- Ronald Reagan's daughter writes that gun violence has turned the US into a "weakened country."
- "Fear is a breeding ground for autocracy," author Patti Davis wrote in a New York Times op-ed.
- Davis wrote that she's "lived in fear" of guns since her father survived an assassination attempt in 1981.
Patti Davis, daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Tuesday that gun violence has turned the United States into "a weakened country" and warned that the "fear is a breeding ground for autocracy" in the wake of several mass shootings.
"And to have a country in which everyone is scared of who might be legally carrying a gun as they walk through their daily lives means we have a weakened country in which anything is possible," Davis wrote. "Fear is a breeding ground for autocracy, and history shows us that every democracy that has crumbled did so in an atmosphere of fear."
Davis' op-ed came on the heels of a pair of July 4 mass shootings that turned Independence Day parades and festivities into tragedies. A shooter in Highland Park, Illinois killed six people and injured dozens who were attending a parade, and a shooting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania left two police officers injured and sent hundreds running for their lives.
The July 4 violence follows other high-profile mass shootings at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, where a shooter killed 10 people, and a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.
Davis wrote that her father, an actor by trade before going into politics, obtained a permit to own a gun in 1947 but raised her "to have a healthy fear of guns" and awareness of how seriously a gun could injure someone.
"It was necessary, he said, but it didn't really make him feel safer," she wrote. "It was a constant reminder of how life can take a frightening turn, and he didn't like living in fear. He knew how corrosive it is."
In 1981, Reagan survived an assassination attempt at the hands of John Hinckley, a shooting that injured him and three others. Davis wrote that "in the decades since that day, I have lived with a fear of guns, especially concealed guns," a fear augmented by the proliferation of powerful assault rifles.
"The world saw him confident, unafraid. What you didn't see was the Secret Service putting a bulletproof vest on him in the hospital room, carefully strapping it over the long incision on his chest," Davis wrote.
While Reagan, a conservative Republican, was initially reticent to support stronger gun regulations in the wake of his own assassination attempt, he eventually came around to support the 1993 Brady bill, named for his former press secretary who was badly injured in the shooting.
"Democracy thrives when citizens feel emboldened by their country, when they feel confident in their freedoms and in a government that exists to make their lives safer, not more at risk," Davis wrote. "Democracy dies in the dark waters of fear, and that's where we are — swimming for our lives, wondering why a strident minority wants us to drown."