When UC Davis violence researcher Dr. Garen Wintemute queried Americans on political violence, race and threats to democracy, he didn’t know exactly how scary the results would be. “We expected the findings to be concerning, but these exceed our worst expectations,” said Wintemute, a go-to source of mine for many years on gun violence, which he witnesses firsthand as an emergency room physician in Sacramento. The report by Wintemute and his team at the Violence Prevention Research Program was released by UC Davis on Wednesday, on the eve of the last round of congressional hearings into the Jan…