OpinionMass shootings have become a fact of American life, like Donald Trump’s hate

Robert Delaney says US politics has been infected by the rancour that brought Trump to the White House

The anti-China, anti-immigration Trump narrative is going strong, in spite of the latest mass shooting by an immigrant-hating gunman, he says

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President Donald Trump discusses his hardline approach to immigration during an event in the White House. Photo: TNS

Published: 3:02am, 30 Oct 2018Updated: 4:27am, 30 Oct 2018

The blood had not stopped flowing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania over the weekend when US President Donald Trump turned the massacre into an election issue.

The Tree of Life synagogue, where 11 people were killed by a gunman raging about immigrants, should have armed guards, Trump bellowed. It is a regular refrain we have heard from the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) every time a psycho snaps and acts out the cultural ritual that’s now as American as apple pie and baseball: the mass shooting.

This bloodletting is so common now, we might as well cue The Star-Spangled Banner whenever the bullets start flying. As this American tragedy plays out, Trump is twisting it into a campaign message faster than gun-control advocates can trot out their arguments, because he knows American politics have devolved to the point where the loudest voice wins.

While Trump shouts down the entirely reasonable question of how many people must die before Congress will enact some controls on assault weapons, the NRA moves to get ahead of the controversy by spitting out the entirely unreasonable assertion that all Americans would be safer if more people were armed.

“Alternative facts”, which the American left and centre laughed at when White House communications adviser Kellyanne Conway first suggested they were as legitimate as anything objectively verifiable, now drive the narratives on any number of right-leaning, Trump-friendly media outlets, starting with Fox News.