In June 2010, less than six months before the midterm elections, Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle suggested in a radio interview that if the November results didn't turn out the way conservatives wanted, well, there were always "Second Amendment remedies" that could take care of her opponent, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid. "I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies," the Tea Party candidate told her host. "I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems."

The voters spoke. Despite the Tea Party wave that flipped the Senate, Angle was ruled too extreme and lost the race, and Reid kept his seat.

Angle wasn't the only one using gun rhetoric on the trail that year. Sarah Palin, still fresh from her new stardom as the running mate on Sen. John McCain's failed 2008 presidential ticket, released a map in March 2010 listing key districts to "target" in Congress. Each district was marked by crosshairs, and the text read "Don't Retreat — Instead RELOAD." One of those 20 districts was that of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Just two months after she won her reelection, 22-year-old Jared Loughner opened fire at a constituent event Giffords was hosting at a local supermarket. As a result of his use of "Second Amendment remedies," 18 people were shot, six fatally.

Violent rhetoric on the campaign trail has become a sadly commonplace part of the political cycle, even after the assassination attempt. In 2012, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill was considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic candidates up for reelection. One of the many Republicans vying for the party nomination to be her opponent was Tea Party activist Scott Boston, who dubbed Sen. McCaskill "Claire Bear." At one rally, Boston told his supporters, "We have to kill the Claire Bear, ladies and gentlemen. She walks around like she's some sort of Rainbow Brite Care Bear or something, but really she's an evil monster." Boston lost the nomination to Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin, but security around Sen. McCaskill greatly increased for the rest of the election as a precaution.

In a presidential election where one person was already investigated for attempting to file a fake obituary notice on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and where Republicans have said everything from "[Clinton] should be put in the firing line and shot for treason" to "[She] should be tried for treason, murder, and crimes against the US Constitution ... then hung on the Mall in Washington, D.C.," it seems impossible to think that things could get much more incendiary. Of course, until now, the most blatant violent rhetoric hadn't been coming from the Republican presidential candidate himself.

Speaking at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Tuesday, the GOP nominee reminded supporters that Clinton is in favor of gun control, which Republicans and the National Rifle Association interpret as wanting to "ban" the constitutional right to bear arms. "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment," Trump said. "By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know. But I'll tell you what, that will be a horrible day."

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Trump's campaign has argued that he was actually referring to the ability of gun proponents to mobilize and vote. The faces of those who attended the rally, however, imply that his audience heard what many claim was his real message: Gun owners should apply some "Second Amendment remedies" of their own.

House speaker Paul Ryan said the remarks sounded like a "joke gone bad," and although Trump didn't claim this particular comment was a joke, he has a habit of turning to the "just kidding" defense whenever he gets in hot water over any comments he makes. He was "just joking" when he threw a mother and her crying child out of a rally, or when he told Russia to hack Clinton's emails, or when he says pretty much anything rude or misogynistic about a woman, or even when he said he could go out and shoot someone and still not lose any of his supporters.

Whether it was a "joke gone bad" as Ryan argues, or he was being inarticulate and the media misconstrued him, as California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter claims, it's impossible to ignore Trump's repeated pattern of using the power of suggestion in order to maintain deniability. It's not so different from the way he employs the phrase "many people are saying" — he's not saying, of course, but he's just putting it out there that some people are, make of it what you will.

Regardless of whether or not he was intentionally calling for direct violence against Clinton or others with his Second Amendment comments, the fact remains that movement leaders have a grave responsibility for the words they say and the actions that those words may trigger. It's a lesson that is repeated over and over again, such as when Robert Dear was arrested after a fatal shootout at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado, telling investigators "No more baby parts," or when a young man killed nine at a black church because he said he wanted to start a race war. As law professor David Cohen explains inRolling Stone, Trump is just the latest to engage in "stochastic terrorism," using language to incite random actors to engage in violence. "Predicting any one particular individual following his call to use violence against Clinton or her judges is statistically impossible," Cohen wrote. "But we can predict that there could be a presently unknown lone wolf who hears his call and takes action in the future. Stated differently: Trump puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn't know which dog."

No one understands that better than former Congresswoman Giffords, who condemned the nominee Tuesday evening. "Donald Trump might astound Americans on a routine basis, but we must draw a bright red line between political speech and suggestions of violence," Giffords said in a statement, according to The Hill. "Responsible, stable individuals won't take Trump's rhetoric to its literal end, but his words may provide a magnet for those seeking infamy. They may provide inspiration or permission for those bent on bloodshed."

With a mob who regularly chants "lock her up" at his campaign events, where violence against protesters has become a common theme, and where Trump himself is often heard to taunt his opponents as they are escorted out, Trump is completely aware of the tinderbox he is playing with every time he addresses his supporters. Conservative websites are already claiming that Trump supporters are being violently attacked physically in the streets, and pundits like Rush Limbaugh have been telling their listeners to expect "levels of violence that we have not seen" depending on the outcome of the race in November.

But if Trump continues his campaign of dog whistles and coyly veiled threats, it's likely violence may occur long before November. And with the presidential contender currently bragging that this latest controversy is actually "a good thing for me," chances are his violent rhetoric is just beginning.

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