Thursday’s shooting in front of the U.S. Capitol is by no means the first violent incident to occur in the place where the legislative branch conducts its business.
In fact, the halls of Congress have routinely been a target for those determined to carry out acts of ill will, some motivated by a political agenda and others by mental illness.
Here’s a look back.
July 24, 1998: Two Capitol Hill police officers, Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson, were killed when deranged gunman Russell Eugene Weston Jr. entered the Capitol and opened fire.
Nov. 7, 1983: Sen. Robert Byrd’s Capitol Hill office and cloakrooms in the U.S. Capitol were bombed by members of the group Armed Resistance Unit. There were no injuries in the attack, which the group said was carried out on behalf of the citizens of Grenada, Lebanon, Palestine, El Salvador and Nicaragua in retaliation for “imperialist aggression.”
March 1, 1971: Protesting U.S. military involvement in Laos, The Weather Underground set off a bomb on the ground floor of the Capitol building.
March 1, 1954: Four Puerto Rican nationalists — Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irving Flores Rodríguez — opened fire with semi-automatic pistols from a balcony in the House of Representatives as members of Congress debated an immigration bill. Five representatives were wounded, and the attackers were jailed.
July 2, 1915: Harvard University German professor Eric Muenter detonated a bomb comprised of three sticks of dynamite in a Senate reception room as a protest to the U.S. support of the allies in the lead up to the first World War.
Jan. 30, 1835: President Andrew Jackson was lucky to survive an assassination attempt after leaving a funeral held in the U.S. Capitol building. Richard Lawrence, an unemployed English house painter, tried to shoot Jackson with two different pistols, both of which failed to discharge.
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