United States and Canada: Deadly attacks on local officials reflect the rise of the lone gunman
Individual gunmen were behind the killing of Charlie Kirk and attempts on local representatives in 2025.
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This report is part of ACLED's annual Violence Targeting Local Officials series that has been covering this topic for the past four years.
In keeping with a long-term trend, local officials in the United States and Canada were rarely targeted with violence in 2025. However, those attacks that did take place in the US created political shockwaves that reverberated across the nation. Amid intensely polarized political discourse at the national level, attacks on state officials in Pennsylvania and Minnesota reflect the broader rise of high-profile politically motivated attacks by individuals without ties to wider movements, including the killing of political activist Charlie Kirk by a lone gunman in September and assassination attempts on President Donald Trump in 2024.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family were targeted by a man who, armed with a hammer, broke into the Governor’s Residence in Harrisburg on 13 April and set it alight. The arsonist later turned himself in and cited Shapiro's support for Israel as motivation, claiming that Shapiro needed to “stop the killing of Palestinians.”1
Several Minnesota state lawmakers and their families were also targeted for assassination by a lone gunman in June. The gunman, disguised as a police officer and wearing a silicone mask, drove to the homes of at least four Democratic elected officials in the Twin Cities area. He carried out shootings at two of these homes, wounding State Senator John Hoffman and his wife and killing State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, before being apprehended by police. The gunman had a “hit list” that included 45 elected officials — all of whom were Democrats — as well as doctors who provide abortions and Planned Parenthood clinics, pointing to anti-abortion views as a possible motive.2 Hortman was the first state legislator to be assassinated in the US in a decade.
Though less consequential, ACLED also records a handful of attacks in Canada in 2025 directed at the offices of New Democratic Party (NDP) politicians in Winnipeg and Vancouver. Between August and early September, the office of local parliamentarian Nahanni Fontaine was set on fire and vandalized, while parliamentarian Bernadette Smith's was set alight. A man was later arrested in connection with these incidents, as well as a string of other arsons at restaurants and bars in the city. British Columbia NDP legislator Bowinn Ma was the target of a similar incident in June, when his North Vancouver office was targeted with an explosive device. No one was injured in any of these incidents.
