“I COULD stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” former US president Donald Trump famously boasted at a January 2016 campaign rally in Sioux Center, Iowa.

Instead, at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, somebody shot him. The failed assassination attempt will likely further inflame Trump’s base and boost the Republican presidential candidate’s popularity. 

What it won’t do is prompt any calls from the right for gun control in a country where daily gun violence is so routine it barely makes headlines.

More than 40,000 people died from gun violence in the US last year. Five thousand more had died within the first six weeks of 2024.

There are an estimated 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the US with one or more weapon in 43 per cent of households. A website where this information is found offers a pop-up to readers offering access to “ammo.”

When the shots rang out at the Butler rally on Saturday, some at first mistook them for firecrackers or a vehicle backfiring. But nothing backfired more than the action of the 20-year old would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks.

In a split second he created what has quickly become an iconic image. Trump, staggering to his feet, bloodied but unbowed, defiantly raising his fist as an American flag waves behind him against a crystal blue sky. T-shirts have already been printed bearing that image and emblazoned with the words NEVER SURRENDER.

“Donald Trump is a great patriot and American hero who is willing to give up everything including his life to save America and improve the lives of its citizens,” wrote a Trump supporter on X, capturing the mood of his fans, many of whom are white working class but still believe the wealthy New Yorker is there for them. 

After the shooting, Trump’s fans quickly took to social media to assign blame — to President Biden and the Democrats, of course, the media, “criminal” immigrants and, even more bizarrely, former president Barack Obama.

The 20-year-old shooter armed with an assault rifle was pilloried by the MAGA crowd as a “crazy liberal,” even though Crooks was white and a registered Republican and no-one yet knows his motive.

Many credited the “hand of God” for sparing Trump’s life. The failure to protect Trump was put down to the fact that the head of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, is a woman. 

No-one called for an assault rifle ban. On the contrary, Trump’s base was more than ready to rise up and avenge the attack. “We owe it to Donald Trump to fight. All of us together have tremendous power,” wrote one in a typical response.

Until now, Trump has been the self-described “best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House.” He assured an audience at a National Rifle Association rally in February that "Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,” should he be re-elected this November. That mantra is unlikely to change.

Because the US does not have a gun problem, it has a “bad guy” problem, according to the cartoonish world that Trump and his followers inhabit.

“This is not a gun problem,” Trump said at another NRA rally in Indianapolis back in April 2023. ”This is a mental health problem, this is a social problem, this is a cultural problem, this is a spiritual problem.”

Until the evening of July 13, media attention had continued to obsess over whether a faltering Joe Biden was too old and too mentally frail to stay in the presidential race and face Trump on the ballot in November. Then came the shot, turning Trump into a defiant symbol of machismo and resilience.

Crooks grazed Trump with his bullet, but it was Biden who may have sustained the graver wound.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.