Hat tip to the WSJ for the interactive timeline.
- 11 Members of Congress have been shot while in office.
- 9 House members have been shot while in office.
- 7 Members of Congress were shot by 'progressives'.
- 6 Members of Congress survived their shootings.
- 5 Members of Congress died from their shootings.
- 5 Members of Congress were shot by Puerto Ricans.
- 4 Members of Congress were shot by Democrats. (The Southern shooters had to be Democrats)
- 2 Senators have been shot while in office. (Huey Long and Robert Kennedy)
- 0 Members of Congress were shot by Republicans.
The Shootings
1868 - Rep. James Hines (R-Arkansas) - Shot by a drunk County Democratic Committee Secretary presumably upset by Reconstruction Republican control of state politics.
1905 - Rep. John McPherson Pinckney (D-Texas) - Shot in the back at a public meeting in Hempstead, Texas by "passionate and misguided men" who opposed his support for (mandatory) temperance.
1935 - Sen. Huey Long (D-Louisiana) - Shot by 1) the physician son of a political enemy or 2) by his own bodyguards. Perhaps at the direction of FDR who considered him "one of the two most dangerous men in America".
1954 - Rep. Alvin M. Bentley (R-Michigan), Rep. Clifford Davis (D-Tennessee), Rep. Ben F. Jensen (R-Iowa), Rep. George Hyde Fallon (D-Maryland), and Rep. Kenneth Roberts (D-Alabama) - Shot on the floor of the House of Representatives by 4 Puerto Rican nationalists. All the congressmen survived. Attackers were released after 25 years by James Earl Carter Jr.
1968 - Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-New York) - Shot by a (Christian) Palestinian upset by his support for Israel during the Six Day War (1967).
1978 - Rep. Leo Ryan (D-California) - Shot by a member of Jim Jones' People's Temple at that cult's facility in Guyana. Jim Jones - in addition to being a Marxist - was active in Democratic Party politics in both Chicago and San Francisco.
2011 - Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) - Shot by a deeply disturbed young man at a public meeting.
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The Frequency
| Years | Interval |
| 1789 | |
| 1868 | 79 |
| 1905 | 37 |
| 1935 | 30 |
| 1954 | 19 |
| 1968 | 14 |
| 1978 | 10 |
| 2011 | 33 |
Note that after the first shooting, the frequency of congressional shootings increases steadily until 1978 when we experience a 33-year gap. Looks like the rhetoric toned down since the '70s.
Eleven shootings in 222 years (1 every 20 years) seems low to me considering the frequent unpopularity of Congress.
