Ronald Reagan Shot 25 Years Ago Today

3/30/06 | SELF

[Nextrush]

At around 2:25 p.m. on March 30,1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot as he exited the Washington Hilton Hotel.

A volley of shots rang out from the press area where 25 year-old John Hinckley Jr., who had gotten to within 15 feet of the President, was holding a .22 caliber pistol.

Hinckley shot not only President Reagan, but a Washington police officer, a Secret Service agent who put himself in the line of fire to protect the President, and White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was shot in the head.

A Secret Service agent pushed Reagan into a limosuine and rushed to George Washington University Hospital, where he walked in under his own power and underwent surgery.

Thankfully, Ronald Reagan quickly recovered.

The mainstream media, though, was quick to make gun control a big issue in the aftermath and the Brady gun control campaign launched by James Brady's wife eventually led to a gun control law.

Also, John Hinckley ended up being found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a mental hospital. In recent years he has been able to go on visits to his family.

I remember that day because I was working in a college radio newsroom writing news when a girl came in and shouted "Reagan's been shot." I jumped up and began tuning my transistor radio hearing a reporter's decription of the scene of the shooting, but no details on whether the President was hit. Then the radio died because the batteries were out of juice.

I ran over to my dorm room for fresh batteries and saw the video being played back with Secret Service agents waving the limo to get away while Hinckley was wrestled with in the midst of the press corps.

By the time I made it back to the station, I got a request from the news director to get his TV set. He threw me the keys to his dorm room and I ran for it. I remember yelling to students in their rooms watching "Was he hit?" or something like that.

After getting back to the newsroom we watched TV, listened to a radio network feed and read the wire copy as it spit out.

But I also wanted to tell you the reaction of one student who worked at the station. This African Studies major ran into the newsroom and said "Yeah, they got him."

(The guy was a leftie who produced a radio documentary using the last message of Jim Jones, recorded as the Kool Aid was prepared for the mass suicide. This guy was repeating the charge of Jones that the CIA was out to get him. The guy was actually pushing the idea the mass suicide was a CIA mass murder plot. By the way on that tape "Rev. Jones" said that the Peoples Temple was "Marxist-Leninist.")

[linda_22003]

I think that went all the way back to 1840, that presidents elected in a "zero" year died in office:
1840: Harrison
1860: Lincoln
1880: Garfield
1900: McKinley
1920: Harding
1940: Roosevelt
1960: Kennedy