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Some may consider the assassination attempt on Donald Trump to be a worrying sign of a new era of unprecedented political violence.
US politics has undeniably changed since 2008, when Barack Obama defeated John McCain in a presidential campaign that saw both men defend the other's honour.
Yet while political violence is particularly distressing, it is important to contextualise what makes the assassination attempt unique and unprecedented in American history.
Attempts on presidents' lives are unfortunately common
Some have erroneously said that this was the first attempted assassination of a current or former US president since President Ronald Reagan, who was famously shot by John Hinckley Jr in 1981.
In reality, however, every president since Reagan has faced attempted assassinations of some sort.
In 1993, Kuwaiti authorities arrested some 17 individuals who had plotted to assassinate President George HW Bush with a car bomb while on a visit to Kuwait.
In 1994, an American man shot the White House some two dozen times while President Bill Clinton was inside.
In 2005, a grenade thrown toward President George W Bush while at a rally in Tbilisi, Georgia, failed to explode.
In 2011, a bullet was discovered in the window of the White House's second floor — part of the residential quarters belonging to the president's family — after a 21-year-old man who said President Obama was the "antichrist" shot multiple rounds at the White House.
Loading...Even President Joe Biden has faced significant security threats. In 2020, authorities arrested — and held without bail — a 19-year-old found with "four rifles, a 9mm handgun, explosive materials [and] books on bomb making" who posted memes about whether he should kill Biden and had searched for the then-candidate's home address online.
In November 2023, a Utah man accused of threatening President Biden was shot and killed by FBI agents only hours before the president was expected to arrive in the state.
Assassination attempts on a president or presidential candidate are not new or novel in US or global history, particularly when attempted by a young "loner" — which is how peers described the 20-year-old shooter in this weekend's attack.
Motivation will amplify blame
At this point, the shooter's motivation remains unclear. He reportedly donated $US15 to a Democratically aligned group in 2021 before later becoming a registered Republican.
The shooter may have been inspired by the sort of hate that caused a shooter to try to assassinate Republican members of Congress in 2017 in an attack that nearly killed House Republican Leader Steve Scalise, or the sort that led to the 2011 assassination attempt in Tuscon, Arizona, that killed six and left US Democratic Representative Gabby Giffords severely injured after being shot in the head.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Trump campaign officials and supporters blamed Biden for political rhetoric that labelled Trump an existential threat to America. While all major political figures have since called for a lowering of political rhetoric, all the major political figures have also pointed fingers at each other for prior instances of violent rhetoric.
Trump has previously accused Biden of trying to "overthrow the United States" while Biden has said that Trump is, "A genuine threat to this nation. He's a threat to our freedom. He's a threat to our democracy. He's literally a threat to everything America stands for."
Should it come to light that the shooter was particularly aligned with Biden or progressive ideologies, Democrats and the Biden campaign will be placed under all the more pressure to avoid divisive campaign rhetoric. While he has already suspended his campaign advertisements to respect the violent event that just took place, it's unclear that Biden can keep doing so for long.
In addition to the challenging reality that he finds himself behind Trump in the polls, Biden's campaign has also largely defined the need for his second term as a means to keep Trump out of the White House.
The challenges beyond polarisation: calcification
It's hard to envision how Trump could have lost any supporters over the recent events. Even before this weekend, political advisors marvelled at the unbelievable streak of wins the former president had gotten after Biden's poor debate performance and the Supreme Court's ruling that limits presidential liability.
This incident — which has resulted in the Biden campaign ceasing political advertisements and spurred remarkably positive rhetoric from essentially all of Trump's political opponents wishing him well — occurring mere days before the beginning of the Republican National Convention this week can only bode well for Trump.
However, it's also unclear if President Biden has lost or will lose support from this incident either. As much as Biden's June debate performance worried voters, campaign donors and even Biden administration supporters, the polling in the aftermath of the debate did not see support for Biden dip significantly.
As much as many talk about the challenges of political polarisation in US politics, a perhaps more worrying challenge is the calcification of voter positions.
Seismic events continue to occur — ranging from a once-in-a-generation pandemic and an insurrection to presidential criminal convictions and demands from the president's own party members to take a cognitive test — but political affiliation and voter intentions have largely remained unchanged for most of the United States.
Where to from here?
President Trump has consistently viewed his physical strength as a manifestation of his political strength and his personal struggles as emblematic of his supporters' struggles. That mindset characterised his approach to his fight with COVID in 2020, when he refused to publicly admit how challenging his battle with the disease was for him personally.
That mindset also explains Trump telling his supporters after his first federal indictment a year ago: "They're not coming after me. They're coming after you — and I'm just standing in their way."
Trump's actions in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt — in which he halted Secret Service attempts to evacuate him so that he could address the crowd and tell them to "Fight! Fight! Fight!" — makes clear that he not only remains a uniquely talented politician who knows how to make the most out of a perilous situation but also that he will portray the attack on him as an attack on his supporters, too.
None of this, however, is all that surprising. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this tragic event is the security lapse that allowed an armed man to fatally shoot multiple rounds from his elevated position in such close proximity to a major party's presumed candidate.
The fact that some rally attendees claim they alerted authorities to the man's presence before the shooting began is all the more alarming. It would be surprising if no individuals lost their jobs over this oversight.
Unfortunately, in the United States today, a crazed gunman committing acts of high-profile violence with a gun is not unique. Violence against a presidential candidate is also not all that unprecedented.
While calls by President Biden and Trump to lower the political rhetoric should be welcomed by all, the most unique and unprecedented outcome of this period would be if either candidate adheres to them.
Jared Mondschein is the Director of Research at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.