Attacks on Presidents: A History

[The Straight Story]

Attacks on Presidents: A History
By Tom Shoop | Sunday, February 17, 2008 | 05:20 PM

In a new study, the Congressional Research Service reports that presidents, presidents-elect, and candidates for president have been attacked 15 times in the country's history, and five of them have been killed. Four of the past six presidents have been victims or targets.

Given that recent history, this line from the study's summary is depressing: "The report will be updated and revised if developments require."

http://blogs.govexec.com/fedblog/2008/02/attacks_on_presidents_a_histor.php

The full report in PDF is here, interesting reading:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS20821.pdf

Of the 42 individuals serving as President, ten (or about 24%) have been
subject to actual or attempted assassinations. Four of these ten
incumbents — Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley,
and John F. Kennedy — were killed.

! Four of the past six Presidents have been targets of assaults: Gerald R.
Ford (twice in 1975), Ronald W. Reagan (in a near-fatal shooting in
1981), William J. Clinton (when the White House was fired upon in
1994), and George W. Bush (when an attacker tossed a grenade, which
did not explode, towards him and the President of Georgia at a public
gathering in Tbilisi, in 2005).

! Two others who served as President were attacked, either as a Presidentelect
(Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933) or as a presidential candidate
(Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, when he was seeking the presidency after
being out of office for nearly four years).

! Two other presidential candidates — Robert F. Kennedy, who was killed
in 1968, and George C. Wallace, who was seriously wounded in 1972 —
were also victims, during the primaries.

! In only one of these 15 incidents (the Lincoln assassination) was a broad
conspiracy proven, although such contentions have arisen on other
occasions.5 Only one other incident involved more than one participant
(the 1950 assault on Blair House, the temporary residence of President
Harry S Truman); but no evidence of other conspirators emerged from
the subsequent investigation or prosecution.