At a time when American politics is dominated by a revived gun debate, the killing of a British member of Parliament an ocean away shows gun control isn’t enough – we must also remake our violent political discourse.

With its strict gun control measures, shootings in Britain are rare. Those measures did not, however, stop an attacker from savaging lawmaker Jo Cox, an outspoken advocate for multiculturalism and an inclusive approach to immigrants. The attack comes amid a divisive debate about whether Britain should remain in the European Union.

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Usually, it is possible for people to qualify strong sentiments around race and ethnicity and to express them in ways that are functional within a democratic society that prizes free speech and freedom of religion. But just as a weapon in the hands of the mentally unstable can have violent consequences, the rhetoric of bigotry – and hatred cloaked in a veil of politics – can conjure violence.

The suspect reportedly shouted “Britain First”, as he attacked Cox, according to witnesses. Britain First is a far-right group known to put on anti-Muslim demonstrations. The organization has posted a statement distancing itself from suspect Tommy Mair and saying it “would never encourage behavior of this sort”. But its invocation – and the shooter’s alleged ties to the US based neo-Nazi organization National Alliance – underscore the reach that bigoted thinking has played in discourse around the upcoming Brexit vote.

That ugly discourse can have ugly consequences is nothing new. We saw this clearly in the rightwing, anti-government extremism and white supremacy of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people and remains America’s deadliest rightwing terror attack. Bill Clinton, who was president at the time, would recall years later the centrality of violent rhetoric in the tragedy.

“What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or we should reduce our passion for the positions that we hold, but the words we use really do matter, because there are – there’s this vast echo chamber, and they go across space, and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike,” Clinton said in a speech in 2010.

His words didn’t prevent history from repeating. We saw it a year ago in a racially motivated shooting at a black church in South Carolina, where the white supremacist shooter later admitted he was hoping to ignite a race war. And we saw it six months ago in the shooting of a Colorado Planned Parenthood, where the killer’s comments about “no more baby parts” signaled he’d taken the moral extremism of the right’s war on abortion to an illogical conclusion.

We even saw it this very week in the Orlando shooting. The killer was reportedly triggered by gay men kissing in front of his wife and child – something a deranged radicalization of his faith had taught him was a grave and evil sin. (His father would later condemn his son’s shooting only because he thought gays would ultimately be punished by God.)

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And while it is true that the Orlando killer was Muslim, it’s important to emphasize it is not just the Muslim faith that has anti-LGBT sentiment ingrained in it. It is also in Christianity, and in practically every major world religion. It can also, disturbingly, be found in our politics, particularly in the rhetoric of the evangelical right.

It’s important – imperative even – to emphasize this so that the Donald Trumps of the world cannot scapegoat and stereotype Muslims. He has already sought to do so in the wake of Orlando, fanning the flames of hatred, fear and bigotry against Muslims, as so many before him did in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. And those same folks who would ignite hatred rather than promote peace will use cases like the killing of Britain’s Jo Cox as ammunition in the argument against gun control.

Don’t be fooled. Britain’s overall homicide rate is much lower than the that in the US. According to the Geneva Declaration of Armed Violence and Development, a multinational organization based in Switzerland, the gun homicide rate in England and Wales is about one for every 1 million people. That means there are about 50 to 60 gun killings annually in a population of 56 million. In the US, a population that’s roughly six times larger, there are about 160 times as many gun homicides.

The closest thing we’ve seen to Cox’s killing in America was the 2011 shooting of congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was targeted during an outdoor constituent meeting in Arizona. That shooter, who would be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was able to shoot not one person but 19. He killed six of them, permanently debilitating Giffords, who has since gone on to dedicate her public life to gun control efforts.

Gifford’s shooter was able to purchase his Glock from a nearby Sportsman’s Warehouse less than two months before the killing. The Orlando shooter, on FBI watch lists, was able to easily obtain what amounts to a weapon of war.

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The internet has lowered the barriers for rhetoric, and while virtually 100% of people will never act on it, it spreads more hateful political rhetoric in the public domain – rhetoric that disproportionately affects women. And Cox, who was also national chair of Labour Women’s Network, already had been the target of abusive messages from another man angry with Cox’s push for EU inclusivity, who was arrested in March.

Cox’s death is tragic and terrible. It’s also a reminder that Trump’s response of hate-filled political scapegoating and stoking of fear – enabled by a toxic political rhetoric and spread by social media and the web – is more than exactly the wrong response: it’s at the heart of the violence.