In the aftermath of the bloodshed on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, state authorities arrested Colin Gray, whose 14-year-old son, Colt Gray, allegedly shot four people to death and injured nine others before surrendering to police. The father is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, eight counts of cruelty to children—and, most significantly, two counts of second-degree murder.

The murder charges are unprecedented, the most severe ever filed against the parent of a school shooter. Late Thursday, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said at a news conference that the charges against Colin Gray are “directly connected with the actions of his son” and that the father “knowingly allowed him to possess the weapon.”

Authorities have not provided further details about evidence they may have, but according to news reports, Colin Gray owned the type of AR-15 that his son allegedly used in the attack. And Colt Gray had been “begging for months” for mental health help but had received none, according to an aunt of his who spoke to the Washington Post. (Colt Gray has been charged with four counts of murder and will be tried as an adult, authorities said.)

For more than a decade, I’ve studied and reported on the American epidemic of mass shootings. Over the past several years, and particularly since early 2024, a dramatic shift has taken shape: a reckoning for the parents of school shooters. Today, with more than 400 million guns and a lack of political will to regulate them more effectively nationwide, it may be that America has begun to find another route—a legal end-run of sorts—to bring accountability for these events of catastrophic gun violence.

The arrest of the school shooter’s father in Georgia comes just seven months after James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of a 15-year-old school shooter in Michigan, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter—also a first. What is publicly alleged so far about the role of Colin Gray appears to echo the case of the Crumbleys, who were found to have ignored their son’s mental health crisis and supplied him with the gun he used to commit his attack at Oxford High School, where four died and seven were injured.

The prevailing theme has long been that no one can see the violence coming, the parents included. But that theme no longer holds.

It is a near certainty that in the days and weeks ahead, more details will emerge about warning signs given off by the school shooter in Georgia, one of 20 states now requiring plans for violence prevention in public schools. School shootings are almost always preceded by such warning signs. Significant questions also loom about what may have been done regarding concerns about Colt Gray by law enforcement or the school district, after anonymous tips about threats posted online put him on the radar of the FBI and local authorities in 2023.

Another parental role—starkly different—came into public view this spring, when we published my two-year investigation, “Lessons From a Mass Shooter’s Mother,” in Mother Jones and aired a companion audio investigation on our radio show Reveal. These chronicle the experience of Chin Rodger, whose son Elliot Rodger committed mass murder in the California college town of Isla Vista in 2014. Chin Rodger hadn’t been able to recognize her deeply troubled son’s suicidal and homicidal warning behaviors, but she had gone to great lengths to get him help and care before his attack. Years later she began working with violence prevention experts at the FBI and beyond, sharing myriad details about her son’s life with them—and eventually with the public—in hopes of raising awareness about warning signs and helping avert future violence.

As I wrote in the story: “The public rarely hears from parents of mass shooters apart from brief statements of sorrow in the aftermath. The prevailing theme has long been that no one can see the violence coming, the parents included. But that theme no longer holds, especially in light of a recent tragedy that could remake the legal landscape.”

There I was referring to the new criminal precedent established with the Crumbleys—one with the potential to expand, it now appears, with the case in Georgia. The recurring mass murder of school kids and their teachers drives intense public calls for finding culpability among parents (and others), which may well be warranted in some cases. But this nascent trend of criminalizing parents is not without possible pitfalls, including, legal experts have said, for mothers and fathers of minority children exposed disproportionately to gun violence.

Another notable development in the past several years has been a trend of civil liability for gun manufacturers who market their AR-15s and other firearms aggressively to America’s youth. In early 2022, Remington, the company that made the AR-15 used in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, agreed to a landmark $73 million civil settlement with victims’ families. In late 2022, the family of a 10-year-old victim in Uvalde, Texas, filed suit against Daniel Defense, the maker of the AR-15 used in the massacre at Robb Elementary School, accusing the company of using militaristic marketing appeals to target “young male consumers.”

The devastation in Georgia this week is far from the first to involve a shockingly young perpetrator. The shooter at Oxford High School in 2021 was only one year older, just 15 at the time. Other cases going back in time, documented in our mass shootings database and in my book on prevention, Trigger Points, have involved shooters as young as 13 and 11 years old.

In January 2023, a 6-year-old child brought a pistol to school in Virginia and shot his first grade teacher—a case in which the mother was later imprisoned for gun-related federal crimes. (The child used the mother’s unsecured firearm; her prosecution involved drug use and lying related to the gun purchase.)

What happened in Georgia this week serves as a particularly stark reminder: In America, a teenager can easily get his hands on a military-grade rifle and use it to gun down his classmates and teachers. Why we have this problem—and tens of millions of AR-15s in civilian hands—is complicated and arises from a recent history that many Americans know relatively little about.

Another reminder about this problem worth repeating is that, despite popular opinion, it is not an unsolvable one. Now, deterrence for gun-owning parents may be a growing part of a broader solution.

Ever since the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump, the former president and his allies have promoted unfounded conspiracy theories and blamed Democrats directly for the violence. The effort appears highly coordinated: From JD Vance to Trump’s sons and MAGA Republicans in Congress, many have used the same rhetoric to declare that Trump’s political opponents sought to have him murdered at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. No one has furnished any evidence to support that claim. And while Trump himself was relatively quiet in this regard during the initial aftermath, he has since been pouring fuel on the fire, starting with a campaign speech on Aug. 5 in Atlanta, where Vance introduced him by emphasizing that Trump’s opponents had “even tried to kill him.”

