Former President Donald Trump speaks at Dream City Church in Phoenix on June 6, 2024, during his first campaign event since being convicted in New York of 34 felonies in connection with paying hush money to a porn star before the 2016 election to prevent her from would tell people about their sexual relationship. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona mirror
I don’t own a gun.
I never wanted it.
There are about 49,000 reasons why I don’t. That’s the number of people killed by firearms in the U.S. in 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available.
Research shows that just having a gun in your home dramatically increases the chance that someone will be murdered or commit suicide. In fact, more children than ever are being killed by guns, often unintentionally, and The Trace reports that people who buy guns to protect themselves would be much safer if they simply called the police or ran away.
But this is not an article about gun control. It’s about why the idea of even owning a gun continues to cross my mind these days.
I worry about the future of our country and the safety of my family, which are not mutually exclusive.
One of the things that concerns me is that 70% of Republicans (or about a third of the American electorate) still maintain that their presumptive presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, was cheated in the 2020 election.
He wasn’t. There is absolutely no evidence that he was. It’s a pernicious lie that Trump continues to spread almost daily.
Yet national polls show Trump and Biden running neck and neck in the race for the White House.
Intellectually, I have come to the conclusion that Biden will win in November, that our democracy will survive, and that Trump will ultimately end up in jail where he belongs.
Still, I wonder, “What if I’m wrong?” I was wrong in 2016. It could be happen again.
If Biden wins, given the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, will Trump’s MAGA followers accept the results or revolt? If Trump wins, will he make good on his promise to get revenge? And will his supporters use violence again to keep him in power, this time for good?
Like many people, all of this has me thinking: If Trump wins, should my family and I stay in the US or flee abroad?
I’m certainly not the only one who thinks. People who make a living helping Americans transplant their lives abroad say business is booming.
Patricia Casaburi, CEO of London-based Global Citizen Solutions, a luxury migration consultancy, told CNN commentator David A. Andelman: “Starting in 2020, we went from Americans making up 5% of our clients to 70% today. ”
And according to the results of Gallup polls over the years, at the end of George W. Bush’s eight years in power, 11% of respondents wanted to leave the US for good. When Barack Obama was president, that figure dropped slightly to 10%. But in 2019, midway through Trump’s presidency (even before the pandemic crushed our economy and killed 1.2 million people in the US), 16% said they were thinking about leaving the country permanently.
Obviously, most people won’t go through with it, but if Trump wins the election, the ranks of our deeply disillusioned fellow Americans will undoubtedly swell.
I had been thinking about this for a while when the subject came up in a recent conversation with my brother Ruben, a proud Vietnam veteran whose blood boils whenever Trump’s name is mentioned. My brother insists, half-jokingly, that he will become a recluse when the former president returns to the White House.
“I’ll stay and fight,” I told him, even though people like me would be among Trump’s likely targets.
I am an outspoken critic of Trump and am among those who call the ex-president ‘the enemy of the people’.
On the contrary, I think my views reflect those of most Americans, who understand that a second Trump presidency could destroy or at least deeply wound our democracy and lead to the prosecution of virtually anyone who openly disagrees with him.
Not to mention, as a playwright, my work often explores themes steeped in social justice from a decidedly liberal perspective. I once wrote a satire that had the word “Trumpifornication” in the title. Do you get the photo?
I’m not a Democrat, but I voted for Biden in 2020 and I plan to vote for him again. I guess if the choice is between a rational, experienced, politically centrist octogenarian and a self-proclaimed wannabe dictator and newly minted criminal who has also been found guilty of sexual assault and massive corporate fraud while being accused of stealing top secret documents and trying to to overthrow our government, call me crazy, but I’m going to pick the guy from Scranton every time.
Speaking of being targeted, did I mention that I am brown, Latino, the son of an immigrant from Mexico, and someone who is not afraid to speak the truth: that the vast and overwhelming majority of immigrants coming to the United States come just a better life and mean absolutely no harm?
I could go on, but basically everything about me indicates that if Trump returns to the White House, I, like millions of us, could become a target of his wrath or that of his increasingly radical and violent followers.
Which brings us back to the gun thing. Should I buy one to protect me and my family from the MAGA cult?
I really don’t want that, because I believe this country would be much better off if far fewer people owned far fewer guns.
For now, my “weapon of choice” will be my keyboard, my voice, and my ideas, which I never intend to silence.
Yet I am reminded of how, during the Civil War, fellow Americans, neighbors, and even brothers and sisters took up arms and slaughtered each other by the thousands over the question of whether whites had a “state right” to own black people.
I’m not suggesting that civil war or widespread political violence is imminent – at least not yet – but I think times are changing again, and this time things could get a lot worse before they get better.
In the meantime, I’m still leaning against buying a gun.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. If you have any questions, please contact editor Jim Small: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.
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