These are different times... Guns are "more available" now than in the past :::: Don't forget -- US was born in violence, fought a civil war less than a century after its founding !!

The killing of Charlie Kirk has left the US and those who care about it on edge. 

The arrest of a suspect, Tyler Robinson, has hardly settled the nerves .... 

The US was born in violence, fought a civil war less than a century after its founding and in living memory seemed to be on the brink of another one – with a spate of assassinations in the 1960s that took the lives of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and John and Bobby Kennedy. 

That should provide some consolation, the knowledge that the country has been through this before and survived.

And yet the comfort is scant, because these are different times. For one thing, guns are even more available now than they were then. 

However, there is an irony and a sort of paradox.

At a time when no one was in custody and nothing at all was known of Kirk’s killer, Donald Trump said the blame for his death lay with “the radical left”. 

It was its “rhetoric” that was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today”. The problem was not political violence in general, but “radical left political violence”.

It is one of the asymmetries of the US culture wars that this etiquette, rigorously enforced from left to right, is not observed in the other direction. 

So when an intruder broke into the home of the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and nearly clubbed her husband, Paul, then 82, to death, the leading Republican in the country did not offer condemnation or words of consolation. 

Instead, Trump responded by making repeated jokes at Paul Pelosi’s expense. 

Take a pause and rethink for a while.  

In India -- it's the other way round !!

Different rules apply. 

After an act of violence, Democrats must be gracious, empathetic and call for calm on all sides.

But the Republicans can mock the victims, blame only one side and demand more violence. 

And there’s a further asymmetry: a single post from a random, anonymous user online will be treated as a statement from “the left”.

However, the outpourings of the right’s most powerful voices, in politics or the media, and including the President himself, somehow get a free pass.

The US was born in violence, fought a civil war less than a century after its founding and in living memory seemed to be on the brink of another one – with a spate of assassinations in the 1960s that took the lives of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and John and Bobby Kennedy. That should provide some consolation, the knowledge that the country has been through this before and survived.

And yet the comfort is scant, because these are different times. For one thing, guns are even more available now than they were then.  

"These are dynamics Kirk knew well and that he was adroit at using to his advantage. 

He understood that a culture war inherently favours those willing to disregard the rules. 

It is a lesson that liberals and the left are, rightly, reluctant to learn – but that reluctance comes at an increasingly high price," - writes Jonathan Freedland in 'The Guardian'. 

ends