Even shooting the President can’t get lasting gun control laws passed
Paralyzed by John Hinckley’s bullet, James Brady devoted his life to handgun legislation. It didn’t work.
When John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981, the only person he permanently injured was James Brady.
One of the six bullets Hinckley intended for the President struck the then-press secretary in the head, leaving him partially paralyzed. Brady would devote the rest of his life to gun control.
It’s a sad story, made even sadder by the fact that when Hinckley is released next week from the mental hospital where he has spent the last 35 years, he’ll be released into a world where Brady’s advocacy has essentially come to naught.
Before the shooting, Brady was quick-witted and well-spoken. Immediately after the shooting, which landed him in a wheelchair, his speech was labored and he had trouble expressing himself without crying. He regained most of his cognitive function, but not without a fight. And that wasn’t the only fight he was engaged in. By the late ’80s, he and his wife, Sarah Brady, were both active in pushing for gun control, against the well-funded efforts of the gun lobby.
The first to jump in the fray was actually Sarah Brady. In 1985, as her husband was recuperating, she called the office of the NRA and left a voicemail. “My name is Sarah Brady,” she said, “and you’ve never heard of me, but I am going to make it my life’s ambition to try to put you all out of business.”
She then joined the board of gun control advocacy group Handgun Control, Inc. “The case of John Hinckley is a vivid reminder of how easy it is for a handgun to fall into the wrong hands,” she said in 1985, as she began to advocate for background checks and a federally imposed waiting period on gun buyers. She went up against the NRA the following year, and lost: the NRA successfully lobbied to overturn many elements of the 1968 Gun Control Act with the passage of the more gun-friendly Firearm Owners’ Protection Act in 1986.
In the years that followed, Sarah Brady continued to campaign for gun control. And as his recovery progressed, James Brady began to join her. In 1989, he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and argued for a waiting period for gun-buyers. “I need help getting out of bed, help taking a shower and help getting dressed, and — damn it — I need help going to the bathroom,” he said. “I guess I’m paying for their convenience.”
In 1992, he wrote a stirring editorial in The New York Times about his experience and the need for stricter gun control measures. “Eleven years ago today,” he wrote, “I was shot in the head by a gunman intent on killing my boss, President Ronald Reagan… Because I want to spare others this suffering, I have joined my wife, Sarah, in her campaign for a safer America.”
The Bradys’ activism paid off the following year, when they were instrumental in passing the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which which mandated background checks and imposed a five-day waiting period on gun purchasers. First introduced in 1987, the legislation had been long delayed due to fierce NRA opposition. But Ronald Reagan spoke out in favor of the bill, and it was passed in 1993. The next year, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban passed, also thanks in large part to the Bradys.
But it didn’t last. The NRA funded lawsuits in state after state, and succeeded in eventually gutting the law. In 1997, the case went to the Supreme Court, which decided that background checks could not be federally mandated — states had to choose to comply.
During the George W. Bush administration, the law was further diminished. In 2003, the Tiahrt Amendment limited the federal government’s ability to share info on firearm purchases. In 2004, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired. And in 2005, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act gave gun manufacturers immunity from civil lawsuits filed over the deadly use of their weapons. Together, these developments landed us not far from where we were when Brady was shot.
He died in 2014 — the death ruled a homicide, since he died from complications caused by Hinckley’s bullet. Sarah Brady died shortly after, in 2015.
In January of 2016, Barack Obama gave a speech in which he said, “Each time this comes up, we are fed the excuse that common-sense reforms like background checks might not have stopped the last massacre, or the one before that, or the one before that, so why bother trying. I reject that thinking. We know we can’t stop every act of violence, every act of evil in the world. But maybe we could try to stop one act of evil, one act of violence.”
By the time John Hinckley Jr. goes home this week, nearly 8,000 people will have died by gunfire in the United States this year alone.
