The times are a changin’, again, maybe for the worse

Former President Donald Trump speaks at Dream City Church in Phoenix on June 6, 2024, in his first campaign event since being convicted in New York of 34 felony counts related to paying hush money to a porn star before the 2016 election to keep her from telling people about their sexual relationship. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror

I don’t own a gun.

I’ve never wanted to.

There are about 49,000 reasons I don’t. That’s the number of people who were killed by guns in the U.S. in 2021, the most recent year that complete data is available.

Research shows just having a gun in the house dramatically increases the odds of someone getting killed or committing suicide. In fact, more children than ever are being killed by firearms, often unintentionally, and The Trace reports people who buy guns to protect themselves would be much safer if they just called the police or ran away.

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But this isn’t an article about gun control. It’s about why the idea of even owning a gun keeps crossing my mind these days.

I’m anxious about our country’s future and the safety of my family, neither of which is mutually exclusive.

One of the things that has me concerned is that 70% of Republicans (or about one-third of the American electorate) still insist that their presumptive nominee for president, Donald J. Trump, was cheated out of the 2020 election.

He wasn’t. There’s absolutely no evidence 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’ve concluded that Biden will win in November, our democracy will survive and Trump will eventually end up going to jail — where he belongs.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder: “What if I’m wrong?” I was wrong in 2016. It could happen again.

If Biden wins, given the 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, will Trump’s MAGA-minions accept the results or revolt? If Trump wins, will he make good on his promise to exact revenge? And will his supporters turn to violence again to keep him in power, this time for good?

Like a lot of people, all of this has me thinking: If Trump wins, should my family and I stay in the U.S. or flee abroad?

I’m hardly alone in my thinking. People who make a living helping Americans transplant their lives overseas say business is booming.

Patricia Casaburi, CEO of London-based Global Citizen Solutions, an upmarket migration consultancy firm, told David A. Andelman, a commentator for CNN, “Beginning in 2020, we went from Americans being 5% of our clients to becoming today 70%.”

And according to Gallup polling results over the years, at the end of George W. Bush’s eight years in office, 11% of respondents wanted to leave the U.S. for good. When Barack Obama was president, that figure dipped slightly to 10%. But by 2019, halfway through Trump’s presidency (even before the pandemic crushed our economy and killed 1.2 million people in the U.S.), 16% said they were mulling permanently leaving the country.

Obviously, most people don’t go through with it, but if Trump wins the election, the ranks of our deeply disenchanted fellow Americans are bound to swell.

I’d been thinking about this for a while when the topic came up in a recent conversation with my brother, Ruben, a proud Vietnam vet whose blood boils whenever Trump’s name is mentioned. My brother, half joking, insists he’ll become a hermit if 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.

A vocal Trump critic, I’m one of those people the ex-president refers to as “the enemy of the people.”

On the contrary, I think my views mirror those of most Americans, who understand that a second Trump presidency could destroy or at least deeply wound our democracy and lead to the persecution of most anyone who openly disagrees with him.

Not to mention, as a playwright, my work often explores themes steeped in social justice from a distinctly liberal point of view. I once wrote a satire that included the word “Trumpifornication” in the title. Get the picture?

I’m not a Democrat, but I voted for Biden in 2020 and I plan to vote for him again. I figure if the choice is between a rational, experienced, politically centrist octogenarian and a self-described wannabe dictator and freshly minted felon who’s also been found guilty of sexual assault and massive business fraud, all while standing accused of stealing top secret documents and trying to overthrow our government, then call me crazy, but I’m going to pick the geezer from Scranton every time.

Speaking of being a target, did I mention I’m brown, Latino, the son of an immigrant from Mexico, and someone who’s not afraid to say the truth: that the vast and overwhelming majority of immigrants who come to the United States just want a better life and mean absolutely no harm?

I could go on, but basically everything about me suggests that, if Trump gets back in the White House, I, like millions of us, could become a target of his wrath or that of his increasingly radical and violent base of supporters.

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 to, because I believe this country would be far 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 let fall silent.

Still, I can’t help but think of how, in the Civil War, fellow Americans, neighbors and even siblings took up arms and slaughtered each other by the thousands over whether whites had a “state’s right” to own Black people.

I’m not suggesting that civil war or widespread political violence are imminent — at least not yet — but I think “these times, they’re a changin’” 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. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and X.

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