It is a heavy reality that the American presidency is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Since 1789, people have tried to kill the Commander in Chief with alarming frequency. Some succeeded. Many failed by a matter of inches or a stroke of pure, dumb luck. When we talk about assassination attempts on US presidents, we usually jump straight to the Ford’s Theatre or that sunny afternoon in Dallas. But the story is much weirder and more chaotic than the history books usually let on.
Violence is a recurring theme in American politics. It's tragic.
Most people can name the four who died—Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. But what about the guys who walked away? What about the shooters who tripped, the guns that misfired, or the presidents who just refused to die? Looking back at these moments isn't just about morbid curiosity. It’s about seeing how the Secret Service evolved from a small agency fighting counterfeiters into the high-tech shield it is today.
The first major assassination attempts on US presidents started with a literal miracle
Andrew Jackson was a tough man. He was basically made of old hickory and spite. In 1835, he was leaving a funeral at the Capitol when a house painter named Richard Lawrence approached him. Lawrence pulled out a pistol, aimed it at Jackson’s chest, and pulled the trigger.
Click. Nothing happened. The cap fired, but the powder didn't ignite. Lawrence, apparently prepared for a backup plan, pulled out a second pistol and fired again.
Click. Two misfires in a row. Statistically, the odds of both pistols failing were nearly impossible. Some people at the time called it divine intervention. Jackson, being Jackson, didn't wait for a third try; he started beating Lawrence with his cane until his aides had to pull the President away.
History is funny like that. If those guns had worked, the entire trajectory of American banking and westward expansion might have looked totally different. It sets a precedent for the "near-miss" culture that defines the Secret Service's biggest nightmares. Lawrence wasn't some political mastermind. He was a guy who genuinely believed he was King Richard III of England. This is a pattern we see over and over: the intersection of mental health crises and the highest office in the land.
The tragic gap between Lincoln and the Secret Service
People often forget that Abraham Lincoln signed the legislation to create the Secret Service on the very day he was assassinated. Talk about bad timing. But back then, the agency wasn't even supposed to protect the President. Their only job was to stop people from printing fake money.
John Wilkes Booth changed everything.
His attack at Ford’s Theatre was a coordinated conspiracy. It wasn't just about Lincoln. The plotters wanted to take out the Vice President and the Secretary of State, too. They wanted to decapitate the entire government in one night. They almost did. Secretary of State William Seward was stabbed repeatedly in his bed that same night, surviving only because of a metal neck brace he was wearing from a previous carriage accident.
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Why some assassination attempts on US presidents actually succeeded while others failed
There is a huge difference between the "loner" shooters and the "organized" plots. Take James A. Garfield. He was shot in 1881 by Charles Guiteau at a train station in Washington, D.C. Guiteau was a frustrated office-seeker who thought God told him to "remove" the President so the Vice President could give him a job.
But here is the crazy part: the bullet didn't kill Garfield.
The doctors did.
In 1881, nobody really believed in germs yet. Doctors stuck their unwashed fingers and dirty tools into the wound looking for the bullet. They turned a non-fatal flesh wound into a massive, agonizing infection that took months to kill him. Alexander Graham Bell—yeah, the telephone guy—even tried to use a primitive metal detector to find the bullet, but the metal springs in Garfield's bed messed up the signal.
Garfield's death was a turning point. It proved that the President needed constant protection, not just a casual escort.
The McKinley hit and the birth of the modern era
Leon Czolgosz was an anarchist who walked up to William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901 with a gun hidden under a handkerchief. He looked like a man with a bandaged hand. McKinley reached out to shake it.
Two shots.
McKinley died eight days later. This was the final straw. Congress finally told the Secret Service, "Okay, you guys are officially the bodyguards now." Since 1901, the level of security has scaled up until it reached the "bubble" we see today.
The weirdest assassination attempts on US presidents you’ve never heard of
If you think the famous ones are intense, the "minor" ones are almost surreal.
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The Teddy Roosevelt attempt is legendary because he finished his speech. In 1912, while campaigning in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot in the chest by John Schrank. The bullet passed through a steel eyeglass case and a 50-page manuscript of his speech.
He didn't go to the hospital. He went to the stage.
