When it became clear that there had been an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, my mind went back to November, 1963.  I was 12 years old, in elementary school, when it was announced on the loudspeakers that President John Kennedy had been shot and we later learned had died.

When I was 17 years old, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were both assassinated in 1968. There were assassination attempts on President Gerald Ford.  President Ronald Reagan barely survived an attempt on his life.

Political violence goes way back in our history.  The young nation put down the Whiskey Rebellion during the 1790s.  Of course, there was the Civil War, ending in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  In 1881, President James Garfield was gunned down at a train station.  William McKinley was shot and killed when shaking hands in Buffalo, New York.  There were unsuccessful assassination attempts on the lives of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

If you want to widen the definition of political violence, go back to the Red Summer of 1919 or the racial violence of the 1960s.  You can add the Rodney King violence in Los Angeles.

It breaks my heart to think about all this, but we in America have a violent history, including our treatment of the native tribes.  We need to understand our history, including the parts we don’t like to think about.

Many commentators have called the attempt on the life of former President Donald Trump un-American.  It was un-American when measured against our laws and constitution and the overall good in American society.  I would go one step further.  This act of violence was evil.

It will take time to sort-out the story behind the alleged shooter and what his motive might have been.  Let’s not jump to conclusions, something far too easy in our interconnected world.

My prayers and sympathies go to those lost and badly injured in this attack.