Just over two weeks ago, on new year’s eve, 14-year-old Zykere Langley died from a bullet fired into his chest at close range in Greenville, North Carolina.
This young boy’s death took the total of American children shot in 2023 to 6,193, an all-time record. See yellow chart, above.
That appalling number – 6,193 children shot – was zero in most other developed countries last year.
Tragically, Donald Trump’s continuing violent rhetoric, amplified by Fox News and other Murdoch media outlets, made 2023 one of the worst years on record for firearms sales, political violence and gun deaths.
We do not know yet whether Zykere was a victim of politically-charged hatred. Police say it was a targeted shooting following an altercation on social media. So there is a fair chance. We will find out when the coroner eventually reports.
We do know Trump has ramped up calls for physical violence in recent months, labeling people he despises “vermin” – who, of course, must be exterminated. He has nicknamed prosecutor Fani Willis “Phony Fani”, called the New York judge hearing his business fraud case a “psycho”, and characterised special counsel Jack Smith as “deranged”. Trump routinely refers to President Biden as “Crooked Joe” who is “a communist, fascist and a tyrant”.
Violent rhetoric leads to deadly action
Thousands of Trump supporters were convicted last year of malicious hate crimes. These include the MAGA fanatic who broke into the home of former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and smashed her husband’s skull with a hammer.
More than 1,240 defendants have now been charged with offences committed on 6 January 2021 when Trump urged his followers to storm the Washington Capitol. Of those, 875 have pleaded or been found guilty, 763 have been sentenced, 592 to imprisonment. The others are still pending.
Proof that Donald Trump instigated the violent insurrection comes from multiple judicial inquiries, including:
(a) the judgment by Colorado District Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace in November excluding Trump from the presidential primary ballot,
(b) the Colorado Supreme Court’s December decision confirming Trump’s exclusion,
(c) the finding by the Maine administrative hearing in December that Trump is excluded from future elections,
(d) the guilty pleas and trial decisions of many of the 763 January 6th insurrectionists now sentenced,
(e) the testimony of multiple witnesses, mostly Republicans, in the 2021 impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives, and
(f) the sworn testimonies in court filings in upcoming criminal trials relating to election interference in Georgia, Washington DC and New York.
Gun violence overall
2023 was extremely disappointing for gun control activists. Personal violence incidents had been steadily declining over recent decades, then accelerated suddenly when Donald Trump entered the presidential race in 2015.
The agreement between candidate Trump and Fox News gifted the television network exclusive access to Trump’s incendiary rants and racist hate speech, and gave Trump in return a vast national audience of largely low IQ television addicts highly susceptible to a con artist’s pitch.
The sudden surge in stabbings, bashings and shootings happened only in the USA, as the data from the World Bank, discussed here last May, emphatically shows. See white and green chart, below.
Most categories of violence peaked in the US in 2021. These included physical assaults, homicides, firearm injuries, children 0-11 killed or injured, mass shootings, police shot on duty, and suspects shot by police. [Data is from Gun Violence Archive, with some earlier figures drawn from Statista.]
In 2022, Trump’s social media and cable TV presence declined substantially. Violence subsided that year, which reformists hoped signaled a return to the earlier long-term trend of reducing hate crimes.
This was not to be. In 2023, Trump resumed incessant malicious social media posts, staged regular live rallies and gained more TV coverage, causing violence to escalate.
Categories which worsened last year, besides children aged 0 to 17 shot, included mass shootings, police shot on duty, suspects killed by police and schoolteachers shot at work.
Signs of hope
Some measures did improve through 2023. These include gun suicides, firearm injuries, accidental gun deaths, school shootings and total firearm homicides. See green graph, below.
The movement to limit the ridiculously easy access to handguns and assault rifles and end the violence is advancing fitfully. Two things are needed for it to break through – tighter gun laws and Trump’s removal.
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This is an edited version of an article published today in Independent Australia, available in full for free here:
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/americas-political-killings-surge-as-trumps-hate-speech-intensifies,18243