Francisco Martin Duran
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Francisco Martin Duran is best known for his actions of 29 October 1994, when he fired 29 rounds of ammunition at the White House. He was later convicted of attempting to assassinate President Bill Clinton and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Events of the Day
In preparation for the assassination, Duran drove his truck, loaded with ammunition, weapons and poison gas, from Colorado Springs to Washington, D.C., arriving on 10 October. Over the next few weeks he went from hotel to hotel and even solicited a few dates.
On Oct. 29, dressed in a trenchcoat, Duran went up to the fence overlooking the south lawn of the White House and fired an SKS semi-automatic rifle at a group of men in dark business suits on the White House lawn. Two nearby boys claimed they had remarked aloud just before the shooting that one of the men looked like Clinton. Secret Service agents immediately began running across the lawn, guns drawn, when a citizen tackled him and pinned his arms until he could be subdued. Clinton was in the family residence watching a football game at the time of the shooting and was unharmed. The incident followed just six weeks after a Cessna crashed into the White House south lawn and prompted debate about closing off traffic on that area of Pennsylvania Avenue. No one was harmed in the assassination attempt.
Trial
The most important charges in the two-week trial were attempted murder of the President and four counts of assaulting a federal officer (the Secret Service agents). Duran had served prison time previously, convicted of aggravated assault with a vehicle in the Army, and therefore one beyond the attempted murder of the President he was also charged with illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The other charges were use of an assault weapon during a crime of violence, destruction of U.S. property and interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony.
Duran pled not guilty and mounted an insanity defense, claiming that he was trying to save the world by destroying an alien "mist", connected by an umbilical cord to an alien in the Colorado mountains. He also claimed to be incited by conservative talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Chuck Baker (the latter of whom spoke on air about "armed revolution" and "cleansing" of the government).
Duran was motivated at least in part by the assault weapons ban of 1994, which banned the SKS rifle among others. In August 1994, Duran had called a local congressional office to oppose the ban and threatened to "go to Washington and take someone out." He also bought the SKS on Sep. 13, 1994, the same day Clinton signed the bill into law.
Before his brush with infamy, Duran worked as a hotel upholsterer in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
References
- April 5, 1995 Washington Post article (http://www.prop1.org/park/pave/950405wp.htm)
- March 23, 1995 Washington Post article (http://www.prop1.org/history/1995/950323wp.htm)
- Nov. 19, 1994 Washington Post article (http://www-tech.mit.edu/V114/N57/assass.57w.html)
- Public Eye report talking about Duran's motivations (http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/gunsammo.html)
- Duran's personal ad from prison (http://web.archive.org/web/20041015094434/http://writeaprisoner.com/template.asp?i=z-19588016)