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I think honestly the best answer is serious pressure, social and political against all political bomb throwers. The reason that political violence in 1980 was rare was that it was socially unacceptable to be a radical, mainstream media was corralled by technology (there were only 3 channels and news content was limited to a hour a day and whatever was printed in the newspaper), by social pressure (people refusing to watch entire stations who got too radical, or calling the FCC to complain), and because the screen was in a public place, there was social stigma at play to people — especially minor children— watching radical content. In the home, mom can turn off the television, especially since there’s only one and it’s in the living room.
Going on to social pressure, the only people who were radicals were either very quiet about it or were basically social pariahs. The open communist, post high school worked in the fine field of low-rent retail and fast food restaurants. He had few friends and generally only among other true-believing pariahs like himself. If you worked in an office job, you wouldn’t talk about politics because saying anything even slightly outside the fairly narrow window of things white make middle class office workers believed was a good way to end a career. All of this social conformity kept the violence down because it’s hard to justify violence if you’re not pretty radical in your ideology. And if you are pressured to not be radical, and can’t marinate in radical ideology, it’s a lot of work to become and remain a radical as you get pushback from people you know and people who have power over you.
So my suggestion is to basically leverage those kinds of ideas. Make political radicals losers again. Don’t hang around with them, don’t hire them, and don’t let them be radicals in public. Policy wise I would hope that some kind of control can be exerted such that radical content on social media, streaming services, and on cable networks can be removed. Barring that, at least in your own home, be aware of the kinds of content and social media your kids are consuming and as possible prevent them from getting into those kinds of content or influencers. If I were a parent I’d look at the people he’s into and seeing if they are dancing around because Kirk got shot or are calling MAGA or the government authoritarian or something.
I'm not sure that political violence in the US in the 1980s was much more rare than it is nowadays.
In the 1980s, there was a politically motivated bomb explosion in the Capitol building and a politically motivated assassination attempt on civil rights leader Vernon Jordan. Also, mentally ill individuals killed former Congressman Allard Lowenstein and attempted to kill President Ronald Reagan.
Granted, the assassination attempts that I mention were not politically motivated, but then I'm not sure that the attempt on Trump's life in Butler, PA was either.
The 1970s had a lot of communist and also more or less vaguely leftist violence from the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, and so on, even though the same social factors that you mention applied. It was pretty easy back then for radicals to find other, fellow-minded radicals.
Three political attempts at violence in a decade is much lower than the current baseline which is at least 5-6 within the last 6 months. You can’t really reach absolute zero, but having those events be rare is a much better thing. The 1970s were more radical mostly because of Vietnam and the draft and mostly calmed down once the war and draft ended.
Butler I regard as at least semi political simply because I don’t think you can non-politically shoot a presidential candidate during a campaign rally. He was also disturbed as I understand it, so mental illness plays a role.
Those are obviously just the high profile ones. Most of these from our time won’t be remembered in a couple decades.
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