When political violence erupts in America, we reach for easy explanations. The media wants a headline. Politicians want a talking point. Audiences want a villain that fits neatly into their worldview. So we seize on whatever detail stands out — a $15 political donation, a bullet casing scrawled with a slogan — and spin it into a story about leftists, Antifa, or lone wolves.

But what if we’re missing the bigger pattern?

Take the two most shocking incidents of the past 12 months: the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. On the surface, they look different. Two different shooters, two different settings, two different outcomes. But underneath, the profiles line up in ways too striking to ignore.

A Shared Profile

Look at the Trump shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks. Twenty years old. White. Grew up in a conservative Republican household in suburban Pennsylvania. His father bought the AR-15 rifle he used. Crooks himself was a registered Republican, though pundits have fixated on a single $15 donation he once made through a Democratic fundraising platform.

Now look at Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old accused of killing Charlie Kirk. White. Grew up in Utah, a state where conservative politics and gun culture are woven into daily life. His parents were Republicans. His family was Christian. Guns were familiar, part of the background of his upbringing.

When you put them side by side, the similarities are uncanny:

Young white men, early 20s. From Republican families. Raised in conservative Christian environments. Comfortable with guns from an early age. Suburban or rural communities where firearms are normal.

This isn’t the stereotypical profile of a leftist radical. It’s something else entirely.

The Distracting Details

Why, then, are we so quick to frame these attacks as left-wing? With Crooks, the $15 donation became the story. With Robinson, the bullet casings inscribed with phrases like “Bella Ciao” and “Hey fascist, catch” have been treated as proof of anti-fascist sympathies.

But those details, while eye-catching, don’t outweigh the weight of their backgrounds. People don’t build their core identity around a one-time $15 donation. And scrawling “Bella Ciao” — a famous anti-fascist anthem — on a bullet doesn’t automatically mean someone is a leftist. In online subcultures, slogans and memes are often used ironically, as trolling, or simply to misdirect.

If we mistake those surface details for the whole story, we risk ignoring the deeper truth: both shooters came out of conservative White families and communities. Both turned their guns not on leftist targets but on figures of the right.

Something Else Is Happening

That raises uncomfortable questions. Why are young men from Republican households aiming violence at Republican leaders? Why are the supposed insiders turning on their own?

One answer may lie in the culture of radicalization itself. Online spaces filled with memes, trolling, and political extremism don’t respect traditional left-right boundaries. They blur them. They teach young men to reject mainstream conservatives as “weak” or “fake.” To someone immersed in that world, Donald Trump or Charlie Kirk may not look like champions of the movement. They may look like sellouts.

Another answer may lie in alienation. These shooters are very young, caught between adolescence and adulthood, living in a political culture that thrives on grievance. They have guns, they have anger, and they have easy access to online communities that can channel both into dangerous directions.

And another answer may be structural. In rural and suburban America, guns are part of life. Conservative politics are the default. Families may assume that raising children in that environment shields them from extreme radicalism. But when alienation meets easy access to weapons, the outcome can be deadly.

The Silence of Institutions

What’s striking is how little systemic response these events have generated. After McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Congress held hearings. After Kennedy was shot in 1963, the Warren Commission launched. After Reagan was wounded in 1981, there were reforms to security and gun laws.

But after two attempts on Trump’s life and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Congress has been silent. No bipartisan commission. No investigation into how young men from conservative households are being radicalized. No effort to understand the role of online extremism or to examine how gun culture intersects with alienation.

The silence is deafening. It suggests we would rather argue about stray details, a donation here, a slogan there, than confront the possibility that political violence is emerging from inside conservative America itself.

Beyond Left and Right

The urge to assign blame to the “other side” is powerful. Democrats are quick to frame violence as right-wing extremism. Republicans are quick to point to leftist radicals. But when the shooters themselves come from Republican families, steeped in White conservative culture, that binary doesn’t hold.

Something else is happening. And until we admit that, we will keep misunderstanding the threat.

The Bigger Picture

The danger here isn’t just one shooter. It isn’t even two. The real threat is the ecosystem that produces them. Young men, disaffected and angry, raised in White conservative environments where guns are normal, drifting into online spaces that blur ideology and reward nihilism.

And when violence erupts, the chaos works in their favor. The narrative becomes fractured:

Was he a leftist? A confused loner? A right-wing extremist?

Each side seizes the detail that fits its story. Meanwhile, the harder truth, that political violence is emerging from inside the very communities that think they’re immune to it, gets lost in the noise.

Conclusion

After the Oklahoma City bombing, I remember there was an outcry at first that the United States had been attacked by religious extremism. But that narrative wasn’t accurate — it was Timothy McVeigh, acting out of far-right, anti-government ideology. Religious extremism was not the motive.

Data bears this truth out over and over. According to multiple studies, right-wing extremism has perpetrated the majority of politically motivated attacks, plots, and murders in recent years. The Anti-Defamation League reports that from 2014 to 2023, of the 442 people killed in extremist-related attacks in the U.S., 336 (about 76%) were killed by right-wing extremists.  Meanwhile, research from the Government Accountability Office and academic institutions shows that in the years since 9/11, far-right actors have been responsible for roughly 70-75% of extremist murders. 

That’s the bigger picture: this isn’t about fringe leftists, anarchists, or religious radicals in the way many media narratives assume. It’s about a pattern that’s been under-recognized — young White men, often from conservative backgrounds, radicalized in ways that don’t always display the symbols we expect, committing political violence in our backyards.

Until we recognize the pattern, and until institutions like the media, law enforcement, and government are willing to confront uncomfortable facts that don’t fit their political framing, the violence will continue. It won’t stop by mislabeling its source. It will stop only when we confront and dismantle the ecosystem that produces it. Otherwise, we’re simply counting down to the next shots.

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Julian Vasquez Heilig, Ph.D., is a nationally recognized education scholar, public intellectual, and media voice on issues of equity, democracy, and policy. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Education Week, and the Associated Press. He has provided expert commentary on CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, Al Jazeera, Univision, ABC, CBS, FOX. Through his widely read blog Cloaking Inequity and his LinkedIn newsletter Without Fear or Favor, Vasquez Heilig has reached millions of readers in over 200 countries, translating academic research into accessible insights for the public. His media presence consistently challenges misinformation, amplifies marginalized voices, and connects scholarship to urgent debates in education and democracy.