Attempted assassination of Trump: The long history of violence against U.S. presidents

By Thomas Klassen, York University, Canada

Political assassinations in the United States have a long and disturbing history.

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, who narrowly escaped death when a bullet grazed his right ear while he was speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, highlights the danger of those seeking votes in a country whose constitution guarantees citizens the right to bear arms.

Trump joins a not-so-exclusive club of U.S. presidents, former presidents and presidential candidates who have been the target of bullets. Of the 45 people who have served as president, four have been assassinated while in office.

Given the near mythic status of U.S. presidents, and the nation’s superpower role, political assassinations strike at the very heart of the American psyche.

Abraham Lincoln’s killing in 1865 and that of John F. Kennedy in 1963 are key moments in the history of the United States. James Garfield (1881) and William McKinley (1901) are less remembered, but their deaths nonetheless rocked the nation at the time.

Secret Service provides protection

It was after McKinley’s assassination that the U.S. Secret Service was given the job of providing full-time protection to presidents.

The last American president to be shot was Ronald Reagan, who was seriously wounded and required emergency surgery in 1981.

Reagan was leaving a Washington hotel after giving a speech when gunman John Hinckley Jr. fired shots from a .22-calibre pistol. One of the bullets ricocheted off the president’s limousine and hit him under the left armpit. Reagan spent 12 days in hospital before returning to the White House.

Other presidents have been shot at, but luckily, not injured.

In 1933, a gunman fired five shots at the car of then President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt wasn’t hit but the mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, who was speaking to Roosevelt after the newly elected president had made some brief remarks to the public, was injured and died 19 days later.

Two attempts in one month

In September of 1975, President Gerald Ford survived two separate assassination attempts — both by women.