BY Thomas Klassen, The Conversation

Trump assassination bid: 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.

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