It's hard to believe it's only been four weeks since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in part because the national media has largely moved on from the aftermath and the investigation in favor of trumpeting Kamala Harris's elevation to presidential candidate. 

Sure, every now and then we'll still see a column or news story about the assassination attempt, but all too often the incident is used merely as a setup to push gun control, like this piece that ran in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Monday:  

Mass shootings often bring calls to tighten America’s gun laws. That hasn’t happened in response to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

There was little demand on Capitol Hill or on the presidential campaign trail to ban assault-style weapons like the AR-15 used by the Butler shooter and by the killer of 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue; the AK-17 used in the deaths of 22 people in El Paso, Texas; or the Bushmaster semiautomatic used to gun down 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Conn.

One of the few calls to action in Congress after the July 13 shooting came from U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who used his opening and closing statements during the panel’s July 22 hearing on the Trump shooting to call for stronger gun regulations. 

Raskin blames Republican "obstruction" for the lack of a sustained push for a semi-auto ban in the wake of the attempt on Trump's life, while New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker trotted out the "weapons of war" canard in calling for a ban: 

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who joined the filibuster, said in an interview that the assassination attempt should have sparked new pressure to ban assault weapons. Then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., was the lead Senate sponsor of the 1994 law that banned those weapons. President George W. Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress let the ban expire 10 years later.

“It’s stunning to me that these weapons of war are so readily available and put the lives of people in danger, including presidents,” Mr. Booker said. “So it is something I definitely think should be part of this conversation and I’m surprised it’s not.”

As Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie pointed out during a recent markup of a budget bill, if AR-15s and other semi-automatic long guns are "weapons of war," then why does the Department of Education and the USDA need them? Those aren't branches of the military, after all. But Democrats like Raskin and Booker are perfectly fine with exempting federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies from their gun ban plans, while telling the taxpayers who fund these agencies that they shouldn't be allowed to purchase or possess the same firearms. 

Democrats want to ban citizens from owning AR15s, but they insist the Department of Education can’t complete its mission without AR15s. I say the Second Amendment guarantees the right of the people to own AR15s, and the Dept of Education should be banned!pic.twitter.com/K7kQN9nt9W

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) August 13, 2024

Trump himself has said that the attempt on his life didn't change his views on a so-called assault weapons ban. And honestly, even a bolt-action rifle could have been used in the attack on the former president. The more we're learning about the events of that day, it's become clear that there were significant lapses in security that allowed the would-be assassin access to a nearby rooftop. As RealClearPolitics reporter Susan Crabtree recently outlined, Trump's Secret Service detail has been "plagued" with problems for at least a year:

Among the allegations are accusations of improper sexual relationships or fraternization within the team, debilitating mental health issues, non-merit-based promotions, conflict of interest issues, unfair retaliation and the creation of inappropriate memes and social media posts.

On May 15, the top two leaders of Trump’s detail sternly dressed down the entire 60-member staff in a virtual meeting, announcing formal investigations into what they argued were serious misconduct violations, several sources in the Secret Service with direct knowledge of the online meeting tell RealClearPolitics. 

Sean Curran, the detail leader and top boss of Trump’s regular 60-member protective team, and his deputy, Matthew Piant, complained of “rumors, innuendo and toxicity” among the detail, as well as “selfishness and immaturity.”

They reminded all employees that they had worked to mentor and train them, and, up to this point, had refrained from referring agents and support employees for discipline even though there had been violations that they could have reported to agency headquarters for investigation.

Curran and Piant complained that they were not getting the same treatment in response from the team. Over the last year, the two leaders have been the target of formal complaints, and some members on the team viewed the all-hands lecture as an effort to turn the tables and retaliate on those complaining about their leadership.

Piant spoke first, accusing someone on the detail of stealing from another. But he quickly shifted to harshly condemning an incident in which a teammate took cellphone photos of two members of the support staff sleeping in a command post while guarding Mar-a-Lago and circulated those to others on the detail.

Democrats like Raskin and Booker would much rather talk about a ban on AR-15s than the security issues in the Secret Service, which is overseen by the Biden/Harris administration. And Harris herself has made a call for an "assault weapon" ban a regular part of her campaign stump speech, even as she's avoided any questions over what that ban would entail and why she supposedly no longer supports a mandatory "buyback" of lawfully-owned firearms. 

The media's been mostly happy to play along with Harris's refusal to face tough questions about her policies, and even if she ever does deign to conduct a formal press conference or a sit-down interview, there's no guarantee reporters will press her on the specifics of her gun ban proposal. Based on the tone of reports like the one from the Post-Gazette, the press is in favor of a gun ban, and their biggest question is why Republicans aren't going along. 

It's up to outlets like Bearing Arms to cover the Harris/Walz campaign's gun control talk with a skeptical eye and provide the facts that the mainstream media would prefer to ignore; from Harris's attempt to ban gun shows and her support for D.C.'s handgun ban as District Attorney in San Francisco to Tim Walz's own belief that only the military should be allowed to possess AR-15s. 

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