The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump was a dark day in American political life; not the first, and likely not the last.
It was an appalling act by a gravely misguided young man who took the life of a former fire chief who was attending the election rally, and critically injured two others.
And of course the shooter himself was killed. He was just 20.
President Trump narrowly missed likely death. The shooting was rightly condemned by President Biden and world leaders, including Taoiseach Simon Harris.
Politicians, no matter what their party, office, or the office they are seeking, should be able to speak in public without fear of assault or assassination.
They should be. But history and this latest shooting point to a different, grim, reality.
There was an element of irony in the shooting. There always is though, for the most part, irony goes unnoticed in these highly charged times.
In his inaugural speech in January, 2017 then President Trump spoke of "American Carnage". It was a dark vision of America's present and future.
Saturday's shooting was a terrifying example of American Carnage. We could do with a lot less of it, but it's more likely that we will witness more examples of it.
What makes it more likely is the presence in our society of hundreds of millions of guns, many of them in the wrong hands.
The Secret Service has come in for criticism since Saturday's shooting. Much of it may be warranted. Headlines have been asking how the shooter managed to get on to a roof within easy rifle shot of the podium where Trump was addressing his supporters.
Fewer questions are being asked about the fact that he was armed with a military grade AR15 Rifle. It was bought legally by his father, according to reports. A fishing rod would have been a better buy; perhaps golf clubs. But no, it was an assault rifle.
Buying such weapons in Pennsylvania does not require much effort. The shooter bought fifty rounds of ammunition shortly before his crazed gun rampage.
As widely reported in recent days, people can now buy bullets from vending machines in some parts of the country.
According to CNN, "vending machines selling ammunition will now be in grocery stores in Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma – a move that has generated mixed feelings from officials in those states.
"American Rounds, the distributor of the machines, uses AI technology to scan the customers’ identification as well as facial recognition software to verify a customer’s identity, according to the company’s website.
"The software works together to verify the buyer’s age and that the person using the machine matches the identification scanned. Each machine sells ammunition for various firearm calibers, including rifles, shotguns and handguns, according to American Rounds."
And there are plans to expand the availability of vending machine bullets to other states.
Sure, this is just a variation of over the counter sales, but it's also another example of how utterly in thrall America is to the ways of the gun, how normalized our armed-to-the-teeth society has become.
In Birmingham, Alabama last weekend, as the Trump shooting was grabbing the lion's share of headlines, seven people were shot dead in two separate shooting incidents. Over the July Fourth weekend a hundred people were shot in Chicago, nineteen of them fatally. Belfast in the worst days of the Troubles could not match this kind of, well, carnage.
Ultimately, the most horrifying aspect of the attempted assassination of Trump and the death, and injuries in his near vicinity, was not how much of an aberration it was, but how tragically commonplace.
It is to be hoped that President Trump recovers from the obvious shock that he suffered. We might disagree fundamentally with the man on some political issues, but he did not deserve such a near brush with death.
The man who died did not deserve such a violent ending to his life and his family should not now be grieving. Those wounded did not deserve their wounds.
None of us deserve to live in an America where the gun is all too often used in anger. But only "us" can do anything about that.