Trump took the narrative to the next level in a softball interview with TV host Dr. Phil that aired this week. The first quarter of the hour-long conversation focused on Trump’s brush with death as a divine miracle, which was a major theme of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee just days after the attack. “It has to be God,” Trump said to Dr. Phil about surviving the shooting. He went on to claim that the assassination attempt could’ve ended up like the 2017 massacre on the Las Vegas Strip, where hundreds of people were gunned down.

Later in the interview, Trump returned to the shooting unprompted, focusing blame on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’ fault. And I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me, they brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me. They weren’t too interested in my health and safety,” he claimed without evidence. He further suggested that they played a role in undermining his security: “They were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service.”

“I’m not saying they wanted you to get shot,” Dr. Phil said, “but do you think it was OK with them if you did?”

“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “There’s a lot of hatred.” (Biden, Harris, and other Democratic leaders condemned the shooting in the aftermath and Biden phoned Trump to offer prayers and support—a call Trump said was “very nice” in a leaked conversation with RFK Jr.)

Trump then reiterated the same claim he made in his Aug. 5 speech: “They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy,” he told Dr. Phil. “They would say that, that was [a] standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going…Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.”

The deceased 20-year-old gunman was a registered Republican voter, as noted throughout national media coverage—and as I reported in the days and weeks after the attack, there appears to be no solid evidence that he was driven by partisanship or ideology. A sweeping FBI investigation, including analysis of his digital devices and interviews with more than 450 people, has found no clear motive, according to congressional testimony from FBI Director Christopher Wray. FBI officials reiterated those findings on Wednesday in a call with reporters. They suggested that the gunman, who also considered attacking a Biden event, was seeking infamy and selected the Trump rally as a “target of opportunity.” (I reported five days after the attack about the emerging indicators of this behavioral profile—a common one among political assassins, as I documented in my book, Trigger Points.)

The provocative rhetoric from Trump and his allies isn’t just unfounded but also carries a disturbing risk: Threat assessment and law enforcement leaders have told me that the messaging is fueling the danger of political violence headed into the election. Sources also told me that Trump’s political incitement more broadly—increasingly focused on a supposed grand conspiracy to steal the election from him—has made potential violence from MAGA extremists a top concern. As one source put it, “they’re piling on the idea that the opposition is so out to get Trump that they even tried to kill him, and therefore retaliation is justified.” Another described how conspiracy theories about the Trump shooting give extremist groups “a really big plot point” for retaliatory violence.

The “J 13 Forum,” a faux congressional hearing held by Trump allies at the Heritage Foundation, leaned into speculation and innuendo.

The blame narrative from Trump and his allies also expanded this week when Republican Reps. Cory Mills of Florida and Eli Crane of Arizona convened an “independent” hearing they called the “J 13 Forum” at the Heritage Foundation (home of Project 2025). They and several colleagues conducted congressional testimony-style interviews with participants including former Secret Service agent and right-wing media personality Dan Bongino, and former Blackwater CEO and Trump political operative Erik Prince. Many key questions indeed still loom about the catastrophic security failure that occurred in Pennsylvania; ongoing investigations by the FBI, Homeland Security, and a bipartisan congressional task force will last many months, if not years. Nonetheless, the “J 13 Forum” leaned into speculation and innuendo about what could explain the disaster, with Mills suggesting from the outset that a nefarious plot would inevitably be uncovered.

“You will see at this stage, where I think that criminal gross negligence and purposeful intent will be indistinguishable,” he said.

The faux congressional hearing included various unsubstantiated claims about the tactical response to the gunman in Butler and heated rhetoric from Bongino about the alleged role of DEI policy at the Secret Service. At one point, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida prompted Prince to highlight the risk of a foreign terrorist team carrying out such an assassination attempt on US soil. “I’m very concerned,” Prince responded. “I don’t think they have any idea what’s coming at them.”

Notably, Mills has been involved in the blame narrative from the start—he was among the Trump allies using the same attack lines in the initial aftermath. “What about the rhetoric said by President Biden, when he said it’s time to put Trump in the bullseye?” Mills asked on Fox’s Varney & Co. five days after the shooting. (Biden went on to apologize for that previous word choice, despite the fact that it clearly was taken out of context by Mills and others in the aftermath.) With that setup, Mills landed his allegation: “They tried to silence him. They tried to imprison him. And now they’ve tried to kill him.”

On the morning of August 3, 2019, a 21-year-old man walked into a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle. He murdered 23 people and injured 22 others. Most who died were Latino, including eight people from Mexico.

The gunman had driven to the border city from 650 miles away. In custody, he told police he’d come to kill Mexicans. Some writings he’d posted online said his attack was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas” and that his mission was “defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.” He cited an extremist ideology known as “The Great Replacement.”

These were not obscure ideas. The gunman wrote that he agreed with a recent mass shooter in New Zealand who had espoused them. He also knew some of these themes were being championed at the time by President Donald Trump. With help from Fox News pundits, Trump was whipping up fear and hatred of an alleged “invasion” coming across America’s southern border—the message was central to Trump’s reelection campaign in 2019, a focus of his ads and speeches warning ominously of a national demise.

At the end of the shooter’s screed posted online, he sought to validate his attack with a pseudo-clever twist, suggesting that his views predated Trump in the White House. “I know that the media will probably call me a white supremacist anyway and blame Trump’s rhetoric,” he wrote. Then he used Trump’s own rhetoric as supporting ammo: “The media is infamous for fake news.”

Today, Trump is running again using the same potent demagoguery he wielded during his presidency and prior campaigns. Five years to the day after the massacre in El Paso, he held a rally in Atlanta with running mate JD Vance, and, over the course of an hour, warned a half dozen times about hordes of murderous foreigners overrunning America.

