Some of the most talked about political assassinations in US .

From President to Leader of the Rights Movement - Most talked about assassinations in the United States

A massive search is underway in the country after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a close political aide of US President Donald Trump.

Kirk was shot while giving a speech at the University of Utah on Wednesday. The bullet hit him in the neck and he was pronounced dead a short time later.

It is not yet known who carried out the assassination and what the motive was. However, President Trump and the governor of Utah have commented that it is linked to political violence.

The attack on Kirk added another chapter to the 'gun violence' in the United States, and it is also seen as the latest in a long series of politically motivated assassinations.

Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln was the first US president to be assassinated. On April 14, 1865, he went to see a play with his wife at a theater in Washington, DC. Then an actor named John Wilkes Booth shot him.

He died the next day, April 15. It is believed that he was killed because he stood up for the rights of blacks. Within days, Booth, who was accused of murder, was also shot by police in Virginia. On July 2, 1881, Charles Guiteau shot him at a train station in Washington, D.C. Garfield died in September of that year after doctors were unable to remove the bullet from his body. He had only been president for a few months. Guiteau, who was mentally ill, was convicted and hanged in June 1882.

On September 6, 1901, an 'anarchist' named Leon Czolgosz shot him while giving a speech in Buffalo, New York. He died a few days later. The assassin was convicted and executed in October of that year. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was shot with a high-powered rifle while riding in an open car in Dallas, Texas. He was rushed to the hospital but died. Former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested within hours of the incident.

Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed two days later by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
Robert, a New York senator and brother of President John F. Kennedy, ran in the 1968 Democratic primary. He was assassinated in a Los Angeles hotel after winning the California primary. The killer, Sirhan, was sentenced to death for first-degree murder, but his sentence was later commuted to life in prison. He remains in prison.

In 1968, while leading a workers' march in Memphis, Tennessee, civil rights leader Martin Luther King was shot dead on the balcony of a hotel by a white extremist named James Earl Ray. He was taken to the hospital shortly after, but could not be saved. He was only 39 years old at the time of his death.
He had been attacked several times before.

He was shot and killed in front of his family in a ballroom in New York in 1965. He was 39 years old at the time. Malcolm X was initially an influential spokesman for the Nation of Islam, but later his position softened. He wanted to establish Islam as a tolerant and unified religion among the African-American community.

On February 21, 1965, he was killed by members of the Nation of Islam while speaking at a rally of his organization in New York.

Three people, Muhammad Aziz, Khalil Islam, and Thomas Hagan, were sentenced to life in prison for the incident. Aziz and Islam's convictions were overturned in 2021.

Recent murders and attempted murders
Recently, on June 14, 2025, two Democratic lawmakers in the state of Minnesota were shot and killed in their homes.

Among them, State Representative Melissa Hartman and her husband Mark were killed in their homes. It was classified as a "politically motivated murder." State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were shot on the same day but survived.

A gunman shot Donald Trump at a 2024 campaign rally, piercing his ear. In what is being treated as an attempted murder.
Image caption: A gunman shot Donald Trump at a 2024 campaign rally, piercing his ear. In what is being treated as an attempted murder.