to back down because the rifle was pointed at him and he was not able to draw his weapon in defense.  There was a story today that Secret Service agents were located at the roof level on the interior of the same building that the shooter was on but did not see him.  The shooter was identified as a “suspicious person” but not a threat because his rifle was not seen initially. If he had been identified as a threat – Trump would have been sequestered in a safe area until the threat was neutralized.

I have not heard any information about the perimeters established for security.  I heard initially that there was a Secret Service perimeter closest to Trump and extending out for 200 yards.  The meant that Secret Service was responsible for anything inside that perimeter and local law enforcement was responsible for the next tier beyond 200 yards.  That may explain the aborted attempt by the police officer to intervene moments before the shots were fired at Trump. 

Most significant to me as a psychiatrist is the continued “search for a motive” or that “no motive has been found.”  That is a routine finding in these events.  There really are no rational motives for picking up a gun and trying to kill the former President or anyone else.  There is no motive for essentially firing into the crowd beyond Trump and killing a spectator and seriously injuring two more.  Most firearm related homicides are irrational acts – related to angry disagreements and firearm accessibility.  The fact that motives are lacking is probably the reason mental illness is often considered to be a factor in firearm homicides. 

That takes me back to my hypothesis of mass shooters that can probably also be related to lone shooters in this case.  The United States has a long history of cultural memes related to firearms.  Film and television is a rich source of revenge stories where the hero/antihero is wronged and proceeds over the next 90 minutes to kill everyone who wronged him.  That has extended in the media to include mass shooters and school shooters. Many are described as “bullied”, loners, or mentally ill.  The overriding story is the revenge meme – whether it is accurate or not.  For several decades the meme involved postal workers "going postal" due to workplace stress and mismanagement although a subsequent investigation showed the incidence of post office violence was not greater than other workplaces.   All it takes is a marginal person without self-control ability to decide to project their problems onto an available individual or group and extract their revenge.  The method of choice in the US is a firearm.

There is another group and cultural factor that may be important in these cases and that is the American sniper.  There are thousands of snipers in the US military.  They typically operate at a range of 600-1200 meters, although several shots have occurred at much greater distances. The IMDB database lists 18 sniper movies dating back to 1963. Just inspecting that list suggests to me that there are many more. And of course there are constant real-life stories about mass shooters.

My point about snipers is fourfold.  First, it reinforces the shooter meme in that a sniper is generally seen as a very competent person who is shooting people for the right reason.  Even the cinematic revenge version often has the audience primed to see the shooter's viewpoint.  Second, snipers are generally portrayed as cool and professional.  Third, there are any number of weapons that can be used to become a self-styled sniper.  The first mass shooting I became aware of was the Texas Tower mass shooting of 1966.  The incident occurred at the University of Texas and the shooter fired from the same clock tower position.    Snipers are generally portrayed as possessing some special talent to shoot well – but the reality is that anyone can shoot well – even at a distance if they have enough practice. Fourth, gun access in the US is easy.  The problem of how long mass shooters experience thoughts about shooting people is unknown and probably an impossible study.  That leads to a certain politics of explaining the motives.  To gun extremists the shooter is just “a bad guy with a gun.” who needs to be stopped by a “good guy with a gun.”  Many of these same gun extremists tend to blame the behavior either on mental illness or the treatment of mental illness even though most incidents are not related to either.  This group rigidly avoids acknowledging their possible role due to cultural changes and the widespread availability of guns.  They are joined by some mental illness advocates for not treating mental illness who suggest the behavior is due to medical treatment.  In the past, I have suggested going after the problem directly and approaching it as a public health problem.  That is – if you have homicidal thinking call an emergency number for intervention.  Acute care psychiatrists intervene in the problem when it is precipitated by severe psychopathology, but in most cases that is not the issue.  It is safe to say, the problem and successful interventions cannot be well studied in the current landscape.

