It is supposed to be 99 today and 101 tomorrow. After cool lower 90’s in southern Maine, this seems like too much. By the way, these temperatures are presumably being orchestrated by the same God who saved Donald Trump’s life after the same God allowed young Mr. Crooks to shoot him. Not being flippant here, but seriously, folks. And why is it that all Democrats seem to be coming out with a “stop the violence” mantra (as usual), while many Republicans are saying “Biden did it – if not directly, he did it indirectly”? Is it time for Biden to add to his popularity by standing before the camera, holding up each hand, fingers outlining the letter V, and saying once and for all: “I am not a Crooks”? (Sorry about that; I hear the audience groaning.)

But seriously, isn’t it surprising not that someone tried to kill Trump, but that this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often? There are 400 million guns in the United States now, and of those between 80 and 100 million are semi-automatic guns. Today, and for some time now, about 50% of guns sold each year in this country are semi-automatic. (These figures are the product of Google’s AI.)

Whom do I blame? Of course, I blame the people who buy these guns. Every single one of them, whether they have shot at a president or former president, or not. I also blame everyone in the business of manufacturing, distributing, promoting and selling the guns, every one of them, whether or not they sold a gun to Matthew Crooks’ father (or whomever it is determined purchased the gun used to shoot Trump). But perhaps most of all, once again I blame our Supreme Court, which in 2008, decided the case, District of Columbia v. Heller, which expanded the reach of the Second Amendment of the U.S. constitution well beyond its previous reach, and decided – basically – that no level of government could ban or heavily regulate firearms. 2008 may seem like a long time ago (16 years by my calculation), but three of the five members who found for Mr. Heller (Roberts, Alito and Thomas) are still on the Court. The other two positive votes were Scalia and Kennedy (Kennedy being the Court’s then swing man, who clearly swung the wrong way on this one).

And since then, other Second Amendment decisions have not only affirmed Heller, but expanded its reach, covering weapons beyond the handguns that were the primary subject of Heller.

Someone once said that Republicans focus on the Supreme Court, while Democrats ignore it. This has manifest itself in two ways – first, in electoral politics, where Republicans have been focusing on the importance of having a conservative Court to deal with not only the Second Amendment, but a myriad of other topics, and second, in Congressional politics, where Mitch McConnell shamefully kept one nomination from the Senate floor, and rushed another one through under the precise same circumstances. He should not be forgiven for this dereliction of duty.

2024 is another election year and the Democrats should push the need for a Democratic president to choose the next Supreme Court justices. But I haven’t seen this as a major push yet, even though the Court has now set itself up as the strongest leg by far of the three legged stool that forms our government.

Although I was not concentrating on the news on the drive home yesterday, I sense that there is a feeling that the shooting is going to help the Republicans. I don’t understand why this should be, why it should favor any group that believes in the Gospel of the pure Second Amendment. I don’t understand why anyone who didn’t like Trump before he was shot would like him now enough to vote for him. Unless of course they believe people like that clearly pigeon-brained Congressman from Georgia who said it was Biden who directed Mr. Crooks to fire the shot.

Heaven help us.

Oh, how was the drive home yesterday? It was fine. Thanks for asking.