What US presidents have been assassinated or shot at?

Credit: AP

Former President Donald Trump was injured Saturday night during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in what the FBI says was an assassination attempt.

The gunman and at least one audience member are dead, the Secret Service said.

This is is not the first time in American history that a political leader's life has been in danger.

In the pre-Civil War era, President Andrew Jackson was shot at while attending a funeral in the Capitol. The shooter fired twice, but the gun failed.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt, like Trump, was trying to get his old job back during the 1912 campaign.

He was shot on the way to a speech in Milwaukee by a saloon keeper. Roosevelt later said a folded-up copy of his 50-page speech slowed the bullet, which stayed in his body for the rest of his life.

Franklin D Roosevelt was president-elect when a would-be assassin fired at him in Miami in 1933.

The shooter, Guiseppe Zangara, missed Roosevelt but killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. He was put to death by electrocution.

Harry Truman, who took over the presidency after Roosevelt died, was shot at across from the White House by Puerto Rican nationalists in 1950.

Gerald Ford faced two assassination attempts in quick succession in 1975.

Lynette “Sqeaky” Fromme, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson, was foiled before she could fire at Ford in Sacramento, California.

Weeks later, a woman named Sara Jane Moore shot at Ford in San Francisco but missed because a bystander grabbed her.

Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 outside the Hilton in Washington, DC, after giving a speech.

His press secretary, James Brady, was more seriously wounded than Reagan and later became an activist for gun control.

Reagan’s shooter, John Hinckley, spent decades in a mental institution. He was released from court supervision in 2022.

An Idaho man was charged with the attempted assassination of Barack Obama when he fired shots at the White House in 2011.

Trump raised his fist to the crowd as he was bundled off stage in Pennsylvania. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

Other political leaders were not so lucky, and killed.

This famously includes Abraham Lincoln, who was the first president to die by assassination.

He was shot in the back of the head in 1865 during an appearance at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, by John Wilkes Booth, an actor in the play that night and Southern sympathizer.

Booth fled the scene and was shot when he was captured weeks later in Virginia.

James Garfield, the 20th US president, was shot at a train station in Washington, DC, in July 1881.

He died from his wounds months later, in September, in New Jersey.

Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau, a disaffected former supporter with mental illness who was angry at not getting a job in Garfield’s administration. Guiteau was convicted and hanged within the year.

William McKinley was shot in September 1901 in Buffalo, New York, by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist.

Czolgosz was later electrocuted.

John F. Kennedy was killed by a sniper, Lee Harvey Oswald, in Dallas in November 1963 as he was driven down a parade route in an open-topped limousine.

Oswald, a Soviet sympathizer, was arrested days after the shooting. Oswald was himself killed by Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas police station.


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