Saturday, May 13, 2017

The Two Assassination Attempts on President Ford

President Gerald Ford was lucky enough to survive not one, but two assassination attempts.

    The first attempt took place in Sacramento, California. As Ford was walking near the Capitol, a lady named Lynette Fromme, who was found to be a part of the infamous Charles Manson family (a drug-addled cult), simply walked up to the President with a .45 caliber handgun and pointed it at him. Right before she pulled the trigger, however, Secret Service Agents quickly tackled her to the ground.

    Shockingly, the second attempt took place a mere seventeen days later in San Francisco. As Ford walked from the Saint Francis Hotel, a mentally unstable former FBI informant named Sarah Moore fired 2 shots at the President. The first shot went off cleanly; it only narrowly missed the President, while a bystander grabbed her arm after that, deflecting her second shot.

    Ford himself was puzzled about why there were 2 assassination attempts on him in the span of eighteen days. History says, however, that it likely stemmed from anti-Vietnam and anti-government sentiment.

    This obviously raised a ton of questions about the Secret Service and security, including questions about why the security was not raised immediately after the first assassination attempt. Ford was hustled out of the state after the second, but why was he not after the first assassination attempt? Additionally, it seems that not enough security measures were taken even after that fiasco, because notable assassination attempts, such as the one on Reagan in 1981, took place after the event.

Sources:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-ford-survives-second-assassination-attempt
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ford-escaped-2-assassination-attempts-Both-2481771.php

1 comment:

  1. Im surprised that Ford had 2 assassination attempts on him. He wasn't even president for a full term and from what we have seen in class and read in books, he didn't do much,especially something that would get people angry enough to kill him, so its weird that people tried to kill him.

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