“Forty or fifty million illegal aliens will invade our country during the next four years if they’re in,” Trump said of his Democratic opponents at the outset. He soon continued: “Many of them that are coming in are from prisons and jails and mental institutions, insane asylums.” He taunted media covering the rally as he referenced the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter, a provocation he now uses to depict migrant “insanity” and brutality.

He went on to vow he would “stop the invasion” and expanded on the peril: “These people are so violent and vicious…These are the worst people anywhere in the world coming into our country. They’re coming in at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.”

“We’ve already seen where this goes and it can easily go there again,” one threat assessment source told me.

Audience reaction was relatively subdued as Trump recited these lines from a teleprompter, perhaps because they are such a familiar fixture of his speeches. But deep into this speech, the next escalation played differently. The danger, Trump now further alleged, came from a grand conspiracy against him, one involving migrants. He warned that his political opponents who “hate our country” are “actually trying to get them to sign up and vote.” Then came the climax: “It’s so sinister,” he said, “but they want to sign these people up to vote, and if they do that, this country is destroyed. We’d become a dumping ground for the entire world, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

A close listener could hear echoes of Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump invoked loss of country and the danger of inaction against an election that he falsely claimed was stolen from him. Now, in his telling, that conspiracy promised to use legions of evil foreigners against him and his supporters.

The crowd cheered, beginning to stir more as Trump recounted a recent murder of a university student at the hands of a Venezuelan man illegally in the country. “Kamala Harris let in the savage monster who murdered Laken Riley,” Trump declared. He railed against “migrant crime” and falsely claimed that “thousands” of Americans were being killed in this way.

He continued: “If Harris wins, a never-ending stream of illegal alien rapists, MS-13 animals, and child predators will flood into your communities. If I win, on day one we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history.”

The crowd roared at this signature line from his speech.

“We have no choice,” Trump said.

Who was listening? Perhaps some disturbed young man there in the crowd, or elsewhere watching Trump live on YouTube—perhaps someone who might feel enraged, like the El Paso mass shooter surely did when he wrote down the lie that Democrats “intend to use open borders, free healthcare for illegals, citizenship and more to enact a political coup by importing and then legalizing millions of new voters.”

Shortly after Trump’s speech in Atlanta, I talked to a longtime threat assessment source with expertise in counterterrorism and far-right extremist groups. His response was blunt when I noted that no major media focused their coverage on Trump’s inflammatory language, almost as if all that rhetoric was just business as usual.

“There’s nothing normal about any of this,” the source said. “We have the First Amendment and he can say whatever he wants, that’s our democracy. But it really disturbs me how politicians in his party won’t stand up and say one word against it now. The country really needs that. We’ve already seen where this goes and it can easily go there again.”

The use of Trump’s rhetoric to justify racist and organized political violence began early in his presidency. Strained denials of that reality crumbled for good with the horrific events at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. This June, I reported again on Trump’s years of incitement against his many perceived enemies, a method known to national security experts as stochastic terrorism. The results, as I’ve reported, grow even worse when a high-profile figure emphasizes themes of contempt and disgust.

Security and law enforcement sources told me that topping the list of concerns now for election-year violence are threats stemming from white supremacist groups and Trump’s MAGA movement. After the assassination attempt against the ex-president in mid-July, sources told me that the promotion of conspiracy theories and false blame on Democrats by Trump allies could provoke retaliatory attacks.

At the Aug. 3 rally in Atlanta, JD Vance doubled down on that very blame, declaring in his speech that Trump’s political opponents “tried to kill him.” Meanwhile, a new intelligence report from the FBI and Homeland Security focused on the upcoming Democratic National Convention highlights similar concerns about retaliatory violence.

I contacted three people with the Trump campaign asking specifically for comment on these warnings about political violence: spokespersons Brian Hughes and Steven Cheung, and Trump senior advisor Alina Habba. None of them responded.

America faces immense challenges with immigration, a top issue for voters. It is precisely that reality Trump seeks to exploit.

Trump shows no signs of stopping the incitement. Last Thursday, in a rambling speech to reporters assembled for a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, he again emphasized that America was under invasion by millions of migrants “from prisons, from jails, from mental institutions, insane asylums.” They are flooding in “from all over the world,” he claimed. “Prisons are being emptied into our country.”

He delivered more of the same at a rally on Friday in Montana: “Fifty million of them… they’re destroying our country, they’re ruining our country… migrants praying on our women and our girls.”

Fear and loathing, dressed up as just another stump speech.

Trump’s incitement focused on migrants is not mutually exclusive with the fact that America faces immense challenges with immigration, a top issue for voters. It is precisely that reality Trump seeks to exploit. In early 2024, Congress was poised to pass a bipartisan border security bill, with President Biden ready to sign it. Trump killed the deal. No one bothered trying to hide why he pressured Republicans to do his bidding: He wanted immigration to remain his political weapon.

“The fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and Congress people that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem, because he wants to blame Biden for it, is really appalling,” Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah told reporters in January, the deal dead.

Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who helped author the legislation, later revealed how “a popular” media commentator had threatened him: “If you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year,” that Trump ally told him, according to Lankford, “I will do whatever I can to destroy you. Because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election.”

What else might follow when the leader of a major political movement smears a population as a menace to public health and safety and even national survival?

Trump’s relentless fear-mongering against migrants underscores how he has always seen immigration and the border as essential to his political power. There is zero doubt that his current trajectory—begun nearly a decade ago when he announced his first campaign and inveighed against Mexican criminals and “rapists”—will continue to the November election.

