By Ariel Garneau
On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at John F. Kennedy, the president of the United States, who was parading through the streets of Dallas, Texas. On October 29, 1994, Francisco Martin Duran, dressed in a trench coat in order to conceal his weapons, approached the North lawn of the White house, and proceeded to fire at a group of men dressed in suits, presuming the president was amongst them. In the case of Oswald, the president was shot and killed, forever changing the course of history. In the case of Duran, no one was injured, and Duran is currently serving a life sentence in jail. Both men came from low-income families. Both lacked a stable father figure growing up. Both men had been in the U.S. armed services. Both men wanted to kill the president. When reading through the profiles of presidential assassins, there are a number of cases where the assailant had received military training at some point in their life. Samuel Byck1 had been in the U.S. army from 1954-1946. Guiseppe Zangara2 had served in the Italian army before immigrating to the U.S. Lee Harvey Oswald was a U.S. marine radar operator from 1956 to 1959. Francisco Martin Duran was a medical specialist in the U.S. Army from 1986 to 1990. This paper explores the effect the environment, training, and ethos of the U.S. armed forces had on the development of Lee Harvey Oswald and Francisco Martin Duran, and will conclude whether or not their experiences were fundamental to their capacity as assassins.