The US won’t put down its weapons – gun violence is as American as apple pie

A day after the failed assassination attempt on his rival Donald Trump’s life,US president Joe Biden denounced the attack in statesmanlike terms, railing that “there’s no place in America for this kind of violence”.

Except that isn’t strictly true.

“This kind” of violence has long been commonplace in the US for centuries, and shows no sign of abating. In fact, nearly one in 10 US presidents have been assassinated in office, while another handful were either shot or narrowly escaped disaster.

Trump wasn’t even the first ex-president to be shot on the campaign trail when seeking non-consecutive election to the Oval Office. That dubious honour belongs to Theodore Roosevelt, the former Republican president who, while seeking a return to the White House in 1912, was due to make a scheduled address in Milwaukee when he was shot. With the bullet lodged in his chest – its progress had been slowed by a copy of his hefty, 84-minute speech tucked inside his coat pocket – he spoke to the crowd, apologising that “I cannot make a very long speech… but I will try my best”.

Despite his valiant efforts, Roosevelt lost the election to Woodrow Wilson. Trump, however – who managed to raise his fist and shout “Fight!” repeatedly before being bundled away by the Secret Service – looks set to return to the White House in four months’ time.

Gun violence in the US is as old as the country itself. Rather than having “no place” in 21st-century America, it is as American as apple pie.

The statistics make for grim reading: last year, some 43,000 people died by the bullet in the US (whether murder, suicide or other causes); that is, 117 a day, or five Americans an hour, every hour. So far in 2024, there have been more mass shootings in the US than