Most news media are no longer paying any of this much attention. But that carries risk of the public forgetting about the violence that has already occurred. More broadly, shouldn’t we be asking: What else might follow when the leader of a major political movement smears a population as a menace to public health and safety and even national survival?

According to one of Trump’s own senior national security advisers in the White House, Trump was informed explicitly and repeatedly about how his rhetoric had been used to justify acts of violence. Credible evidence of his awareness—and his demonstrated unwillingness to respond meaningfully against the violence—suggests that, for him, more bloodshed will be welcome.

Campaigning in Atlanta on Saturday, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance blamed Democrats without any evidence for the recent assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

In his brief remarks introducing the former president at a Georgia State University arena, Vance told the crowd: “They couldn’t beat him politically, so they tried to bankrupt him. They failed at that, so they tried to impeach him. They failed at that, so they tried to put him in prison.” Then, gesturing emphatically, Vance declared: “They even tried to kill him.”

After three weeks of intensive FBI investigation, no evidence has emerged supporting that claim. The motive of the deceased 20-year-old gunman, who was registered as a Republican voter but appears not to have been driven by partisanship or political ideology, remains unknown.   

As I’ve reported in the weeks since the horrific shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, top Trump allies repeatedly have promoted unfounded conspiracy theories and blamed Trump’s political opponents without evidence. Multiple threat assessment and law enforcement leaders have told me that this rhetoric is fueling already heightened concerns about political violence heading into the November election. Those concerns, they said, stem foremost from domestic far-right extremist groups and Trump’s MAGA movement.

This has been a clear pattern of incitement from high-profile supporters of Trump.

As one threat expert put it regarding the rhetoric from Trump world since the assassination attempt: “Now they’re piling on the idea that the opposition is so out to get Trump that they even tried to kill him, and therefore retaliation is justified. Only a small number of people might take violent action on this, but you don’t need much for things to get worse.”

This has been a clear pattern of incitement from high-profile supporters of the former president. Trump backers pushing baseless narratives about the shooting have included congressional members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Collins of Georgia, Trump’s sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, a former Trump cabinet official. Vance’s rhetoric on Saturday echoed comments that Don Jr. made during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he declared that Democrats had targeted his father: “They’re now trying to kill him.” Vance has participated in this messaging since the first hours after the shooting, when he posted on social media that Biden campaign rhetoric focusing on Trump as a threat to democracy “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Trump himself made that claim during his speech in Atlanta on Saturday: “Remember the words they use, ‘they are a threat to democracy,’” he said. “They’ve been saying that about me for seven years. I think I got shot because of that, OK.”

Two days after the assassination attempt, Vance was officially nominated for the ticket at the RNC, where Trump’s brush with death led to his being hailed repeatedly as a divine political martyr. Trump had long made violence a more accepted part of Republican politics, and now he was at the center of showcasing it in a stark new context.

Campaigning in Atlanta on Saturday, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance blamed Democrats without any evidence for the recent assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

In his brief remarks introducing the former president at a Georgia State University arena, Vance told the crowd: “They couldn’t beat him politically, so they tried to bankrupt him. They failed at that, so they tried to impeach him. They failed at that, so they tried to put him in prison.” Then, gesturing emphatically, Vance declared: “They even tried to kill him.”

After three weeks of intensive FBI investigation, no evidence has emerged supporting that claim. The motive of the deceased 20-year-old gunman, who was registered as a Republican voter but appears not to have been driven by partisanship or political ideology, remains unknown.   

As I’ve reported in the weeks since the horrific shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, top Trump allies repeatedly have promoted unfounded conspiracy theories and blamed Trump’s political opponents without evidence. Multiple threat assessment and law enforcement leaders have told me that this rhetoric is fueling already heightened concerns about political violence heading into the November election. Those concerns, they said, stem foremost from domestic far-right extremist groups and Trump’s MAGA movement.

As one threat expert put it regarding the rhetoric from Trump world since the assassination attempt: “Now they’re piling on the idea that the opposition is so out to get Trump that they even tried to kill him, and therefore retaliation is justified. Only a small number of people might take violent action on this, but you don’t need much for things to get worse.”

Trump backers pushing baseless narratives about the shooting have included congressional members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Collins of Georgia, Trump’s sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, a former Trump cabinet official. Vance himself has participated since the first hours after the shooting, when he posted on social media that Biden campaign rhetoric focusing on Trump as a threat to democracy “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Two days later, Vance was officially nominated for the ticket at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump’s brush with death led to his being hailed repeatedly as a divine political martyr. Trump had long made violence a more accepted part of Republican politics, and now he was at the center of showcasing it in a stark new context.

In the two-plus weeks since a gunman opened fire at Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, some details have emerged about the catastrophic security failure. The 20-year-old perpetrator, who wounded the former president and three people in the crowd, killing one, was on authorities’ radar for more than 90 minutes before he attacked. He eluded law enforcement agents at the rally site, eventually reaching an unsecured rooftop about 150 yards from where Trump spoke. He fired at least eight rounds from an AR-15 before being killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper.

Major questions remain about the disaster as three federal investigations move forward. In the meantime, Trump allies continue trying to exploit the assassination attempt politically, whether by raising unfounded conspiracy theories about the Biden administration or attacking FBI leaders, as Trump himself long has done.

Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, a former Secretary of the Interior under Trump, suggested on Fox News on Monday that the security failure may have resulted from some sort of government plot. “We know there was incompetence,” he said, “but was this incompetence willful and knowing? Did you willingly and knowing [sic] put the president in a position by atrophying the security and allowing this to happen?” Zinke gave no evidence, but speculated emphatically, “that brings it from assassination attempt into the area of a plot—big difference between an attempt and a plot.”

Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted the FBI over its investigation of the shooting. Fox host Maria Bartiromo set him up by insisting that FBI Director Christopher Wray had “tried to throw doubt” on Trump being shot when Wray testified before Congress last week that investigators were still determining whether the ex-president had been hit on his ear by a bullet or shrapnel. (The FBI soon clarified that it was either a bullet or a fragment of one.)

“I think these agencies have lost the trust of the American people,” DeSantis responded. “Go back to the Las Vegas shooter: We never learned a thing about him.” (Hundreds of pages of FBI documents and a lengthy investigative report on the case are publicly available.) He continued: “Now you have the FBI director casting doubt what we saw on TV live, that President Trump was shot in his ear. These agencies are failing the American people. They lack the credibility.”

Conspiracy theories from both the political right and left have run rampant since the horrific shooting on July 13. But while some Democratic voters have baselessly speculated that the violence was somehow staged to benefit Trump, few if any leaders on the left have gone there. (The closest was an aide to major Democratic donor Reid Hoffman who later apologized.)

Numerous high-profile Trump allies, however, immediately began accusing Democrats—without any evidence—of orchestrating the shooting. They included Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Collins of Georgia, and Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric. Bartiromo also played host to Eric Trump when he claimed that Democrats “would stop at absolutely nothing” and had intended to have his father murdered: “I’ve said on this show before I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried something even worse, alluding to exactly what happened, and I was right.” (And it was on the radio show of a former Fox host, Megyn Kelly, where Don Jr. said Trump’s political foes were “now trying to kill him.”)

During the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which began just two days after the shooting, various speakers used Trump’s brush with death to declare his survival and candidacy nothing short of a divine miracle. The sweeping visual backdrop for Trump’s acceptance speech played to the theme of martyrdom, showcasing the iconic news photo of Trump bloodied and defiant in the moments after the attack.   

Threat assessment and law enforcement leaders told me after the assassination attempt that partisan exploitation of the bloodshed will fuel political violence—already a serious concern ahead of the election—by exacerbating “a really big plot point” for extremist groups.

On Monday, the FBI announced that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, had begun buying gun-related items and bomb-making materials more than a year before the attack. He took firearms training courses and did online research into mass shootings, assassination attempts, and various potential targets. He planned carefully and “made significant efforts to conceal his activities,” said Kevin Rojek, the FBI special agent in charge in Pittsburgh.

According to the Wall Street Journal, FBI investigators have interviewed more than 450 people, including dozens of Crooks’ coworkers, family members, and former classmates. The FBI reiterated that it has found no evidence indicating he was driven by partisanship or political ideology. As I reported five days after the attack, barring some extraordinary revelation to come, Crooks is more likely to fit a different pattern of motive, a murkier one shared by many of his predecessors.

Top image: clockwise from top: Donald Trump, Jr., Ron DeSantis, Ryan Zinke, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Eric Trump, Maria Bartiromo and Mike Collins. Credits: Mother Jones illustration; James Manning/PA Wire/ZUMA; Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/ZUMA; Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/ ZUMA (3); Pat A. Robinson/ZUMA; Prensa Internacional/ZUMA

One certainty about the assassination attempt two weeks ago on former President Donald Trump is that rampant conspiracy theories about it will endure—probably forever. The fascination with spectacular, if highly improbable explanations long predates social media. Yet it resonates now with the Trump shooter’s documented search for information about the JFK assassination, which has sustained a cottage industry of books, movies, and other content for more than half a century.

Wild claims about everything from Trump staging the attack to the Biden White House orchestrating it began spreading online just hours after the fateful campaign rally on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania. Gunfire from a rooftop approximately 150 yards from the stage wounded Trump and three supporters in the crowd, one fatally. The tectonic event shook the 2024 presidential race and is the focus of sweeping investigations by the FBI, Homeland Security, and Congress, and has already prompted the resignation of the Secret Service director. But setting aside any outlandish assertions from both the political right and left about what happened, some key questions continue to loom since the horrific attack.

Was Trump actually hit by a bullet?

Unclear. The ex-president and his top allies maintain that he was, but when FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress on Wednesday about the ongoing investigation, he responded to one inquiry saying, “With respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.” [Update, July 26, 9 p.m. ET: The FBI said in a statement late Friday that it determined Trump was struck by “a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces.”]

The attack is no less consequential either way, but this is a signifcant detail and not just another baseless conspiracy theory, even if GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson insists otherwise. As national security expert Juliette Kayyem noted, “Wray, known for exact phrasing and being careful, didn’t say this on accident.” The specificity of how Trump was wounded is important for public transparency and a full forensic accounting of the attack, relevant to rigorous assessment of the security failures (more on that below), the protective response by Secret Service agents, and the nature of Trump’s injury and his recovery.

It also pertains to how the Trump campaign has used the assassination attempt politically. When Trump was nominated at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee five days later, his brush with death was a major theme. Large images of the iconic news photo of him being pulled from the rally stage, his fist in the air and face streaked with blood, provided a backdrop on the main stage. Multiple speakers referred to his survival as the result of divine intervention. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and others lionized Trump, literally, and declared his survival and candidacy nothing short of a holy miracle.

In his acceptance speech, Trump, his right ear still bandaged, gave a dramatic, graphic account. “I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet.’” He said he brought his hand down from his ear “covered with blood, just absolutely blood all over the place.” He then emphasized, “There was blood pouring everywhere, and yet in a certain way I felt very safe because I had God on my side.”

