Former U.S. President Donald Trump was on Saturday shot at while giving a speech during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports the shooting resulted in the death of one person while two others were injured.
This adds to the list of presidential assassination attempts in the United States.
In 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, in 1881, James A. Garfield was assassinated, in 1901, William McKinley was assassinated, while in 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States from 1861 was assassinated on April 14, 1865. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Shot in the head as he watched the play, Lincoln died of his wounds the following day at 7:22 am in the Petersen House opposite the theatre. He was the first U.S. president to be assassinated. His funeral and burial were marked by an extended period of national mourning.
Meanwhile, Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., at 9:30 am on Saturday, July 2, 1881.
He died in Elberon, New Jersey, two and a half months later on September 19, 1881. The shooting occurred less than four months into the term of Garfield as US president.
Charles J. Guiteau was convicted of Garfield’s murder and executed by hanging one year after the shooting.
McKinley, who was assassinated in 1901, was the 25th president of the United States. He was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, on September 6, 1901, six months into his second term.
He was shaking hands with the public when an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, shot him twice in the abdomen. McKinley died on September 14 of gangrene caused by the wounds. He was the third American president to be assassinated.
In 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated. He was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. This happened while he was riding in the presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza with his wife Jackie, Texas Governor John Connally and Connally’s wife Nellie.
As the car drove into Dealey Plaza, shots were fired. Kennedy was shot once in the throat, and once in the head. The motorcade drove to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead. Lee Harvey Oswald was the main suspect in the murder.
Meanwhile, in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, like Trump, was wounded while campaigning for re-election. Former President Roosevelt was campaigning for the presidency in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Roosevelt was shot on October 14 by John Schrank. The bullet lodged in Roosevelt’s chest after penetrating his steel eyeglass case and passing through a 50 page thick (single-folded) copy of his speech titled “Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual”, which he was carrying in his jacket pocket.
Roosevelt declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately and instead delivered his scheduled speech. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot—but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose”.
Afterwards, probes and an x-ray showed that the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt’s chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pleura. Since doctors concluded that it would be less dangerous to leave it in place than to attempt to remove it, Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life.
Roosevelt had become President following McKinley’s own assassination where the bullet wound turned gangrenous.
The shooter, John Schrank, initially pleaded guilty to the charge of attempted murder, but the trial Judge, unconvinced of Schrank’s sanity, declined his plea and the case was brought to trial.
Schrank was found not guilty by reason of insanity by the jury and was committed to indefinite institutionalization.
On March 30, 1981, Reagan was shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C., as he was returning to his limousine after a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton.
Reagan was seriously wounded by a revolver bullet that ricocheted off the side of the presidential limousine and hit him in the left underarm, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, and causing serious internal bleeding.
He was close to death upon arrival at George Washington University Hospital but was stabilized in the emergency room; he then underwent emergency exploratory surgery. He recovered and was released from the hospital on April 11.
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on charges of attempting to assassinate the president. He remained confined to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a D.C. psychiatric facility. Hinckley was released from institutional psychiatric care on September 10, 2016.
All the presidential assassinations in the US, except that of John F. Kennedy were directed against the Republicans.
The assassination attempt on Trump comes 43 years since the attempt on Reagan in 1981.