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distance Assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump At a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, lawmakers and law enforcement continued Investigate what happened. Presidential campaign To a large extent keep going.
Investigators said the gunman was likely Less driven by political ideology Not because he wants to commit mass shootings. But for research Political violencehave Still worried about risks The United States will experience more dangerous events during this election cycle and beyond. Intimidation of election officials and workers Trump supporters tried to uprising January 6, 2021 Not to mention the rhetoric of Republican candidates and their allies — heightened their concerns. In July, a group of legal scholars, national security experts, and law enforcement officials called on elected officials to Officials create State and national election security task forces are charged with responding to and monitoring election-related threats. (The Department of Justice has launched 2021 Election Threat Task Forcebut Election staff Officials still say Worried about their safety.
Gun violence researchers have also expressed concerns. Garen Wintemute is a doctor and UC Davis Violence Prevention Research ProgramI’ve been studying gun violence. Since the 1980sIn late 2021, the center turned its attention to political violence. Last year, it Published the results of a major survey Get insights into how Americans think about this issue.
“Although small, there is a concerning tendency for people to believe that violence, including lethal violence, is often or always justified in order to achieve political goals,” Wintemute and his colleagues said. Write. Nearly 19% of respondents explain “Having a strong leader” is more important than having democracy. Nearly 14% predict that civil war will break out in the United States in the next few years, and less than 8% said they planned to pick up a gun and arm themselves in the next few years if they found themselves in a situation where they believed political violence was justified.
As the center prepares to release a new survey this fall with updated insights into America’s propensity for political violence, Wintermuth shared with Vox some of the initial conclusions of the survey’s findings, as well as some ideas about what people can do to create a country less susceptible to political violence.
This interview has been edited for brevity.
What do the 2024 data reveal about the risk of political violence in the United States?
Cooking in Winter Quiet: We continue to see continued support for political violence and a willingness to fight in a civil war if it breaks out. This is obviously linked to certain groups of gun owners, but it’s also linked to racism, sexism, homophobia—pretty much any fear and loathing you want to name.
What we saw confirmed what people had anticipated and predicted years ago, but there were two pieces of good news: First, gun purchases did eventually fall back to their baseline levels (from 2020 and 2021.) This is a leading indicator and we watch it closely. The other good news is that gun violence rates were horribly high in 2020 and 2021, but they declined in 2022 and 2023. So far, we have not seen an increase in gun violence rates in 2024 over 2023.
But I would put an asterisk on that. We are experiencing this in real time. I think people who are watching this closely probably agree that the scenario most likely to spark political violence in this country in the coming months is a contested election, where the momentum is shifting toward the Democrats, and where there has already been a high-profile incident of political violence.
That’s the environment we find ourselves in today. It’s a little bit volatile, but after the assassination, someone asked me, do you think this is going to happen? What happened to Donald Trump in Pennsylvania? You can’t predict the specifics, but for weeks, every day I thought, Wow, we’ve made it through another day. Yes, this is going to happen. With the same certainty, I think it will happen again. I don’t know if it will be about targeting elected officials. But in this election season, we’ve opened the door to political violence, and there are still leaders who use rhetoric that promotes violence. I suspect that we’re all going to pay the price for that.
Don’t you think this is the last political violence we’ll see in this election cycle?
I personally think that large-scale political violence is indeed unlikely. I am more optimistic about that prediction given our data for 2024. We asked people, hypothetically, if there was a right-wing insurgency or a left-wing insurgency, would you support either party over the government? In both cases, the majority of respondents said no. I think that’s good news. Large-scale violence is indeed unlikely. I may have a different view in a few months.
But the occasional outbreak, especially if the margins in battleground states are very narrow — is it possible? Of course it is possible. Is it possible that someone would try to intimidate election officials? Of course it is possible.
Most of us, most of the time, and some of us all of the time, don’t believe violence is the solution to this country’s problems. When people use violence, we react negatively.
What we really need to work on is creating a culture that is not accepting of the spread of political violence, so that it may happen here or there, but we don’t see a sustained chain of events.
Where is political violence most likely to come from?
The most influential social movement in the United States right now may be Christian nationalismThe theory not only holds that, by tradition, the United States is and should be a Christian nation, but also that the end of the world is coming and we need to be prepared.
I think about this as a researcher on one hand, and as a clinician on the other. Psychological trauma is like physical trauma, it heals, but it leaves scars. It changes a person. So people who have been traumatized over and over again, or who have seen their privileged position in this society eroded, need to understand all of this. So how do some people make sense of all of this? They look for someone to blame, so xenophobia and replacement theories and so on emerge. You look for a way to correct it. You start thinking, I’m willing to kill and be killed to defend what I believe in. That’s how wars start.
What can prevent political violence? Do we know it?
We do have some data on this. We asked people: If a civil war broke out, how likely would you be to do any of the following? They started with leaving the country, went to killing noncombatants on the other side, and there were a lot of options in between. In the middle was to join in as a combatant. Only a minority said yes.
We asked those who said they would never fight, if family, friends, religious leaders, community leaders, or the media urged you to change your stance, would you change your stance? Conversely, we asked those who said they would fight, would you change your stance because of the same groups?
Those who said “I don’t want to be a fighter” in the beginning are not willing to change. It doesn’t matter where the influence comes from. For those potential fighters, if their family, friends, or even some media ask them not to change, then many will change. I literally danced around my office looking at the numbers on the screen because this led directly to the intervention.
Basically, the vast majority of people who think violence is unjustified need to speak up, because you’re not going to change their minds, and we can prove it. But if you talk to people on the other side — whether it’s individuals talking to family and friends, or the media putting it on the air — we can create a climate where political violence is not acceptable. In doing so, we can expect it to work.
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