Local children had seen the King of England that morning, sitting on a chest in his shop, laughing: “I’ll be damned if I don’t do it,” he declaimed to the courtiers inside his tormented mind. For months, English-born immigrant Richard Lawrence had been pestering the seventh US President Andrew Jackson to reimburse him for the great estates he imagined had been usurped by the United States. Like other petitioners, Lawrence was required to simply sign a register at the White House’s gates, and walk through its unlocked doors. Two meetings with the president, though, didn’t give Lawrence his kingdom back.
Frustrated, Lawrence left his shop one morning in April 1835, and lurked behind a column in the East Portico of the Capitol, the home of the United States Congress, waiting for Jackson to emerge. Then, the painter fired two single-shot brass pistols—later demonstrated to be capable of firing a lead ball through an inch-thick plank of wood—at point-blank range.
The Angel of Death, though, wasn’t hovering over the Capitol that morning: Both pistols, incredibly, misfired, historian Mel Ayton records. The trial of the first man to attempt the assassination of a United States president ended with an insanity verdict. The Washington DC Intelligencer pithily noted: “This city, being the seat of government, is liable to be visited by more than its proportion of insane persons.”
Fortune sided with former President Donald Trump, too, this weekend, when a 5.56 millimetre round fired from a lightweight assault rifle—available brand-new for around $750, and likely purchased legally—clipped his ear. Luck hasn’t always sided with presidents in the two centuries separating Jackson from Trump, though.
Abraham Lincoln was killed by an assassin in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, and John F Kennedy in 1963. Theodore Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt in 1912, Ronald Reagan in 1981, and Gerald Ford survived two in a single month in 1975. William Clinton and George W Bush survived attempts, unhurt. In 1972, presidential candidate George Wallace was crippled by an attack, and Robert F Kennedy was slain in 1968. Twenty-three per cent of serving American presidents, an analysis conducted by the Congressional Research Service states, have been subjected to assassinations or attempts. There have been fifteen attacks against presidents, presidents-elect, and candidates, five of which succeeded in causing their deaths—statistics unrivalled in the modern age.
Every assassin is a person with a grievance—real or imaginary—and a gun. Every culture is awash with resentments. Easy, legal access to lethal weapons, though, has made assassination almost as American as apple pie.
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A militarising society
Little is known, yet, about why a quiet, bespectacled young man from the upper-middle-class town of Bethel Park attempted to assassinate Trump. Thomas Crooks, just over a year out of high school, had won prizes for science and math achievement and worked at a nursing home kitchen. There is no suggestion he was involved in violent activism. Except for a $15 donation to the Left-leaning campaign group Act Blue—and registration as a Republican voter—there is little to suggest he had long-standing political commitments of any kind.
There is evidence, though, that Crooks had spent time preparing for his attack. Among other things, he wore a t-shirt bearing the logo of Demolition Ranch, a popular YouTube channel, which offers its 11.6 million subscribers advice on the use of sniper pistols, explosive-tipped crossbow bolts, and experiments with explosives. For at least a year, he was a member of a local shooting club.
Like Crooks, a study by emergency medicine expert Garen Wintemute and his colleagues reported earlier this year, 3 per cent of Americans believe violence is usually or always justified to advance some political objectives. Almost 8 per cent of respondents said that they would likely arm themselves in a situation where they believed political violence would be justified. And 13.7 per cent thought a civil war might take place “in the next few years”.
Far-right political groups in America, the historian Mark Pitcavage has written, have propagated the idea of a coming racial or civilisational war for well over a century—an idea Trump has regularly stoked. From 2009—the year Barack Obama became president—attacks by white nationalists began escalating, data shows. Fifty-seven per cent of all attacks from 1994 to 2020 were perpetrated by the white Right-wing; just 15 per cent by jihadists. Following the assassination attempt, pro-Trump social media forums lit up with calls for violence.