Getting back to the shots fired at the Trump rally, Trump was speaking 430 ft away from the shooter or about 131 meters.  That is well within typical sniper range.  Further – given the military sniper range suggests that the Secret Service would need to secure the entire area out to 10 times the distance to that rooftop and even then, that may not be far enough.  If there are two important lessons from this event it should be that guns are inadequate protection from a shooter with an element of surprise and a long-range weapon.  You can make the argument that the Secret Service snipers may have stopped a mass shooting event, but at this point that seems to be highly speculative.  Secondly, the perimeter is very significant.  If the initial descriptions of a 200-yard perimeter are accurate – new strategies are required and even then, I would question the likelihood of stopping catastrophic results from single shot fired by a sniper who was trained in evasive action.  These are important considerations when the political solution at this point appears to be an investigation focused on who to blame for security lapses.  Members of Congress are saying all that is needed is a thorough and transparent investigation.  So far – very few details of the investigation are available.

It is doubtful that the obvious cultural factors like gun extremism, widespread availability of weapons and military style weapons, and the cultural phenomena of the lone wolf shooter will be addressed. It is doubtful that public health approaches to the problem will be discussed. I expect a final report several hundred pages long focused on what law enforcement and the Secret Service should have done.  I look forward to reading that report to see what perimeters and measures are considered and anticipate that they will be woefully inadequate compared with any determined shooter from a long range. 

And then there are the legal considerations. After the Reagan assassination attempt, the Brady Bill – a modest modification of existing gun control laws was eventually passed 12 years later.  Since that time there have been decades of gun extremism put into the law, basically because one of the major parties needs the issue for political purposes.  This has made the United States less safe for everyone including Presidential candidates.  The most striking example is that the city of Milwaukee was not able to ban firearms outside of the hard security perimeter at the Republican National Convention that occurred 2 days after Trump was shot at.  Wisconsin law prohibits local municipalities from banning firearms.

Over the past 30 years we have gone from a nation of common-sense gun laws – to a nation of gun extremism.  That is almost entirely due to the actions of the Republican party and its politicians.  There has been a clear association with increased firearm deaths and there has been no resulting retracing of the path to gun extremism.  Gun extremism puts everyone at risk including Presidential candidates. I will refrain from the usual political platitudes about how I hope everyone will be safe out there. Hopes and prayers for the victims of firearm violence have not changed anything so far and I expect more of the same until the party of gun extremism decides to change their mind or they are voted out. 

These are my observations about this Trump rally. It was a shocking event, but probably not shocking enough to change any gun laws or the steady march towards gun extremism that is oddly enough in the hands of the party whose candidate was targeted. 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA


References:

1:  Update on the FBI Investigation of the Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump Update: July 15, 2024, 3:05 p.m. EDT:

https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/update-on-the-fbi-investigation-of-the-attempted-assassination-of-former-president-donald-trump

2:  Neuman S, Westervelt E.  Trump's close call: A detailed time line.  NPR:  https://www.npr.org/2024/07/19/nx-s1-5041734/trump-shooting-assassination-crooks-bulter-secret-service 

 

Supplementary 1:

I decided to write this essay ahead of any investigation results because it appears that will be a very slow process. I will read those reports as they become available.

Supplementary 2:  This article became available after I completed the above post.  It is based on testimony by the FBI Director Christopher Wray.  He states the AR-15 used by the shooter had a collapsible stock and therefore was easier to conceal.  He also said the shooter flew a drone for 11 minutes over the site about 2 hours before the event.  And in terms of the motivation:   

"Wray said investigators haven’t found a manifesto or obvious motive for the shooting. He said pictures were saved in the cache of Crooks' electronics from news searches, rather than necessarily because of a specific search for a public official."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-director-wray-set-house-143641332.html

Supplementary 3:  Additional fragments of information today in the news. There were 8 expended cartridges next to the shooter's body.  No word on the location of the other 42 rounds or whether there was a high capacity magazine.  Some data from the shooters laptop showed that he did a Google search on the JFK assassination searching on both Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. 


Graphics Credit:

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