Trump has released no official medical records from after the shooting, nor has there been any public account from the doctors who first treated him at Butler Memorial Hospital. Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, a Trump ally who served as his White House physician, released a memo a week after the shooting describing a bullet wound, but Jackson’s strident partisan role and track record as a doctor raise questions about his credibility.

An analysis published Thursday by the New York Times suggests that Trump’s ear was indeed grazed by a bullet, the first of eight reportedly fired by the gunman. The Times also reported that FBI investigators are seeking to interview Trump directly. Given the swirl of confusion and speculation about his injury, it seems all the more curious that he and his campaign haven’t provided further information.

Is there any clearer picture yet of the shooter’s motive?

No. Wray this week again reiterated the lack of any clear motive, even after extensive FBI investigation. That could still change, but it would be extraordinary, to say the least, to go from no indication of a motive two weeks after an event of this magnitude to a clear one. As I reported last week, the deceased perpetrator, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, appears to have left behind little indication of any political views or his mindset ahead of the attack, according to the FBI and a flurry of media reporting. He was a registered Republican voter, but also made a small donation to a liberal political group and came from a mixed political household.

This lack of a motive is particularly important in light of all the conspiracy theories and partisan exploitation that have filled the void. Indeed, there is a distinct possibility we may never have a clear picture of what drove Crooks, who also searched online, according to investigators, for information about President Biden’s appearances, the Democratic National Convention, and “major depression disorder.”

Ultimately, a thorough investigation of this case may show, as with many assassination attempts in modern history, that political ideology was not a driving factor. It is quite plausible that Crooks was suicidal and wanted to go out in a blaze of infamy, an act that has grown more common among disturbed and desperate young men, as I discussed with threat assessment experts last week. (For more on this: my book on preventing mass shootings, Trigger Points, examines the history and complexity of motives among many perpetrators, including those who target high-profile public figures.)

What explains the catastrophic failures with security?

The public has very little idea thus far. The shooting stands as a disaster of stunning proportions for the Secret Service, whose director, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned this week under intense bipartisan pressure.

The overarching question of the security failure already encompasses a long and troubling list of specific issues: How could the Secret Service not secure a rooftop that was within shooting range and had clear sight lines to Trump? How could the attacker have flown a drone over the rally location just two hours before Trump took the stage? Why was Trump allowed to keep speaking at the podium even after the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners were aware of Crooks’ suspicious behavior, and then even after counter-snipers had him in their sights?

Those are just scratching the surface.

“I’m not going to get into specifics of the day,” Cheatle said during a congressional hearing this week, citing an ongoing investigation. “There was a plan in place to provide overwatch, and we are still looking into responsibilities.”

Voluminous official tomes and many books are sure to be written in the months and years ahead on this epic fiasco.

Will Trump world continue to weaponize the shooting politically?

Almost as surely as the sun rises in the east. In the immediate aftermath, many Trump allies fired off partisan blame—without any evidence—and they haven’t stopped since. The rhetoric has come from Trump supporters in Congress including Rep. Mike Collins (“Joe Biden sent the orders”) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (“They tried to murder President Trump”), and from Trump’s sons Eric (“I said that the Democrats would stop at absolutely nothing”) and Don Jr. (“They’re now trying to kill him”). Not to mention from the man who would become Trump’s running mate two days later, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who said Biden’s campaign rhetoric “led directly” to the attack.

But they absolutely should stop. This stewing narrative is not only false but seriously dangerous: Threat assessment and law enforcement leaders told me it is fueling potential violence, already a heightened concern heading into the November election. As one source told me, “They’re piling on the idea that the opposition is so out to get Trump that they even tried to kill him, and therefore retaliation is justified. Only a small number of people might take violent action on this, but you don’t need much for things to get worse.” As another put it: “Extremist groups will take advantage of anything that fits into their narrative and this is a really big plot point for them.”

It is an accelerant on Trump’s continuing campaign of political incitement, aimed at migrants, the FBI and DOJ, judges, prosecutors, Democratic officials, journalists, and the many others he has long targeted. The fundamental premise of it all is that he is the alleged victim of a grand political conspiracy to take him down and steal the presidency from him, which is framed as a supposed Democratic or “deep state” plot. It is now being weaponized to whip up outrage by the same folks who are behind Project 2025. And in Trump’s telling, the ultimate target is not him but rather the Americans who support him: “They’re coming after you,” as he ominously puts it.

Meanwhile, Trump has kept up the steady incitement in recent weeks, including in his long, demagogic RNC speech—although this grim dimension of his campaign has gotten far less media attention than it deserves. As I wrote just a couple of weeks before the assassination attempt: “The question now isn’t about whether Trump will continue to stoke political violence in this way through the election. It’s about when and to what extremes he might do so, and how much more that will boost the odds of further violence to come.”

Five days after the horrific attempt on Donald Trump’s life at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, we have a clear picture fundamentally of what happened. There was a catastrophic failure by the Secret Service to protect the former president from a gunman who, incredibly, was able to occupy a rooftop about 450 feet away and get a clear shot at Trump onstage. Trump was wounded on his ear, a 50-year-old man in the crowd hit by the gunfire died shielding his family, and two other people were critically injured. The gunman was quickly shot to death by a Secret Service sniper.

But a crucial piece of this tectonic event remains missing: We still know virtually nothing about the motive of the perpetrator, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, a recent community college student from suburban Pittsburgh. That information void, unusual after a high-profile attack, may have its own repercussions after being filled by a maelstrom of partisan exploitation and conspiracy theories.

