Former US President Donald Trump has returned from the jaws of death, albeit with a chipped ear, after he suffered a gunshot at a rally in Pennsylvania. Coming on the heels of a poor performance in the first televised live debate by his opposition presidential candidate Joe Biden, the attack has helped the controversial Republican politician consolidate his vote bank. Luckily for him, he could raise his fist and chant “Fight, fight, fight” before being frisked away by Secret Service agents, bettering his chances of returning to the White House as undecided voters seem to buy his arguments about a plot against America. Violence against a candidate at the cusp of election only generates sympathy for them; having seen death up-close, Trump is now eyeing a resurrection of his political career.

But no debate in the social media age follows the straight dichotomy of good versus evil or victim versus perpetrator. Taking cue from Trump’s own modus operandi of creating what he calls “alternative facts,” conspiracy theorists and some of his detractors have been calling the attack a plot by Trump himself to gain public sympathy. An old photo of him, with both his ears intact, has been doing the rounds on the internet, claiming that he was not injured at all. After all, this is the same man who was indicted for instigating an attack on Capitol Hill and trying to overturn the 2020 US presidential election results. From investigating crimes by him to now investigating a crime against him, US law enforcement and investigation agencies have an unexpected, rather strange, task in their hands.

But amid the din of which of the old men returns to the White House as the 47th president of the United States of America or the motive of the 20-year-old Republican voter-turned-gunman or even the misgivings about Trump’s victimhood, an age-old question of gun culture has made a comeback. American gun culture has a central role in the assassination attempt on Trump, and Trump himself is one of the fiercest defenders of such a culture. And if anyone thinks Trump will now rethink his love for guns, one of his advisers, Chris LaCivita, has clarified that the ex-president will continue to protect gun rights. For the Republicans, the constitutional guarantee offered by the Second Amendment for individuals to carry guns is sacrosanct; Trump will potentially continue to exploit the Americans’ emotional attachment to the gun as a self-defense instrument.

Such is the gun obsession in the United States, even after seeing the assassination of four presidents—Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy—and assassination attempts on Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W Bush, among others, the country is helpless to do much about it. The comfort of amnesia is too dear to America when it comes to dealing with the tough question of gun violence. And with a morally repugnant record of supplying arms to Israel in its attempts to wipe out the Palestinians, Trump’s opponent and sitting president Joe Biden is lost for words. The United States should really unite to wipe out gun culture.