Now, will they focus on gun violence?

The attempted attack by a potential shooter to kill people at the White House Correspondents Association dinner is just the latest example of violence in our country.

School shootings, church shootings, mass shootings, attempted assassinations of presidents and other public figures – we all are almost desensitized to them.

This one, with no one seriously injured, should be looked at differently, though.

In attendance were media elites and working stiffs, the President, Vice President and a lot of the Cabinet, media corporate bigwigs, House and Senate members and others.

So, journalists and their powerful guests have now experienced a potential mass shooting from the “other side,” as potential targets of such violence which, one hopes, has to affect the way they cover these events going forward. One thing to be an observer detached from a story, another to be in the story.

As the days go by, we’ll learn more about possible motives of the alleged shooter, of arrangements for such events, and more. We need to learn lessons from it all.

To try, finally, to avoid or at least limit, it happening again.

Having been in that ballroom many times, for this event and others, and knowing the layout of the Washington Hilton, while the alleged shooter clearly planned out his attack, if he had gotten into the ballroom, getting to the President or the front of the room would have been next to impossible with the number of people and tables in the way. Would he have killed people? Most definitely, but he wouldn’t have gotten a shot at the dais, in my opinion.

Early reports are he wanted to harm the President and his administration’s representatives. Logistically, he likely would have killed and wounded others though before he was stopped.

Our society has become violent. We have been desensitized to that violence. Reporters cover the tragedies and then move on to the next big story.

Politicians from all sides leverage the events to push their own favorite gun control, gun decontrol or whatever issues.

It’s a pattern that needs changing.

Talking heads took familiar positions. Trump supporters blamed a violent “left wing.” Non-supporters said it’s a problem on both sides of the political spectrum.

Nothing new there – none were calling for calm and a stop to the finger-pointing at the extremes on both sides.

The truth is such violence knows no single home. It comes from all angles.

President Trump’s reactions to the shooting covered the gamut. From saying the right things (honoring the Constitution, bringing people together) and all the wrong things (immediately focusing on his White House ballroom, on how “impactful” presidents become targets for assassination, designating himself as “impactful”).

But let’s not forget the shock those in the hall and those of us watching on television felt. Because that’s what we must take from these events. And where we must demand something be done, finally.

Now the most powerful people in our country and the reporters who cover them have felt what it’s like to be under the attack of a person who is, clearly, mentally disturbed, motivated … and armed. The same way so many mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers and others have been affected over the decades.

The President asked the event be rescheduled. A nice idea but probably not practical. Certainly not at the level it’s been held for the last 100-plus years.  

Still, the purpose of the dinner – the true purpose – is to honor the First Amendment and to award scholarships to students. Those scholarships, that day in the limelight, is something those students earned and deserve.

Many executives plan trips to DC for months to attend the event, and folks in DC manage their schedules around attending.

Not to mention the millions of dollars the association spends and will have to pay for the night’s cancelled event. The Association doesn’t have a chest of money waiting to be spent. The ticket costs typically pay most of the expenses and scholarships each year.

So, I expect a smaller celebration will be planned.

The President’s immediate focus on the White House ballroom, to me, was inappropriate in addition to being false. For one thing the White House, this one and likely future ones, won’t be renting out that ballroom to private groups, such as the correspondents’ association.

And, even if it found a reason to do so, it won’t be big enough to accommodate them. But it fit Trump’s narrative to direct attention and “need” to his “secure” ballroom. As planned, the new ballroom would seat 650-999 people. That night’s event attracted a few thousand people. It was a fund-raiser. You don’t skimp on seats if you’re raising money. You pack the room.

(By the way, personally I don’t oppose having a larger venue for the White House to hold events, but I don’t like just nonchalantly knocking down the East Wing in the effective dead of night with no notice or adherence to the official, legal process that exists to make changes to the White House.)

Attention also needs to be better paid to the line of succession and who attends what events together. Seems like that President and Vice President needn’t be in the same room (off the White House campus) as often as we’ve seen, for example. At least four of the top five office-holders in the line of succession attended that night.

Let’s not end without singing the praises of the Secret Service and law enforcement for the job they did that night. No one was injured in the ball room, the alleged shooter never even got to the door to enter the ballroom.

While the hotel writ large wasn’t secure, a perimeter was established widely enough around the ballroom to provide a tragedy from being a disaster. And the Secret Service, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is not even being paid right now because of political budget disputes on the Hill.

Those men and women performed bravely and unselfishly to protect the President and the hundreds of others in that ballroom.

Let’s hope the rest of the government sees that as a message for how they should perform – putting personal positioning aside for the country’s good.

GOING FURTHER

• Agent hit by buckshot from the gun of man charged in correspondents’ dinner attack, prosecutor says | AP News

• Shots fired as gunman charges toward ballroom at White House correspondents’ dinner. Trump unharmed | AP News

• Jeanine Pirro says evidence shows suspect shot officer at White House press dinner | The Guardian

• Pirro says ballistic evidence shows correspondents’ dinner suspect shot officer | The Washington Post

• White House press dinner shooting raises questions over security at event | The Guardian

• How the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting unfolded | CBS News

• The “Hinckley Hilton”: Inside the security apparatus where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting occurred | CBS News

Sources:

▪ This piece was first published in The Screaming Moderate and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 4 May 2026 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

▪ Cover: Flickr/The White House. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)