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Nothing new under the sun:

Our permanent culture of political violence
And why the calls for civility in the wake of Saturday’s shooting won’t end up changing anything

The American tradition of political violence goes back as far as the colonial era, when Nathaniel Bacon and a sizable number of Virginians rose up in armed rebellion against the royal governor of the colony in 1676. Other armed uprisings took place against colonial authority in New York and Maryland in the late 17th century. In the 1760s, on the eve of the American Revolution, political violence broke out in the backcountry of the Carolinas, where disenchanted frontiersmen took up arms to fight for more equitable representation in their colonial legislatures, but these illegal posses often consisted of nothing more than roaming bands of thieves and cutthroats. By the early 1770s, Ethan Allen — the Vermont patriot, not the furniture salesman — led his Green Mountain Boys into violent confrontations with New Yorkers over border disputes, while Connecticut Yankees clashed with Pennsylvanians for political dominance over the settlements along the Susquehanna River. Pennsylvania, in fact, was a maelstrom, for a rebellion of Western Scotch-Irish settlers marched on the Quaker-dominated government in Philadelphia in their own bid for increased representation in the colony’s assembly.

In reckoning with the extremity of the political rhetoric of our own time, a longer view of American political hyperbole and violence suggests that as bad as the dialogue between Democrats and Republicans is right now, it pretty much pales in comparison with the virulence that has characterized American political language since the nation’s founding. That rhetoric, more often than not, has been accompanied by violence. Whether the rhetoric causes the violence is, I think, a moot point — something of a chicken-and-egg proposition. You only need to take stock of the incredibly large number of assassination attempts, aborted or successful, that have been made against our presidents or presidential candidates to understand how endemic political violence has been in our history and culture: Andrew Jackson (assaulted in May 1833; unsuccessful assassination attempt in January 1835), Abraham Lincoln (aborted attempt, February 1861; aborted attempt, August 1864; assassinated, April 1865), James A. Garfield (assassinated, 1881), William McKinley (assassinated 1901), Theodore Roosevelt (unsuccessful attempt, October 1912), Franklin D. Roosevelt (unsuccessful attempt, February 1933), Harry S. Truman (aborted attempt, November 1950), John F. Kennedy (aborted attempt, December 1960; assassinated, November 1963), Robert F. Kennedy (assassinated June 1968); George C. Wallace (unsuccessful assassination attempt resulting in serious injuries, May 1972); Richard M. Nixon (aborted attempt, February 1974), Gerald Ford (two different unsuccessful attempts, September 1975), Ronald Reagan (unsuccessful attempt, March 1981), George H.W. Bush (foiled attempt, April 1993), Bill Clinton (unsuccessful attempt, September 1994; unsuccessful attempt, October 1994; aborted attempt, November 2006), George W. Bush (unsuccessful attempt, February 2001; possible target, September 11, 2001; unsuccessful attempt, May 2005; possible aborted attempt, November 2008), Barack Obama (at least two foiled attempts). Then, of course, one must not forget the numerous political assassinations committed during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., in April 1968.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/10/lafantasie_political_violene

We have always had political violence. In fact, some may say today’s “violent rhetoric” is tame compared to actions of our past.