The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last Saturday spurred an outpouring of condemnation against political violence from Republicans and Democrats alike. President Joe Biden declared that the shooting at the Pennsylvania rally, which injured Trump and killed one attendee, was “contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.”

“It’s not America, and we can’t allow this to happen,” Biden said.

But two and a half centuries of American history show that political violence is not new—or even uncommon. Although the current moment has yet to reach the heights of some of the nation’s more violent eras, such as the Civil War or the turmoil of 1968, historians still draw a comparison between 2024 and other times of significant upheaval.

“We’re at a period where we’ve been before, where there’s two sides that are so divided it isn’t surprising that there’s violence,” said Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University who recently wrote a book on the history of the Democratic Party. He added that “each side has convinced themselves that the other side wants to destroy the republic.” Indeed, polling by NBC News ahead of the 2022 midterm elections found that members of each party viewed the other as a threat that could destroy America.

Even before the assassination attempt, 2024’s unrest invited comparisons to 1968. There are some superficial similarities between the two years: a contentious presidential election with a weak Democratic candidate, protests on college campuses pertaining to unpopular wars, and a Democratic convention in Chicago. But the turmoil of 1968 was defined by an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam that was drafting young Americans and by the assassinations of two prominent political figures, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The attempt on Trump’s life has only sharpened comparisons between the two years.

“If you could reduce ’68 to one word, it’s drama. ’68 was full of drama,” said Luke Nichter, a history professor at Chapman University and the author of a book on that year’s political upheaval. “I think this adds a degree of drama to 2024 that does begin to put it in the category of ’68.”

The late 1960s were also characterized by rising mistrust in the government, which is echoed today in the deep unpopularity of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the two presidential candidates. “We are again in the eye of another storm where a critical mass of Americans across the political spectrum have reached a........

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