The shock waves from the shooting at a Donald Trump rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday have continued to reverberate across the country, including in western Massachusetts.

Local politicians reacted to the shooting, which resulted in the death of an audience member and is being investigated by the FBI as an attempted assassination and act of domestic terrorism, with condemnation of the violence and calls for calm amid a polarizing political discourse.

“I think we’re all in a little bit of shock and disbelief,” state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa of Northampton said in an interview.

Sabadosa noted that many politicians had an ongoing sense of unease going into this year’s presidential election, with fears of a repeat of the deadly aftermath of the 2020 election in which supporters of former President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol and called for hanging former Vice President Mike Pence.

“This is the realization of that nightmare,” Sabadosa said of Saturday’s shooting. “It really is an inflection point. Do we continue with this political violence or do we try to find some other way forward? I hope we find some other way.”

U.S. Rep, Jim McGovern, whose district includes much of Hampshire and Franklin counties, condemned the shooting, but also blamed Trump and Republicans for the escalation of political violence in the country, citing the aforementioned Capitol attack along with an attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a foiled plot to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

“I can’t in good conscience say this is a bipartisan problem. I was there on Jan. 6,” McGovern said. “The call to violence comes from the other side constantly.”

McGovern also said the shooting hadn’t affected his support for Joe Biden’s presidential reelection campaign.

“For the sake of our nation and our democracy, we need a Democratic president,” McGovern said. “A Republican presidency would undermine democracy, and I say that because I truly believe it.”

U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, the other congressional representative in the region, also said during a press conference Monday in Springfield that the election hadn’t changed his mind about continuing to back Biden, who has faced calls to drop out from some members of his own party after the June 27 debate against Trump.

“It’s Joe Biden’s decision, and we’ll just have to wait until he decides to make it,” Neal said.

Unlike McGovern, Neal said supporters of both parties bear partial responsibility for the rise in incendiary rhetoric. He also took aim at the media and political pundits, accusing them of stoking division and peddling conspiracy theories. Neal said he wasn’t optimistic that such discourse would change as a result of the shooting.

“The amplification of conflict in American public life now not only has a following, but it also, in some sense has an economic benefit,” Neal said. “It’s not unusual for candidates for fundraising purposes to use charged statements to keep the public on edge. And I also think that there are commentators in America that benefit immensely from keeping people in a state of tension.”

Having spent much of his political career engaging in the peace process for the political conflict in Northern Ireland, Neal said there were parallels that could be made on how to achieve compromise.

“When people come to the conclusion that enough pain has been inflicted, then they’re prepared to make an accommodation,” Neal said. “One of the hardest things to do in public life is to tell your most devoted supporters that you disagree with them.”

John Velis, the state senator for the Hampden and Hampshire district, which includes Holyoke and Easthampton, put out a statement on Saturday shortly after the shooting, calling it “simply heartbreaking” and that his thoughts and prayers were with the former president.

“Like the rest of the country and world, I am glued to the television as this situation evolves trying to find out more,” Velis said in the statement. “I am disgusted and horrified by what happened at tonight’s rally — violence has no place in American politics.”

In a follow-up interview, Velis blamed the shooting on the current state of political discourse in the country, calling it “toxic” and declaring that social media had become a “cancer of our politics.”

“The biggest threat to America is not China, Russia, North Korea, Iran or a combination thereof, it is 100% irrefutably ourselves and the inability of our process to function the way it was intended to function,” Velis said. “If we don’t stop, I have profound concerns with where this leads us.”

As a major in the U.S. Army and the Massachusetts National Guard, Velis said he had recently been to other nations with high levels of political instability and violence, such as Afghanistan and Kenya, and that Saturday’s shooting was a dire sign of what could go wrong in American politics.

“Seeing that someone took a shot at the former president, it just made me think of other parts in the world, and we’re going down this path that people in other parts of the world have to deal with, and we need to stop it,” Velis said. “We need to do everything we can to get back to civil discourse, talking to each other.”

Adam Gomez, the state senator for the Hampden district that includes Chicopee and parts of Springfield, bemoaned the event as a sign of increasingly violent rhetoric across the country.

“I am mourning the absence of civil discourse across our nation,” Gomez said. “Ideological disagreement is at the core of what makes our United States of America thrive, but political violence will undermine any efforts to engage in respectful dialogue.”

Peter Durant, the state senator from the Worcester and Hampshire district that includes Ware, Brookfield and Barre, called for unity in the wake of the shooting and condemned the violence.

“While I understand that we may have differing opinions, political candidates should be able to gather with their supporters without fear that those who disagree with them will resort to actions like we saw today,” said Durant, one of the few Republicans in the State House. “My heart is heavy knowing that a person who set out this morning to enjoy their day is now gone.”

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey also condemned the violence, posting on social media site X, formerly Twitter, over the weekend by saying he was “praying for the family of the victim of this shooting and grateful for the safety of the former President and the brave work of Secret Service on the scene.” Elizabeth Warren, the other senator from Massachusetts, also posted on social media that “political violence is wrong and I condemn it. I hope everyone who attended the rally is OK and I am glad the former president is safe.”

Alexander MacDougall can be  reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.