Historically the US has always had a problem with people trying to assassinate the president. Obama had to beef up his security, Reagan was shot, JFK was shot, Garfield, Lincoln, McKinley, Roosevelt, etc were all either assassinated or wounded during assassination attempts.
Thats not even including the dozen plus presidents who faced serious assassination attempts that were either thwarted or failed.
Generally in the US there aren’t as many assassination attempts against senators and representatives, or against governors. I remember seeing an interview Obama did when he was a senator and him and the journalist were walking around the streets freely. Then Obama was interviewed when he was president and he talked about how free it was to not need so much security back then. Basically meaning, there was less of an assassination threat to him as a senator vs as a president.
But with the SCOTUS passing so many rulings by a 6-3 majority I’m wondering if we will see more assassination attempts against them too. In between overturning Roe, deciding bribery is legal if done after the favor, giving more power to the executive branch, blocking some attempts to prosecute the J6 insurrectionists, I’m wondering if in the coming years there will be more assassination attempts at judges than we’ve seen in the past.
I think they’ve already increased security for SCOTUS judges due to this. But I wonder if it’ll reach the level where a SCOTUS judge has the same level of security as the president.
FWIW I’m not advocating for anything, I’m just wondering if we will see more stochastic terrorism directed at the supreme court.
In case anyone doesn’t catch the reference, it’s to the John Grisham novel The Pelican Brief, also a film starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington. In the novel, someone arranges the assassination of two members of the Supreme Court.
Just what I was going to say. I’d be far more worried if the court majority was to the left and had just made the (correct) decision that a president is never above the law.
I agree with the sentiment, but the nature of rightwing radicals is that the conservatives on the court are always just one not-quite-reactionary-enough ruling away from some MAGA Robespierre deciding they have betrayed the revolution.
There are extreme people on both sides but conservatives tend to go for the violent solution far, far more than the liberals do. It is a distinguishing characteristic between the two.
If The Ellen James Society were a real thing I would expect overturning Roe would have already seen some attempts. But as others have said, groups on the left are less likely to choose violence.
If Thomas gets his wish and convinces the majority to reverse Obergfell I think odds would increase.
Personally, I’m not even sure that counts. Roske turned himself in peacefully. If he’d just walked away, nobody would’ve ever heard about the “attempt”.
A comparison of political violence by left-wing, right-wing, and Islamist extremists in the United States and the world
When compared to individuals associated with a right-wing ideology, individuals adhering to a left-wing ideology had 68% lower odds of engaging in violent (vs. nonviolent) radical behavior (b = −1.15, SE = 0.13, odds ratio [OR] = 0.32, P < 0.001). On the other hand, the difference between individuals motivated by Islamist and right-wing causes was not significant (b = 0.05, SE = 0.14, OR = 1.05, P = 0.747). Expressed in terms of predicted probabilities, the probability of left-wing violent attack was 0.33, that of right-wing violent attack was 0.61, and that of Islamist violent attack was 0.62. These findings remained robust after we controlled for demographic variables (sex, age, education, minority status, immigration status), prior criminal experiences, military experience, and decade in which the perpetrator entered the database.
However Islamist violence is equal to domestic right wing violence, but Islamist violence is also right wing violence. It just is right wing in support of a different religion, ideology, skin color and nationality than domestic US based right wing violence (which is motivated by American nativism, white supremacy, christian nationalism, etc)
