Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
If Barack Obama becomes the next US president he will surely be assassinated, British Nobel literature laureate Doris Lessing predicted in a newspaper interview published here Saturday.
Obama, who is vying to become the first black president in US history, "would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would murder him," Lessing, 88, told the Dagens Nyheter daily.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1 |
Somehow . . . . . I think the "they" she's talking about might be different than the backwoods Idaho/Michigan "they" some of you guys are thinking about.
Political assassinations really have little to do with domestic gun availability. And for what it's worth, such motivations come in such a wide variety, that targeting a certain group is quite silly.
The last three assassination attempts have been against two Republican presidents.
Gerald Ford escaped two assassination attempts, both by women. First on September 5, 1975, Lynette Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, pointed a gun at him but did not fire. She was convicted of attempting to assassinate the president and sentenced to life in prison. The second attempt on Ford's life occurred on September 22, 1975 when Sara Jane Moore fired one shot that was deflected by a bystander. Moore was trying to prove herself to some radical friends with the assassination of the president. She was convicted of attempted assassination and sentenced to life in prison.
On March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan was shot in the lung by John Hinckley, Jr. Hinckley hoped that by assassinating the president, he would earn enough notoriety to impress Jodie Foster. He was arrested but found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was sentenced to life in a mental institution.
Obviously, those attempts didn't have a lot to do with ideology.
Other attempts:
http://americanhistory.about.com/od/...ssinations.htm
I do agree that Obama is likely at greater risk of an attempt than the other contenders.
EDIT: The oddity is that, theoretically, this shouldn't be a particularly difficult task for a trained sniper of the type you could find in the closeted Idaho/Michigan Disturbed Members Club . . . . most of these attempts on Presidents seem to be handguns at close range, not a particularly smart way to go.
It's like the prior theoretical argument of why people don't strap explosives on themselves and blow up a C-Train in Calgary? What prevents people from doing that if they were really determined? Not much. But it never happens.
We can probably conclude that up to this point, smart and motivated people - as opposed to the klutz's before them - who might want to take out a President perhaps don't exist.
Will they exist in the case of Obama?
Cowperson