Question lingers: Who protects everyday Americans?

The dust has settled.

Former President Donald Trump is safe, having escaped an assassin’s bullet a week ago.

The Secret Service detail assigned to protect Trump on a daily basis did its job on national television — swarming around and over the former president and putting their lives on the line to save his — while horrified rallygoers and television viewers watched in real time as the events of that day unfolded in front of their eyes.

What could have been yet another national tragedy was averted and life in America goes on.

Oh, yes, Corey Comperatore is dead.

Who was Corey? He was a 50-year old man who took his wife and daughters to see the former president at the rally in Butler, Pa. He was a volunteer firefighter, a man respected and loved by his community, an avid churchgoer and “the best” dad to his girls. He was a good man and an innocent man who didn’t deserve to die.

When the shooting started, Corey did what his instincts demanded. He threw himself between his wife and daughters and the bullet that was headed their way. He died a hero. He lived a life worthy of the name — American.

Since that fateful day — those of us of a certain age have lived through way too many of those days, some of them with far more horrific and life-altering outcomes — there has been much hand-wringing and questioning about what happened.

How did that shooter get that close to a Secret Service protectee with a gun? How did the shooter get the AR-style weapon in the first place and was it legal? Did the Secret Service use the right protocols and did the agents on the ground respond appropriately in real time? How did law enforcement “lose” the shooter after they were alerted to his presence as a possible threat?

So many questions and with time there will be answers. With time.

That’s what we do in this country when we are charged with protecting our VIPs. Former presidents of the United States being right at the top of that list requiring protection.

But there is a question I have been waiting a respectable amount of time to ask. It is a question that so many Americans ask every time there are senseless murders of innocents whether they be people praying in their church, young people gathered in a nightclub for an evening of fun, people gathered together to celebrate Christmas or kindergarten children gathered together in their schools for what should be the beginning of their long and interesting lives.

Who in this country is protecting them?

Butler, Pa., is a place that will never be confused with the middle of America in terms of its political thought. It is a bright red, gun-loving and, most likely, gun-toting part of this country that prides itself on its unabashed and unfaltering support of the Second Amendment.

And I am certain most of the people who live there subscribe to the NRA-promulgated rhetoric that promises that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Well, folks, there were hundreds of good guys with guns the day Donald Trump got shot. And none of those people stopped the bad guy — until Trump’s ear was shot, Corey was killed and a couple of other people were injured. By then it was way too late. Wouldn’t you agree?

So, I ask again, who in this country was protecting Corey Comperatore and the hundreds and thousands of Americans who go about their daily lives in schools, in the malls, in our churches and synagogues and mosques and other places of worship, and in our nightclubs and movie theaters?

Here’s a hint. There aren’t enough Secret Service agents, police officers, sheriff’s deputies and “good guys with guns” who can actually use them without shooting themselves or other innocent people to do the job.

So, that begs the next question. What is the common denominator in every one of these mass shootings and the assassination attempt on the former president?

According to every report I have read, it is an AR-style weapon. You know, the kind that was banned in the 1990s and clawed its way back into mass production in the early 2000s when Congress refused to renew the ban.

If the shooter didn’t have access to that weapon — where the best he could have done would be a handgun or slingshot or musket (that’s the most lethal weapon available when the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment) — we wouldn’t be having this conversation and Corey would be alive with his family.

So I ask one more time. Whose job is it in this country to protect the thousands of innocent people who get cut down way too early while they are just going about their business and living their lives as free Americans?

And if your answer is that it is our job — each of us — to protect each other in this country then what are you going to do about it now?

Butler, Pennsylvanians do not need automatic weapons of war. Those folks should have learned that by now because their hometown will forever be known as the place where a former president was almost assassinated and one of their own was murdered.

For certain, Las Vegans don’t need to learn that lesson either. Just think 1 October.

Nor does any other part of this country that has been riddled by bullets from AR-type weapons over the past few decades.

The answer is staring us in the face. And so far, the best we can do is stare — blankly — back.

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.