7 US presidents who survived assassination attempts: From Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump
5. Gerald Ford — Sept. 22, 1975
Over the course of a single month in 1975, President Gerald R. Ford survived two assassination attempts, both of which occurred during visits to California.
The first took place on Sept. 5, 1975, in Sacramento, when Manson Family cult member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme pointed a handgun at Ford but was stopped before she could fire the weapon.
The second and more violent of the two incidents took place on Sept. 22 in San Francisco, when Sara Jane Moore fired two shots at Ford outside of a hotel, with the first round missing the president by mere inches.
Moore, a far-left activist who had hoped to start a revolution by killing the president, was subdued by a bystander as she was firing the second shot, while Ford was rushed to safety.
Moore was sentenced to life in prison for her actions, but was paroled in 2007 shortly after Ford died of natural causes. Moore died in September 2025 at the age of 95.
"It was a time that people don't remember. You know we had a war … the Vietnam War, you became, I became immersed in it. We were saying the country needed to change," she explained in a 2009 interview.
"The only way it was going to change was a violent revolution. I genuinely thought that [shooting Ford] might trigger that new revolution in this country."