In the immediate aftermath on Saturday—well before the shooter’s identity even began to emerge—Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia claimed that “Joe Biden sent the orders” and should be charged with “inciting an assassination.” His fellow Republican and Trump backer, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, said that “Democrats wanted this to happen” and further declared with no evidence that “they tried to murder President Trump.” Swift partisan blame also came from Trump’s son Eric and a prominent Trump adviser, Chris LaCivita, who said, “they tried to put him in jail and now you see this.”

Anger and threats from partisans with large social media followings flooded X.com and other platforms. “Retribution is coming,” inveighed one prominent MAGA account. “Guarantee you that.” The post drew more than 100,000 views and included the instantly iconic news photo of Trump pumping his fist as he was evacuated from the stage, his face streaked with blood.

“Extremist groups will take advantage of anything that fits into their narrative and this is a really big plot point for them.”

As various MAGA supporters claimed that Biden had ordered a hit on his election opponent, some on the left spread outlandish conspiracy theories about the attack being “staged” by Trump. An adviser to major Democratic donor Reid Hoffman suggested in an email to journalists they should consider whether the shooting had been encouraged or perhaps even arranged so that “Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash.”

Ahead of this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, some party leaders called for calm and a message of unity—but many, including Trump’s now-running mate, JD Vance, continued to declare that Biden’s campaign rhetoric was the direct cause of the assassination attempt.

This atmosphere is further heightening concerns about violence, according to threat assessment leaders with expertise in counterterrorism and mass shootings who I spoke with. Risk of a cycle of political violence and recrimination, including from the far left, is a growing worry. But their greatest concern remains potential bloodshed stemming from Trump’s long-running campaign of incitement and his message that he is supposedly the victim of a systemic conspiracy—a narrative that has now been supercharged.

“Trump people were already mobilizing around the phony message of ‘we’re going to get screwed again by a rigged election,’” one threat expert told me, “and now they’re piling on the idea that the opposition is so out to get Trump that they even tried to kill him, and therefore retaliation is justified. Only a small number of people might take violent action on this, but you don’t need much for things to get worse.”

“Extremist groups will take advantage of anything that fits into their narrative and this is a really big plot point for them,” said another threat assessment expert. (These sources asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the Trump shooting investigation and their working relationships with federal law enforcement agencies.) An intelligence bulletin from the FBI and DHS sent earlier this week to law enforcement throughout the country warned of potential “follow-on or retaliatory attacks.”

Early investigation suggests that Crooks, from the Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park, left behind few if any real clues as to why he targeted Trump. The relatively thin portrait of him is decidedly mixed in terms of any possible political identity or motive. He was registered to vote as a Republican, and neighbors have told reporters they recalled seeing Trump MAGA signs in the yard of the house where Crooks lived with his parents. Crooks also once donated $15 online to a liberal fundraising group. CNN reported that state voter records show his mother is registered as a Democrat and his father as a Libertarian. His father owns more than a dozen guns and a decade ago purchased the AR-15 used in the attack, according to law enforcement officials.

Media interviews with former high school classmates and employees at a skilled nursing home, where Crooks worked as a dietary aide until last week, all suggest he was quiet, kind, and intelligent. He graduated Bethel Park High School in 2022, where he won a math award, and in May he completed an associate’s degree in engineering science from the Community College of Allegheny County. Claims in the media by a couple of former peers that Crooks was bullied in high school have since been strongly contradicted by a school guidance counselor who worked with him and said he knew him well; the counselor told the Washington Post that Crooks never was bullied, had no disciplinary record, and had a group of close friends. (The idea that bullying is a root cause of school and mass shootings goes back to Columbine and is misguided in many cases.)

None of the wave of media coverage has included reports of Crooks expressing strong political or ideological views, let alone personal grievances or threats. He appears to have had scant presence on social media, relatively unusual for a person of his generation. It’s unclear whether his trail will lead to any meaningful “legacy tokens,” as FBI experts call the written screeds, images, videos, or other evidence that many perpetrators leave behind to convey their grievances and influence media coverage.

By Monday, FBI investigators had begun examining data from a cellphone belonging to Crooks, but they have found “nothing significant” so far to help explain his mindset or intent, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation confirmed to me. There is no indication to date that anyone else was involved, officials have said. Investigators have spoken with Crooks’ parents, who seemed to have little insight into their son’s motive, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal. A second cellphone and other devices Crooks used could yield further information. FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Wednesday afternoon in a Senate briefing that no motive had been established after extensive investigation. FBI analysis of Crooks’ online activity found that he searched for images of Biden and Trump as well as for dates and places for appearances by both of them.

Claims by former peers that Crooks was bullied in high school have since been strongly contradicted by a school guidance counselor who worked with him.

Threat assessment experts told me that a few things can reasonably be surmised at this point about Crooks. Given the physical circumstances of his attack from the rooftop, he likely had no expectation of escaping the Trump rally site and likely was suicidal, as many mass shooters are. It’s highly probable that further evidence exists of him planning and preparing for the attack—including and going beyond his visit to a gun range and his purchase of ammunition in the days ahead, as has been reported, and his advance surveillance of the attack site, which Wray reportedly discussed in Wednesday’s Senate briefing.

The FBI has said that Crooks had no record of mental health problems, but that doesn’t mean he had no such issues, or that he gave off no warning signs. (Nor would any mental health issues have predicted or fundamentally explained his attack—that’s a myth.) As I examined in my recent deep investigation into the 22-year-old who committed mass murder a decade ago in Isla Vista, California, perpetrators who are intelligent and able to present themselves as normal can be skilled at concealing their inner turmoil and lethal intent—while still also “leaking” signs of their plans far in advance.

