The American Years of Lead are Here

The Charlie Kirk shooting is just another sign of our new era.

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A few hours ago, conservative activist and provocateur Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a rally at Utah Valley University. There are pictures and videos and rampant speculation all over the internet. You will not find them here. The shooter’s name and motivation are still unknown as of this writing. In the next few hours and days we will likely have definitive answers to these questions, but we do not have them now.

What does seem clear is that the American Years of Lead are here.

The term refers to a period of Italian history roughly between 1960 and 1980 that was defined by widespread political violence and domestic terrorism, perpetrated by both right and left-wing groups. The scale of the violence in Italy — hundreds dead in massacres, bombings, and assassinations — makes applying the term to the United States seem hyperbolic at first. But consider: Italy had a deeply divided political system, a repressive government, and widespread economic woes. It was filled with motivated and organized radical political groups on both the left and the right. It was quite a bit like our country today.

And now we see the results. We are in a different era: the weapons are different, the tactics are different, the groups are different. The American Years of Lead will not look like Italy’s, but they are here all the same. In this country, any person can pick up a gun and find someone to shoot for ideological reasons. As we have seen time and time again, it is so very easy to do.

But access to firearms in this country is not new. You have been able to get a gun and shoot a lot of people for years. What’s different now is that, in the past half-decade, the contours of this violence have shifted. The motivations of mass shooters are still a difficult trend to map, but more and more people appear to be carrying out assassinations for very specific reasons, targeting very specific people. Put another way, Luigi Mangione was not an anomaly, and nor is the person who killed Charlie Kirk. In the next few years, I suspect they will become known simply as the start of a trend.

The structure of American society has deteriorated to the point where a growing number of people see violence as the only way they can change their world. In some ways, this has always been the case — as I’ve written before, basically all human governance comes down to the use of force at some point or another — but society is supposed to be structured to insulate everyday people from that truth.

The kind of violence that killed Kirk is supposed to be carried out by people who are so deranged, or crazy, or sick, or in pain, that they take an extreme action that is outside the bounds of what our society should permit. But look at where we’re at. Our society is increasing the number of people who are sick or in pain every day. It has broken down and squeezed so hard that ordinary people may feel deranged on a bad day. But most of all, for those who were already harboring thoughts of violence or hate — like so many on the far right — the chaos is an easy excuse. That the president looks fondly on their views or, at the very least, shows little interest in prosecuting them only adds to the opportunity. The country is full of loaded guns in shaky hands, swinging back and forth, from target to target.

What this looks like, on a practical level, might be a bit different than what most people think. There will not be another American “civil war.” The country is too geographically and economically and socially enmeshed for that. But the lone wolves, the fringe groups, and the homicidally desperate will strike, again and again, killing both the innocent and guilty alike.

A few months ago a man drove a truck bomb into a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. The bomber was the only one who died, but the intent was there. His successors will not be as sloppy. The story didn’t get much traction when it happened, but it has stuck in my mind ever since. I do not believe we will get large armed groups fighting each other in the streets. What we will get is more incidents like the Palm Springs one— single shots ringing out in public spaces, or a brief hail of gunfire. Schools and churches will continue to come under attack. People will weaponize their vehicles — the second-deadliest machines in the country — and turn them into battering rams and bombs to slam into buildings and crowds. The state will denounce the attacks it deems to be perpetrated by its enemies and use them to justify expanding its use of force in the streets. Nonlethal rounds shot at protesters will, perhaps, become live ammunition.

There is nothing now that we can do to stop this: ending it will take years of reform and an ease to the material hardships of this country to make it abate.

If that sounds hopeless, I’m sorry. I don’t want people to live their lives in a state of constant fear. It is extremely unlikely that any one person will be affected by this trend, statistically speaking — though marginalized groups are far more at risk. But however insulated we may personally be from some of this violence, what people must do is understand and recognize that it exists. This won’t go away if we do not first recognize that our society is broken and seek to fix it. That means we can’t trust people who want us to “return to normalcy,” or who offer hollow promises of stability without changing the rotten foundations that our violent country rests upon. A more peaceful world is possible. It will take new leadership and new ideas. We do not have those yet. We may not get them anytime soon. Until then, we live in the years of lead.