On 13 July, under a clear blue sky in Butler, Pennsylvania, bullets sliced through the air piercing the ear of the former president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. While he escaped death thanks to the tilt of his head, a stray bullet fatally injured a bystander behind him. “The reality is just setting in,” Trump told the Washington Examiner the following day. “I rarely look away from the crowd. Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?” 

In the wake of this shocking event, millions are now searching for answers. How was a twenty-year-old gunman able to secure a position on a roof overlooking a presidential candidate’s rally, let alone fire off multiple rounds? On social media, security experts have highlighted operational mistakes made by the Secret Service, while political figures have blamed the media and Democrats. Meanwhile, a desperate scramble is underway to link the shooter to a coherent political motive.

However, the search for a clear political motivation may be misguided. History teaches us that some forms of extreme violence lack ideological underpinnings. To truly understand such acts, we may need to look in unexpected places. 

The last attempted assassination of a US president provides a lesson. Forty-four years ago, a man named John Hinckley Jr. followed US President Jimmy Carter across multiple states, stalking him from Washington, D.C., to Columbus, and then Dayton, Ohio. Hinckley came within 20 feet of President Carter but decided at the last minute not to shoot him. That fate would await the next president, Ronald Reagan, outside the Washington Hilton hotel in an assassination attempt that left three Secret Service agents with gunshot wounds, and the President with serious injuries.

Surprisingly, this assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan lacked a clear political motivation. Hinckley was driven not by ideology, but by a delusional desire to impress actress Jodie Foster. A note he wrote prior to the shooting provides insight into his morbid fantasy: