

On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot while leaving a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Reagan had just addressed the Building and Construction Workers Union of the AFL-CIO.

As the president was walking to his limousine at 2:27 p.m. from the side entrance on Connecticut Avenue, John Hinckley Jr., 25, who was armed with a .22 caliber revolver, began shooting. Hinckley’s first shot hit White House press secretary James Brady in the head, partially paralyzing him.
Also wounded were District of Columbia police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy.

While one Secret Service agent pushed Reagan into the limo, another put himself between the shooter and the president. Hinckley’s last bullet, of six shots fired, ricocheted off the limousine and hit the president in the left underarm and lodged in his lung.
Agents at first did not realize Reagan had been hit. When they did, he was taken to George Washington University Hospital. He arrived there less than four minutes after leaving the hotel.

At the hospital, according to history.com, Reagan said to his wife, Nancy, “Honey, I forgot to duck.”
Reagan began resuming some of his duties the next day. He returned to the White House on April 11, 1981.
Hinckley reportedly was trying to impress the actor Jodie Foster. He had stalked her and wrote her a letter saying he was trying to gain her love and respect.

Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity in June 1982 and committed to a psychiatric facility. He was permitted supervised day trips in 1999 and was allowed to visit his parents once a week. He was released in 2016 and moved in with his elderly mother in Virginia, after officials determined that he was no longer a threat to himself or others.

In 2018, a federal judge ruled that Hinckley may live on his own. He is required to do volunteer work or have a job at least three days a week and is restricted to a 75-mile radius of Williamsburg, Va. He is required to have a GPS-enabled mobile phone whenever he is away from home, according to USA Today.
Reagan, former governor of California and a former actor, was elected president in 1980. He had been sworn into office in January 1981, two months before he was shot.

He won a second term in 1984 and left office when that term ended in 1989. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1994, at age 83, and died in California on June 5, 2004, at 93.

Brady had been shot above his left eye. He was left with partial paralysis that required him to use a wheelchair.

Brady and his wife, Sarah, became gun control advocates and lobbyists. They founded the nonprofit Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was passed in 1993. Brady died in 2014.
via nola.comhttps://www.nola.com
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