"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," he told the crowd. He spoke for 80 minutes with blood seeping into his shirt. Roosevelt was just built differently.
Two attempts in one month: The Gerald Ford saga
September 1975 was a wild time for Gerald Ford.
First, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme—a follower of Charles Manson—tried to shoot him in Sacramento. She had a gun, but she didn't have a round in the chamber. A Secret Service agent grabbed it before she could rack the slide.
Only 17 days later, Sara Jane Moore shot at him in San Francisco. She actually got a shot off, but a bystander named Oliver Sipple grabbed her arm. The bullet missed Ford’s head by about five inches. Imagine being a president and having two different people try to kill you in three weeks.
The Kennedy assassination changed the world's perception of safety
We can’t talk about assassination attempts on US presidents without talking about November 22, 1963. It is the single most analyzed event in American history.
Whether you believe the Warren Commission or the endless conspiracy theories, the impact was the same: the loss of American innocence. The motorcade was open-top. The route was published in the paper. Kennedy wanted to be accessible. He hated the idea of being walled off from the people.
After Dallas, the "accessibility" of the presidency died.
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The Secret Service transformed. They got more money, more agents, and more authority. They started looking at "threat assessments" and psychological profiles. They realized that the danger wasn't just a political enemy; it was often a lone individual looking for fame or acting out of a private delusion.
Reagan and the 1981 close call
John Hinckley Jr. didn't have a political motive. He wanted to impress actress Jodie Foster. That’s it.
When he opened fire outside the Hilton Hotel in D.C., he hit Press Secretary James Brady, a police officer, and an agent. He didn't actually hit Ronald Reagan directly. The bullet ricocheted off the side of the armored limousine and hit Reagan in the ribs, puncturing a lung.
Reagan almost died in the ER.
The Secret Service agent, Jerry Parr, is the hero of that story. He made the split-second decision to divert to George Washington University Hospital instead of the White House. If he hadn't, Reagan likely would have bled out.
What we’ve learned from recent threats
In the last 20 years, the nature of the threat has shifted. It’s not just guys with revolvers anymore. It’s drones, ricin-laced letters, and long-range rifles.
- Barack Obama: Faced a record-breaking number of threats. In 2011, a man named Oscar Ortega-Hernandez fired a semi-automatic rifle at the White House, hitting the glass of the residential floor.
- George W. Bush: A live grenade was thrown at him during a speech in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2005. It landed about 60 feet away but didn't explode because a handkerchief was wrapped too tightly around it.
- Donald Trump: In 2024, an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, involving a high-ground shooter, reminded everyone that the "bubble" isn't perfect. It was a massive security failure that led to intense Congressional hearings.
Honestly, the Secret Service is usually playing a game of "catch up." They fix the holes after someone finds them. After Lincoln, they got guards. After McKinley, they got a permanent detail. After Kennedy, they got armored cars and better communications.
How to stay informed on presidential security
The history of these attacks shows us that political violence is rarely a clean, logical thing. It’s messy. It’s often the result of one person with a grievance and a gap in security.
If you want to understand the current state of presidential safety, here is what you should actually look into:
- Study the Warren Commission vs. the HSCA findings: If you want to understand the technical side of ballistics and motorcade security, these reports are the gold standard, even if you disagree with their conclusions.
- Read "Within Arm's Length" by Dan Emmett: He’s a former Secret Service agent who gives a very blunt, non-Hollywood look at what it’s actually like to stand in front of a bullet.
- Watch the GAO reports on Secret Service spending: It sounds boring, but following the money shows you exactly where the government thinks the next threat is coming from (usually tech and cyber-threats).
- Visit the sites: If you’re ever in D.C., go to Ford’s Theatre or the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. Seeing the physical distance—how close these shooters actually were—changes your perspective entirely.
The reality is that assassination attempts on US presidents will likely continue as long as the office exists. The job is a lightning rod. Whether it’s 1835 or 2026, the tension between a president wanting to be seen and the need to keep them alive is a balance that will never be perfectly settled.
The best we can do is understand the patterns of the past to recognize the warning signs of the future. Security isn't just about guns and gates; it’s about intelligence, mental health intervention, and constant vigilance. Stay skeptical of simple narratives, and always look at the logistics. That's where the real story usually hides.