One of the most striking things about the recent shooting at the Republican rally outside Pittsburgh is the immediate search for meaning employed by law enforcement and the media. Could they find Thomas Crooks鈥� manifesto? What could they learn about his intentions from political donations, social media, and phones? Why was the immediate question, and it hasn鈥檛 gone away yet.
Though we don鈥檛 often say so directly, we all know that in America, guns are a means for saying something. This is one of the critical features of what I call 鈥渃owboy messiah mythology.鈥� In Cowboy Apocalypse, I look at the gun as a proxy mouth for some gun fans. The gun speaks in violent and sometimes deadly ways. This is why we assume so readily that Crooks must have been saying something by shooting Donald Trump. So his social media is scrutinized, his political affiliations are uncovered, and his family is harassed.
I have Jewish friends who keep guns in their homes in case of break-ins or (God forbid) antisemitic attacks. I have other friends who enjoy target practice with guns or who go hunting for food. I know some people (including family members) who keep guns on hand to defend themselves in case of large-scale social unrest, a worry that seemed excessive just a few years ago. There are plenty of people who do not use guns to communicate with but keep them as a means of protection. For some people, guns are simply tools with a fixed purpose, not unlike a chainsaw or a propane stove.
But as I write in Cowboy Apocalypse, for a wide swath of American gun owners, the gun is a prop for the performance of identity as a self-proclaimed hero, the 鈥済ood guy鈥� who uses bullets to say something. Because Crooks鈥� attack on Donald Trump was a public spectacle, we expect a story that will explain what he was trying to say with his gun. We expect an iteration of the good guy with a gun who kills the bad guy. Yet Crooks is not an easy reflection of the bad guy, either. There is not enough information to pin him down.
Maybe Crooks shot at Trump because he wanted to anger his father. Maybe he shot at Trump because he was drunk or high. Maybe he wanted attention. Maybe he was in a COVID haze. Perhaps he hoped to incite a new civil war. We do not know. Bullets express one鈥檚 beliefs, which we too easily presume. And while it makes sense to see the assassination attempt as an expression of hate, it might also be nonsensical. It may mean nothing at all. Crooks鈥� attack may simply indicate that there are too many guns accessible to too many people wanting to feel powerful. The shooting may be a sign of a myth gone awry, as a lone young man (again) believes the only way to make an impact on the world is to kill others.
In the absence of a narrative of purposeful violence, meaning has shifted to Trump鈥檚 ear, transforming the gauze pad into a crowd-sourced prop鈥攁 kind of Rust Belt stigmata signifying the sense of persecution experienced by many of the angry white working class who support Donald Trump. Trump is the martyr who was shot and survived the ordeal. Some of his followers temporarily took on the marks of his suffering, padding their ears with gauze at the Republican National Convention. It seems appropriate that the relatively minor injury to Trump鈥檚 ear becomes a sign of the perceived suffering of the white middle class. This is hyperbole made palpable.
I spent the week after the shooting tooling around northern California with my nine-year-old, fulfilling my kid鈥檚 dream of seeing the massive redwoods. I鈥檓 struck by how America could be defined by places like this, magical and ancient. To be American could be to know and honor the quiet groves that stand vigil near the magnificent Western coast. America could be defined by salmon runs on crystal clear rivers, the massive plains of Iowa, and the gorgeous hill country in Alabama. But this would require that we accept the history of theft of these lands from their first inhabitants, and the story of frontier violence that went with it. So instead, America is defined by guns. Guns are America鈥檚 national language, so we shouldn鈥檛 be surprised when people expect every shooting to be meaningful.
Rachel Wagner is Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ithaca College. She is the author of Godwired: Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality and Cowboy Apocalypse: Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah
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