Campaigning to be elected US president again, Donald Trump had a narrow escape on Saturday as a bullet apparently aimed at him grazed his right ear, from which oozing blood was captured on camera as security officers formed a ring around him and whisked him to safety. It’s a relief that the attacker, identified as a 20-year-old local after he was killed by officers, missed his mark, although it’s tragic that an onlooker died and two others were grievously injured.
That America has far too many guns around has long been obvious. It has a history of assassinations, too. What makes this ghastly attempt stand out is that its target was a polarizing leader of the Right. Sure, Ronald Reagan survived a bid to assassinate him too, but his rightist politics differed.
Other political targets in the US have mostly been heroes of the Left, such as Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and English singer John Lennon (shot in New York), all of whom were seen as radical social reformers. This is a solemn moment not just for the US, but all democracies, a time for us to recall Mahatma Gandhi’s insistence on truth and non-violence. And, yes, also Lennon’s call for “nothing to kill or die for”.