A Brief History of People Unsuccessfully Shooting the President

It's not a good thing

Americans love their guns, and some few Americans love to use their shooty boom toys to bust caps in presidential asses. Sometimes, they’re successful. In 1865, Abraham Lincoln never got to see how the play ended. In 1881, James Garfield only got to be president for four months before spending seventy-nine days of agony slowly dying because nineteenth century medicine sucked. Same deal with the state of medicine for William McKinley in 1901, except he only had to suffer for eight days before going off to the Great Certainty because antibiotics were not yet a thing. Alas, Alexander Fleming’s medical discovery wouldn’t have helped poor JFK when his head went “back and to the left” in 1963.

There have been innumerable plots to assassinate American presidents. I want to focus on the guns and when someone actually got close enough to shoot at Oval Office occupants. As noted above, the four times an assassin was successful in bringing an early end to an American president’s term, the method used was a gun.

And I must proclaim that I do not support such attempts, no matter how much the guy sucks. The most recent attempt against the Manchurian Cantaloupe is NOT how he needs to go down.

“So you’re saying if you had a time machine you wouldn’t go back and shoot Hitler?” Oh, shut the fuck up. I would shoot the everloving shit out of Hitler like I was Wyatt Earp and he was Frank Stillwell. That’s because at that time and place in history there weren’t any other options. An entire goddamn planet had to go to war to end the short-mustachioed motherfucker.

But today, in a modern democracy, there are much better nonviolent alternatives to preventing fascist autocracy. Tangerine Palpatine can be dealt with via the ballot box, the justice system, or perhaps by way of KFC and hamberders. We don’t need to use bullets.

Enough of that. Shooting, or trying to shoot, an American president is more common than many realize. Let us begin.

1835: Andrew Jackson
President Jackson was responsible for the deaths of countless Native Americans, and if anyone deserves an eternity of pitchforks up the ass, it’s him. On January 30, just outside the Capitol Building, a painter named Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot Jackson, but both his guns misfired. Being that the Secret Service was not yet a thing, Jackson attacked his would-be assassin with a cane and beat the shit out of him. A mental health analysis of Lawrence found him to be an entire cave full of batshit; he spent the rest of his life in an asylum.

1864: Abraham Lincoln
On a late summer evening, about eight months before President Lincoln was for-real assassinated, he was riding his horse, alone, near his cottage when a sniper took a shot at him and blew Abe’s hat off. Lincoln described that the shooter “unceremoniously separated me from my eight-dollar plug hat.” Abe kicked his horse into a gallop and fled home. A guard confirmed hearing the shot followed by the hasty arrival of the president. The next day another soldier found the hat with a hole in it. The sniper was never identified. The attempt made Lincoln far more paranoid about an attempt on his life. Mere hours before being killed by John Wilkes Booth, the president formed the Secret Service, but they weren’t given the job of protecting presidents until 1901.

1912: Theodore Roosevelt
Like the Danger Yam, Teddy wasn’t president at the time he was shot. He was a former president trying to become president again. Roosevelt was McKinley’s vice president, and ascended to the head of the government when his boss was assassinated in 1901.

He served until 1909, choosing not to run in the 1908 election. But in 1912 he decided to run again, and not as a way to stay out of prison. Less than a month before the election, on October 14, a wealthy saloon owner named John Schrank shot Roosevelt in the chest while he was campaigning in Milwaukee. The bullet went through Teddy’s steel glasses case and his fifty-page speech, which were inside his jacket pocket, before entering the former president’s chest. Teddy said well shit I’m not coughing up blood I’ll be fine; he ignored the calls to go to the hospital and delivered his speech anyway. Schrank likely would have been lynched on the spot had Roosevelt not asked the crowd not to harm the shooter. The attempted assassin was determined to be coocoo for Cocoa Puffs and spent the rest of his days in a hospital for the criminally insane.

