In the early hours of Sunday, April 13, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family awoke to the sound of state troopers pounding on his door. What he soon came to realize was that his home in Harrisburg was on fire and that he would need to evacuate his family — and his dog — from the governor’s mansion immediately.

Fortunately, nobody was injured — at least not physically. An assassination attempt no doubt takes a toll on one’s mind.

Soon after, the 38-year-old suspect, Cody Balmer of Harrisburg, turned himself in. He was charged with multiple high-level offenses including attempted homicide, aggravated arson, terrorism and aggravated assault. According to reports, Balmer allegedly scaled the mansion’s fence, broke the windows with a hammer and used a homemade Molotov cocktail to light at least two fires inside of the residence.

Frighteningly, Balmer told police that he would have attacked the governor with a hammer if the two had met inside the home.

While no official motive has been released yet, political hostility seems to be the obvious conclusion.

Elected officials, no matter their party, have increasingly begun to face death threats and attempts on their lives. Looking at the numbers, it has become clear that some proactive measures must be taken to prevent these attempts from continuing to occur. And these are the ones that we know about. No doubt, if any high-ranking elected official knew of the plots that were foiled in secret, they might never step foot outside of their homes again.

On Sept. 15, a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle was intercepted by Secret Service agents while then-former President Donald Trump was golfing on his own property. Just two months earlier, on July 13, Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt during a rally in Pennsylvania when a bullet grazed his ear.

In 2023, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig was attacked after being followed into the elevator of her apartment building. In October 2022, Paul Pelosi was grievously injured in a politically motivated home invasion targeting his wife, then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In July 2022, Rep. Lee Zeldin was assaulted at a campaign event by a man wielding a sharp object. In June 2022, a man was arrested near U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home, armed with a gun, knife and other weapons, allegedly intent on killing him.

In 2017, U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise was critically wounded when a gunman opened fire during a congressional baseball practice in Virginia.

If we go even further back, we’ll find that, in 2011, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot at close range during a constituent event in Tucson, Arizona. Then, a decade earlier, in 2001, U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle were among those targeted with letters containing anthrax, part of a bioterrorism scare that gripped the nation shortly after 9/11. In 1998, a gunman opened fire in the U.S. Capitol, killing a Capitol Police officer and a detective.

To find another attack on a sitting U.S. official, you’d have to go back to 1981, when President Ronald Reagan survived being shot by John Hinckley Jr. The numbers don’t lie. Attacks on politicians are increasing. A bullet, hammer, or flame will eventually find its way to an elected official. Then what? Will we finally do something?

On this issue, we implore the federal government and each state legislature to take proactive rather than reactive measures. One of the most unsettling types of violence in America is political violence, which is occurring at an alarmingly increasing rate.

We cannot watch helplessly as those who are elected by the majority of the population are constantly under attack and left helpless.

What will happen if this conduct spills into state legislatures, too? They have modest protection.

If the goal of democracy is to empower the people through their elected voices, then the rising tide of political violence is a direct assault on democracy itself. We cannot allow intimidation, terror and assassination attempts to become the new normal and we cannot wait for another tragedy to finally draw a red line.