Turbulent times demand a shored-up Secret Service

The need for increased security seems to expand daily for government, religious and other institutions. There is an increasing collective sense that prominent individuals of various types are targeted and vulnerable.

The recent murders of political commentator Charlie Kirk, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Michigan, a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, and Catholic school students in Minneapolis, all leap most horridly to mind. Yet they are only the latest episodes in a grim wave of violence that marks a recurring ugly streak in American culture.

We cannot let it continue.

Federal lawmakers are not about to relitigate the exceptional permissiveness of our gun laws. Sadly, sensible voices for rejecting hyperbole, inflamed by social media, which can trigger the disturbed among us, do not hold sway, so reasonable defenses against attack are needed all the more.

Let’s not forget. Last year, former and now current President Donald Trump came unnervingly close to being killed or severely wounded in separate attempts on his life. On July 13, during a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired shots from an AR-15 style rifle from a nearby rooftop. He killed rallygoer Corey Comperatore, injured two others and grazed Trump's upper right ear before a member of the Secret Service Counter Sniper Team shot Crooks dead.

On Sept. 23, Ryan Wesley Routh hid in shrubbery at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course and pointed his rifle through a fence line 300-500 yards away from Trump. A Secret Service agent shot four times. Routh fled, was later arrested and convicted, and faces a life sentence when he returns to court Dec. 18.

Part of the underlying problem was described in a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, which found that from 2020 through last year, the Secret Service countersniper unit was way understaffed. The number of events requiring a protective sniper unit to be on patrol increased by 150%, yet the sniper force grew by 5%, the report said. How is it that there are not enough security personnel trained on advanced weapons to protect a president?

The federal government is currently shut down. When sanity returns, Congress and the executive branch are expected to beef up the Secret Service budget. But that doesn’t entirely assure the safety of a president or the other officials the Secret Service must guard. Anticipation and common sense are needed too.

On Sept. 9 demonstrators got uncomfortably close to Trump and Cabinet members at a Washington steakhouse a block from the White House, angrily heckling and chanting about Gaza, a federal crackdown in the city, and restaurant employees’ wages. The group Code Pink has always demonstrated peacefully. But prominent Trump supporters quite logically demanded to know why the Secret Service reacted so slowly on the spot.

Protecting U.S. leaders can be a daunting task. The consequences of not doing so could bring us to a very dark place.