Even before Charlie Kirk had been pronounced dead, the narrative apparatus of the Left was in full gear trying to blame the assassination on the Right. Once it became clear that the shooter was a standard-issue leftist, the narrative shifted to “this is a both-sides problem.” But before Kirk had been laid the rest, the experts and researchers had been mobilized to assert that the original claims, if not accurate, were consistent with a pattern in which political violence in America is largely a right-wing problem. Having spent my career in academia sopping up such unctuous claims, let me assure you that this is complete nonsense. Political violence in America is mostly a problem of the Left.
Begin with some bright, shining facts. There were two assassination attempts against President Trump in the recent election and none against his opponents. The California gunman arrested outside Brett Kavanaugh’s home in 2022 planned to assassinate three conservative Supreme Court justices, not any liberal ones. Attempts on the lives of members of Congress this century have resulted in one Republican (Steve Scalise) and one Democrat (Gabby Giffords) suffering serious injuries.
The most recent violence against elected politicians — the murder of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the serious injuring of State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife in June — was committed by a deranged loner with no political motives, despite efforts by the Left to portray it as a political act of the Right.