The attack on Trump, though, demonstrates the paranoiac strain in American politics isn’t just a phenomenon of the Right. Earlier this year, terrorism researchers Alejandro Beutel and Daryl Johnson reported growing militarisation among far-Left groups, ranging from anarchists to anti-fascists and Black nationalists. Growing numbers of Americans, it is clear, are becoming convinced that their democracy cannot address the country’s social and political conflicts.
For decades, scholars have noted that gun violence in the United States is by far the highest in advanced countries—the consequence of the easy availability of weapons. The country, statistician John Gramlich notes, saw record numbers of both gun murders and gun-related suicides in 2021, the last year for which full data is available. Though the per-capital incidence of firearms murders remains lower than its peak in 1974, incidents of mass shootings are at their highest ever.
The answer ought to be self-evident: A 12-year-old in North Carolina needs parental permission to play Little League Baseball, but not to possess a rifle or shotgun, one study noted in 2000. Texas, Wyoming, Ohio, New Hampshire, Montana and Maine have no age restrictions on the possession of guns.
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American gun culture
Guns, though, are deeply embedded in American political culture. The son of Irish immigrants, Jackson built his public reputation in the course of a series of brutal campaigns against Native Americans in Tennessee and South Carolina, scholar Robert Remini has recorded. Following the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, where Jackson’s forces killed more than 800 native Americans, he compelled the defeated Red Stick Creek to cede more than 23 million acres of land. Then, in 1815, he defeated British forces at New Orleans, inflicting 2,000 casualties for just 71 of his own forces.
For many Americans living in the blood-stained 19th century, violence seemed an organic part of the language of politics. Five hundred death threats, Ayton records, were received by Jackson during his time in office. The British-born actor Junius Booth—father to President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth—threatened to “cut your throat whilst you are sleeping” unless Jackson pardoned two convicted pirates.
The support for political violence America is now seeing has deep roots, too. Following Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, historian Thomas Lowry recorded, a large number of Americans—including in the military, and the anti-secessionist North—saw the killing as legitimate. “This government once was in rebellion against England,” soldier William Hall argued, “and the South had the same right to rebel against us and if they could gain their end by killing President Lincoln, I do not blame them for doing it.’’
Even President Kennedy’s assassination, journalist Bob Moser writes, was celebrated by the Right. “The denizens of Texas nut country did not kill Kennedy that day. But many celebrated openly and joyously after Lee Harvey Oswald did. Birchers and Klansmen gloated. Elementary school students in the Dallas ‘burbs broke into spontaneous applause. In Amarillo, a reporter witnessed jubilation in the streets, with men whooping and tossing their hats in the air and one woman crying out, ‘Hey, great, JFK’s croaked!’”
Following the rise of President Martin Van Buren, some enhancements to White House security did take place, to protect leaders from political extremism. A sentry box was set up outside the grounds, and two round-the-clock guards were hired.
The security landscape had changed significantly by the time of Lincoln’s assassination when political tensions flared across the country. Lincoln, unlike his predecessors, enjoyed a then-unprecedented level of protection. Even then, though, the United States made no attempt to control small-arms proliferation or disarm Lincoln’s opponents in the South.
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Learning from bullets
Few killers, criminologist Cary Federman reminds us, act from ideological belief alone: Leon Czolgosz, a self-described anarchist who murdered President William McKinley in 1901, had only tenuous links to the political cause, and appeared to be driven as much by mental illness as conviction. Charles Guiteau, who assassinated James Garfield in 1881, for being denied credit for his imaginary role in the President’s election victory, meticulously polished his shoes before trial, delighted with finding celebrity, author Candice Millard writes.
The question of why assassins act is important—but nowhere as significant as the need to keep guns out of the hands of killers. The question America needs to be urgently asking itself isn’t why Thomas Crooks wanted to kill Trump. It’s what needs to be done to keep guns out of the hands of others like him.
Praveen Swami is a contributing editor at ThePrint. He tweets with @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)