Big gaps remain in what is publicly known about Crooks’ pathway to the attack: His home life and his relationships with his parents, with whom he lived in Bethel Park, remain of interest to investigators. Little has yet been reported about his recent time at community college.

Many assassination attempts in modern US history have not been motivated fundamentally by political ideology. One case from the 1960s resonates uncannily with the circumstances of today.

Another threat expert I spoke with suggested that America’s heated political atmosphere may have played a role more generally in the shooter’s choice of target. That is, the Trump rally coming to town may even have been a kind of ultimate crime of opportunity for a disturbed young man who wanted to go out in a blaze of infamy. Many shooters seek attention and notoriety—and after Trump announced the event in Butler 10 days ahead, what nearby target could’ve possibly offered that more?

In fact, seminal research in the field of behavioral threat assessment conducted in the early 1990s found that many assassination attempts in modern US history were not motivated fundamentally by political ideology. One case in particular from the 1960s resonates uncannily with the circumstances of today. After the Trump shooting, the Biden administration announced it would begin Secret Service protection for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose father was slain by an assassin’s bullet as he campaigned for president in summer 1968. The killer, Sirhan Sirhan, had expressed anger about Sen. Bobby Kennedy’s policy on arming Israel. But as I reported in my book Trigger Points, the pioneering threat assessment experts who personally interviewed Sirhan and studied his case as part of their research on assassins concluded that he ultimately was driven by a stew of behavioral disorders, personal failures, and fame seeking—not by any clear political motive. (The same was true of Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin.) Notably, Sirhan had considered trying to kill several different public figures, and his stated grievances shifted over the years, later even co-opting conspiracy theories about his attack.

Sirhan’s case was rife with evidence of his thinking and behaviors. A few targeted attacks in the decades since have been mostly bereft of such evidence, including the one by the suicidal gunman who massacred concertgoers in 2017 on the Las Vegas Strip, where he used AR-15s outfitted with bump stocks to kill 58 people and injure more than 500 others. That case is still widely considered to lack a clear motive.

Any student of history knows that the already rampant conspiracy theories about the Trump shooting will never go away. A big future revelation about motive in the case might dampen those, but the relatively minimal picture of Crooks so far suggests the possibility that we may never really have a clear explanation for why he did it. Yet, perhaps no case in modern memory reflects a greater urgency for additional facts to surface and prevail.

Thankfully, some people close to or directly hit by the tragedy have expressed sentiments of civility. Some Trump-supporting locals told reporters they rejected the partisan blame, including a disturbing message posted on a billboard in Butler afterward: “DEMOCRATS ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION.” And although the widow of Corey Comperatore, the man killed at the Trump rally, refused to take a call from Joe Biden, she told the New York Post that she has no ill will towards the president: “He didn’t do anything bad to my husband. A 20-year-old despicable kid did.”

Donald Trump called into Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on Monday night, where the two talked about the biggest topic in political media: Joe Biden’s shockingly bad performance at the recent presidential debate and the future of Biden’s reelection bid. After about 10 minutes, however, Hannity teed up a familiar dark theme for Trump. It was time to talk about the border.

Hannity warned of a “a clear and present danger” from what he claimed are “nearly 11 million unvetted Joe Biden illegal immigrants” inside the country. “The likelihood that terrorist cells are probably already here is very high,” he said, blaming Democrats. “I’m worried about our national security like never before.”

Trump responded by reciting a claim he attributed to Hannity: “It’s one hundred percent certain that we’re going to have a terror attack.” Trump said he agreed with that assessment and then expanded on it:

We’re letting terrorists into our country at a level that we’ve never seen before. Terrorists are coming in and they’re coming in, Sean, from mental institutions and insane asylums. They’re coming in from prisons and jails, from all over the world…and they’re pouring into our country as prisoners, as mental patients, they’re coming into our country, and they’re coming in also as terrorists, and this is poisoning our country.

Immigration is a top issue for voters, and Trump’s unsubstantiated smears against migrants clearly are aimed at motivating his base. But his demagoguery is also part of a long campaign of thinly veiled incitement—one that increases the risk of political violence at the hands of Trump’s extremist supporters. For years, Trump has used this method, known to national security experts as stochastic terrorism, against an array of purported political enemies. With the help of Fox pundits, migrants have been on Trump’s list ever since he entered the 2016 presidential race. As I reported in late June:

Among Trump’s many targets over the years have been immigrants, journalists, judges, and law enforcement officials. Threats and violence have followed. Proving a direct connection is all but impossible—and that’s the point, the madness in the method, so to speak. But in various cases a connection also isn’t difficult to see: a mass shooter claiming to be motivated by a migrant “invasion,” after Trump and his Fox News allies hyped such fears. A sharp rise in death threats against journalists, after Trump and his advisers blasted the media as the “enemy of the American people.” A thwarted attack by a Trump supporter on an FBI field office, after Trump let loose over the Mar-a-Lago raid and after his ally Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona said, “We must destroy the FBI.”

Previously, Trump used Nazi-style rhetoric to declare that those he views as political enemies “live like vermin within the confines of our country” and that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Behavioral research shows that fueling political anger with disgust and contempt produces a potent hatred that increases the likelihood of violence.

Senior law enforcement officials and security experts told me recently that extremist violence stemming from white supremacist groups and Trump’s MAGA movement is a top concern headed toward the November election. How might some fanatical Trump followers respond to the relentless message that a horde of migrants is poised to attack?

 “We’re gonna have to get these criminals,” Trump further told Hannity on Monday, calling them “very high level” and “very bad” to emphasize the alleged danger. “We’re gonna get ’em out. We’re gonna have the largest deportation in our history.”