1933: Franklin Delano Roosevelt
He had been elected president, but Franklin was still seventeen days away from being inaugurated for the first time when on February 15, while giving an impromptu speech from the back of an open car in Miami, Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at him from the crowd. Giuseppe was only five feet tall and had to stand on a folding chair to take aim. The first shot missed, then members of the crowd grabbed for him, and he fired four more wildly. There were a number of injuries, but no bullets struck the incumbent president. The mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, was standing next to Roosevelt and he was hit. As the car raced to the hospital, Roosevelt cradled Cermak in his arms. The mayor died nineteen days later from his wounds. Barely a month after the shooting, Zangara rode the lightning on Old Sparky, being electrocuted until dead at Florida State Prison.

Interlude: Harry Truman
This one doesn’t meet the parameters for my piece, but it’s worth mentioning that in 1950 two Puerto Rican separatists attacked the Blair House—Truman was staying there because the White House was undergoing renovations—with guns in an attempt to kill President Truman, who was inside and on an upper floor. There was a shootout with police that killed one of the separatists and one of the officers. The assassins never gained entrance.

1975: Gerald Ford
On September 5, one of Charles Manson’s crazy-ass followers named Lynette Fromme tried to shoot President Ford while he was visiting Sacramento. Fromme was in the crowd and Ford went to shake her hand. She drew a pistol and was going to shoot him, but she was too fucking deranged to remember to chamber a bullet from the magazine and it didn’t fire. She was restrained by the Secret Service and spent the next thirty-four years in prison.

And what the fuck is up with female assassins hating on Ford? Because only seventeen days later Sara Jane Moore took a shot at Ford when he was visiting San Francisco. She didn’t know the sights were off on her pistol and she barely missed. Then a former Marine named Oliver Sipple grabbed her arm, causing her second shot to go wide and injure a taxi driver. Moore served thirty-two years in prison for the attempt on Ford’s life.

1981: Ronald Reagan
In an attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster, because what the fuck, John Hinckley Jr. emptied his revolver in the direction of President Reagan outside the Washington Hilton, only two months into his presidency, on March 30. A police officer and a Secret Service agent were wounded, and Press Secretary James Brady was hit in the head and nearly died, suffering permanent brain damage. Reagan was hit in the chest by a bullet that ricocheted off the inside of his presidential limousine. It did serious damage and the president nearly died. Except that medicine was way better than in Garfield and McKinley’s day and doctors were able to save him. Hinckley was deemed a couple cans short of a six pack and was released after thirty-five years in a psychiatric hospital.

Interlude: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama
Like the attempt on President Truman, these two don’t meet my criteria because the two presidents weren’t directly shot at. They still merit a brief mention. In October of 1994 a sniper fired over two dozen rounds at the White House while President Clinton was inside watching a football game. The sniper was tackled by tourists before anyone was injured. And in November of 2011 another sniper fired several shots at the White House in an attempt to kill President Obama. Again, there were no injuries. Despite the shooter thinking he was Jesus and Obama the antichrist, there was no insanity defense. Both shooters are currently in prison.

2024: Donald Trump
Ugh. This is the last fucking thing we need.

On July 13, according to early reports, Thomas Matthew Crooks fired several rounds from a rifle at the convicted felon from a rooftop in Pennsylvania while Coppertone Caligula gave another one of his stupid hate rallies to a bunch of idiots who dropped out of middle school to pursue a career in competitive cousin fucking. Former and hopefully-never-again President Trump’s right ear was nicked, one person in the crowd was killed, and two others injured. The Secret Service then shot and killed the shooter. Crooks was a white male and a registered Republican. As of writing, no motive for the shooting has been revealed.

In the wake of the shooting, conspiracy theories have run wild, and I beseech readers not to engage in them. I also ask that you not perpetuate doomsaying by alleging that this will guarantee a Trump victory on November 5 because it makes him appear badass. Teddy Roosevelt was far more badass, taking a shot to the fucking chest a mere three weeks before the election and saying fuck it and delivering his speech anyway. Because guess what? That election, which also happened on November 5, was LOST by Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson in a landslide.

Read my story about the assassination of President McKinley.

Read my story about the attempted assassination of President Ford here, and how it ruined the life of the man who saved him.

Read my story about the history of the Second Amendment and why it’s fucking stupid and also racist.

And don’t forget to buy my sweary fucking history book ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.