Trump Assassination: Trump joins long list of US presidents targeted in assassination attempts

Former President Donald Trump was declared safe after the Secret Service foiled what authorities described as an assassination attempt in Florida on Sunday, less than two months after an attempted shooting at him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

These two incidents are just the latest in a long history of political violence that has long shaped the American political landscape. Over the decades, numerous presidents and presidential candidates have been the target of assassination attempts, some of which resulted in their deaths, others that failed but left deep scars on American society and politics, according to Bloomberg.

Most modern US presidents have been targeted, but the Secret Service has been successful in foiling most of them. Only a few incidents have resulted in actual injury to presidents or candidates.

According to a 2008 congressional report, there were 15 “direct attacks” on presidents, president-elects, and candidates between 1835 and 2005. Of those, four were assassinations of sitting presidents. In contrast, several U.S. leaders have survived deliberate assassination attempts, Axios reported.

Even before Sunday’s incident, polls showed voters were concerned about the potential for violence surrounding this year’s presidential election.

A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of swing states in May found that half of respondents feared that, including roughly equal shares of Democrats and Republicans. Those concerns were more common among independents, the poll found.

Here is a look at some of the most notable assassinations and attempted assassinations of American presidents and presidential candidates:

Donald Trump

During Trump’s 2016 campaign, a 20-year-old British man tried to grab a gun from a Las Vegas police officer at a Trump rally there.

He later revealed to police that he was trying to kill Trump, and pleaded guilty to federal firearms crimes.

Ronald Reagan

On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. fired six shots at the president in Washington, seriously wounding Reagan but recovering after emergency surgery. According to The New York Times

The other three victims also survived. Hinckley was immediately arrested and remained in institutional psychiatric care until 2016, 12 years after Reagan’s death.

Gerald Ford

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson, attempted to shoot Ford in Sacramento, California on September 5, 1975.

Three weeks later, Sarah Jane Moore shot Ford in San Francisco, making the two women the most notable female assassination attempts in U.S. history. according to The Economics Times 

Robert F. Kennedy

Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed Kennedy, then a candidate in the Democratic primary, in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, less than five years after his older brother’s assassination.
Sirhan was sentenced to life in prison, according to Al-Jazeera

John F. Kennedy

On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy in Dallas, in an assassination that still sparks debate about whether Oswald acted alone or was part of a larger operation.

Speculation and theories became more complicated after Oswald was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby just two days after Kennedy’s assassination, According to PBS

Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt was in the midst of campaigning to return to the White House as president when he was the target of an assassination attempt while giving a speech in Milwaukee on October 14, 1912.

With his thick, 50-page speech and his eyeglass case in his breast pocket, Roosevelt survived the bullet that lodged in his chest.

Although he recovered from the incident, Roosevelt eventually lost the election to his opponent Woodrow Wilson. The attacker, John Schrank, was psychiatrically evaluated and diagnosed as insane, leading to his commitment to a mental institution until his death.

William McKinley

President McKinley was shot in Buffalo, New York on September 6, 1901, and later died of his wounds, leading Vice President Roosevelt to the presidency.

Anarchist Leon Czolgosh was convicted of the assassination and executed.

James Garfield

Garfield was shot in Washington on July 2, 1881. He died of complications from his wounds two months later. Writer and lawyer Charles Guiteau was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death.

Abraham Lincoln

On the evening of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre.
The assassination was carried out by John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor who was strongly sympathetic to the Confederacy.

Booth shot Lincoln in the head at close range, killing the president the next morning. Following the incident, the federal government launched a massive manhunt that lasted nearly two weeks, ending with Booth’s death in a confrontation with government troops in Virginia.