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You could have said the same things about the Trump shooting, and many people did. But it turned out that the shooter was a disgruntled Red Triber with no discernable political motive.
You want to believe that "they" are engaged in a pattern of political violence, and you want it enough not to wait for confirmation where there is an obvious alternative theory that turned out to be correct last time. Why do you want to believe this? The world where the people who shoot politicians are crazies is a better, safer, happier one.
The absence of a discernable political motive is not proof of no political motive. I acknowledge it also isn't proof he did have a political motive, nor that such proof currently exists. But you aren't convincing me he didn't have a political motive without a stronger argument. The act of shooting a political figure in a political event is political in and of itself.
My point is about the reaction to the political violence. I don't doubt mental illness played a major role. However, you cannot deny the reaction and behavior of people to these events. One survey finds over 50% of people left of center say murdering Donald Trump or Elon Musk would be justified. Do you think I'm choosing to believe more people are okay with the use of violence for political purposes because I want to?
Who do you think I think "they" are? I stated the left engaged in burning, looting, and rioting after several high profile culture war events. Perhaps you believe this is an unfair assessment of the left, and you might have a point, but they certainly did not condemn such actions or downplayed it. How the right will react to this event, we shall see.
The world where nobody shoots politicians is a better, safe, happier one.
That survey has been linked a number of times, but isn't the research methodology rather sus here? They are not asking a binary question on "Do you think that the murder of [Musk/Trump] is justified", they're asking on agreement on a scale of 1-7 and then counting all the answers that aren't 1 ("Not at all justified") on the "justified" side. One can do that, it tells of something but it's still an odd way to do a survey unless one is specifically intent on getting a sensationalized result. There are people who, when encountering a scale like that, instinctively avoid answers 1 and 7 on account of being "extreme", even though of course in this case that's hardly the correct way to go on about it.
This is a valid criticism of the survey, but I suspect if it had been done the other way one could argue it creates no room for nuance and then try to argue for why the percentage of people that would say it is justified is actually smaller for one reason or another. I don't think the research methodology is sus in as so much as the interpretation of the results, since these are self reported answers. Maybe the collection methodology or their sampling of the population is flawed.
Regardless, if we were to grant anything 4 or under to be on the not justified side, that's still 22% for killing elon and 31% for killing trump of those left of center that believe there is justification for political murder. That's still not an unsubstantial amount, although to be fair it is also far from 50%. The amount of justification for the assassination of a non politician I've seen even in small niche non-political discord servers with people I am friends with, let alone in the wider web certainly does lead me to believe these stats. I'd like to see some surveys giving contrary results.
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