One fateful evening on January 30, 1835, President Andrew Jackson became the first active president to be the target of an assassination. Richard Lawrence, an unemployed English painter, was the man who attempted to take Jackson's life using two guns. After Lawrence was tried in court and proven “not guilty by reason of insanity,” a huge number of conspiracy theories exploded among the public. The main competing theories were, and are, that Lawrence solely attempted to carry out Jackson's murder due to insanity and that Lawrence was merely a pawn of one of Jackson's political oppositions, the true mastermind of the failed assassination. The most widely accepted version of this story is that Lawrence planned and carried out the attempted murder alone. In this theory, Lawrence originally planned to kill Jackson before he attended a funeral. This was not possible as there was no convenient time for Jackson to be vulnerable, so Lawrence quickly decided to assassinate him after the service. As Jackson was leaving, Lawrence positioned a gun at Jackson, but that one had misfired, but Lawrence then retrieved another gun, and this one had also misfired. Some other historians believe that the guns actually jammed and that a bullet did not exit the barrel. This followed Jackson rushing in and repeatedly hitting Lawrence with his cane, maintaining his reputation as "Old Hickory". Other bystanders are believed to have worked harder to detach Jackson from Lawrence than to subdue Lawrence himself. When he was tried in court, the verdict was that he was not guilty of insanity. Richard Lawrence, at the time of the attack, believed himself to be a king of England. Lawrence was out of work, so he blamed Jackson instead of his... middle of paper... Orians theorize that Crockett didn't actually act out of kindness towards Jackson, but instead out of an impulse to save himself and prevent any blame from coming to him. The true story behind the attempted assassination of President Jackson may always remain a mystery and leave historians to believe in their personal theories. The theory that they have a bigger scheme than people, and Lawrence is just a pawn in the failed murder, is less accepted, but much more exciting. On the other hand, analysts who theorize that Lawrence came up with the plan alone still have one unanswered question. How could two shots fired from two different guns miss within inches of each other or jam? There are a handful of signs in the events leading up to and during the assassination attempt that point to a huge conspiracy theory or could just be coincidences..