It seemed the voracious broadcast media fanned out almost before the vivid red blood streaming down Donald Trump’s face had a chance to be cleaned in an ambulance. They wanted reactions from eyewitnesses, and asked the usual inane questions.

Most people seemed as shocked as I was, at a loss for appropriate words, wrestling with a range of emotions, not all of which are fit for print (or broadcast). But a bit later, I heard two bystander interviews expressing the same thought: “We have to stop this. We need to come together. This isn’t America.”

As much as I would like to agree and cling to the ideal that Americans resolve their issues peacefully, the realities point in the opposite direction. The same disbelief could have been voiced by thousands of other witnesses and victims of gun violence and assault in recent years, including members of Congress on January 6, 2020.

This is America. VIPs like Donald Trump, other public officials, and everyday people at movie theaters; bowling alleys; grocery and thrift stores; churches, temples, and synagogues; schools from primary to graduate levels; nightclubbers; concert-goers; and people in every public and private place are consistently threatened by gun violence from deranged individuals, angry loved ones, and everyone in between.

America’s history is filled with assassination attempts and political terrorism. Four presidents have been killed in office, and a list of unsuccessful attempts includes Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Ford, Reagan, and Bush Jr., as well as candidates such as segregationist George Wallace. No one my age or older can forget the twin assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968; countless others were gunned down during the 1960s civil rights struggles. One hundred and sixty-eight peaceful office workers were blown to bits by Timothy McVeigh in 1995.

But the number of mass shootings (four or more injured or killed, as in the Trump attempt), as tracked by the nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive, has exploded, increasing more than 150% in 10 years, from 259 in 2013 to 655 in 2023. For every two mass shootings in 2013, there were five in 2023 (https://www.cnn.com/us/mass-shootings-fast-facts/index.html), climbing under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

America has always been home to deranged individuals and vengeful family members, intent on killing one or more people. But with full access to weapons of war (like the automatic weapon fired at Trump), the ability to do mass damage is easily within reach. Countries with the strictest firearm laws occasionally have mass murders from guns and other weapons, but their frequency and the casualties are dwarfed by big, bad, male Americans equipped with body armor and assault weapons with multiple clips.

When compared by the Rockefeller Institute of Government with nine countries politically and economically similar to the U.S. (seven in Europe, Canada, Australia) over 22 years, the U.S. has had anywhere from 15-plus to more than 100 times as many public mass shootings as any other. When compared with 35 similar countries, the U.S. accounted for 33% of the population, but 76% of the incidents and 70% of the casualties (https://rockinst.org/blog/public-mass-shootings-around-the-world-prevalence-context-and-prevention/).

We are a world leader in many ways, including our penchant for killing each other. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell recently described a “culture of violence that has become pervasive in our country.”

A few Democrats have helped limit or repeal gun legislation, but there is no equivalence in Republican and Democratic actions. Republicans have long interpreted the Second Amendment’s right to a “well-regulated militia” to mean that people can acquire deadly weapons of war if they can pretend to be sane for a short period of time.

A bipartisan federal ban on assault weapons from 1994-2004 was backed by police across the country. It was a period with 70% fewer casualties from mass shootings, but it hasn’t been renewed, opposed by Republicans and spendthrift National Rifle Association lobbyists. (NRA leaders were recently convicted of corruption but currently their positions or donations haven’t changed.)

Is it too late? Possibly. Even an immediate ban would leave more than 20 million assault rifles available for Americans to use when attacking each other.

Is this America? Yes, it is. Everyone, from Donald Trump to you and your next-door neighbor could become victims of a random or political gun attack. But even if the horse has left the barn, banning assault weapons, like the AR-15 used against Trump, means that a flood of new weaponry would be interrupted. All Americans would be acting in their own best interests by supporting a renewed ban.

Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column appears regularly on Saturdays. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.