Attempted Assassination of Ronald Reagan: Trial, Brady Act, and Reforms

The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan took place on March 30, 1981, outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, when 25-year-old John Hinckley Jr. fired six rounds from a .22-caliber revolver, wounding the president, his press secretary James Brady, a D.C. police officer, and a Secret Service agent. Reagan survived after emergency surgery. Hinckley was later found not guilty by reason of insanity, a verdict that prompted Congress and most states to rewrite their insanity-defense laws, gave the country the Brady background check system, and forced the Secret Service to overhaul how it protects the president.

The Shooting Outside the Washington Hilton

Reagan, 70 days into his first term, had just spoken to about 5,000 members of the AFL-CIO inside the hotel. He was walking toward his limousine when Hinckley, standing among reporters and onlookers, drew a Röhm RG-14 revolver he had bought at a Dallas pawn shop for $47.95 and emptied all six rounds in roughly two seconds.¹ The gun was loaded with Devastator brand ammunition, cartridges designed to fragment on impact, though none of the six detonated as intended.²

The first bullet hit White House Press Secretary James Brady in the head. The second struck D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Thomas Delahanty in the back of the left shoulder. The third hit Secret Service Special Agent Timothy McCarthy in the chest as he turned toward the gunfire to shield the president. The fourth and fifth rounds struck the presidential limousine; one of them ricocheted off the car and entered Reagan’s body under his left armpit. The sixth crossed the street and hit a building window.³

Special Agent Dennis McCarthy tackled Hinckley to the pavement. Special Agent in Charge Jerry Parr and his deputy Ray Shaddick shoved Reagan into the limousine, and the car sped off.³

The Race to Save the President

Neither Reagan nor the agents realized at first that he had been shot. They thought a rib had cracked when Parr pushed him into the car, and the limousine was initially headed for the White House. En route, Parr saw Reagan coughing up frothy red blood and noticed his lips were turning blue. He ordered the driver to divert to George Washington University Hospital. Physicians later said a trip to the White House first would have been fatal.⁴

Reagan walked into the emergency room on his own power, then collapsed in the lobby. His blood pressure was dangerously low and his pulse was barely detectable. The trauma team did not find the small entry wound on his left side until after they began treating him. The bullet had struck his seventh rib and driven three inches into his left lung, narrowly missing his heart.⁵ He lost roughly 40 percent of his blood volume.⁶ Dr. Joseph Giordano, who ran the trauma team, later said, “I think he was close to dying.”⁷

After about 35 minutes of resuscitation, Dr. Benjamin Aaron performed a two-hour operation to remove the bullet.⁷⁸⁹ He spent about eleven days at the hospital and returned to the White House on April 11.¹⁰

The Other Three People Who Were Shot

James Brady was the most gravely hurt. The Devastator round that hit him in the head did detonate, causing catastrophic brain damage.¹¹ He survived but was left permanently paralyzed and cognitively impaired. He and his wife Sarah became the country’s most visible advocates for handgun background checks. Brady died on August 4, 2014, at age 73. The Virginia medical examiner ruled the death a homicide caused by the 1981 gunshot wound.¹²

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia declined to bring new charges against Hinckley. Prosecutors cited two barriers: the collateral estoppel effect of the 1982 insanity acquittal, which prevented the government from re-litigating Hinckley’s sanity at the time of the shooting, and the common-law “year-and-a-day” rule then in force in the District, which barred a homicide charge when the victim’s death occurred more than a year and a day after the injury.¹²

Officer Thomas Delahanty had been assigned to crowd duty that day only because his police dog was sick. The bullet in his left shoulder caused permanent nerve damage. Surgeons removed most of the round about a week later, though a fragment likely still remains. He took disability retirement in November 1981 after 18 years on the force.¹³

Agent Timothy McCarthy, shot in the right chest, was hospitalized for about eleven days and returned to the presidential detail three months later. He served 22 years in the Secret Service, retiring in 1993 as special agent in charge of the Chicago Field Division.¹⁴

Who John Hinckley Jr. Was and Why He Did It

Hinckley’s fixation began with the 1976 film Taxi Driver. He became obsessed with actress Jodie Foster, who had played a teenage prostitute in the movie, and when he learned she would be attending Yale in the fall of 1980 he traveled to New Haven, contacted her repeatedly at her dormitory over four days, and was cut off when she stopped taking his calls. In a letter written hours before the shooting, Hinckley called the attack an “effort to impress” her. From St. Elizabeths Hospital he later wrote to Time: “The most important thing in my life is Jodie Foster’s love and admiration. If I can’t have them, neither can anyone else.”¹⁵

Reagan was not Hinckley’s first target. In October 1980, Hinckley was arrested at the Nashville airport during a visit by then-President Jimmy Carter. He was carrying three guns, posted a $50 bond after Carter left town, and had his weapons confiscated. The FBI later said there was “no conclusive proof” he had stalked Carter.¹⁶ In a 2026 interview, Hinckley himself confirmed he had followed Carter at campaign events in Dayton, Ohio, and Nashville, and shifted his focus to Reagan only after Carter lost the 1980 election.¹⁷

The Insanity Verdict

Hinckley was tried on thirteen counts, including the attempted assassination of the president. Under the American Law Institute test then governing federal courts, the government bore the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was sane. The defense argued Hinckley suffered from serious mental illness that left him unable to appreciate the difference between right and wrong or to control his conduct. Prosecutors described him as a “normal, All-American boy” with only common personality disorders.¹⁸

On June 21, 1982, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Foreman Lawrence Coffey said the “prosecution’s evidence was not strong enough.” Juror George Blyther put it this way: “The evidence being what it was, we were required to send John back insane.”¹⁹ An ABC News poll the next day found that 83 percent of respondents believed “justice was not done.” The American Psychiatric Association said it would not oppose restrictions on psychiatric evidence in future trials.¹⁸

How the Insanity Defense Changed

Congress responded with the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984. The law replaced the ALI “substantial capacity” test with a stricter standard closer to the 19th-century M’Naughten rule, eliminated the volitional prong that had excused defendants who could not control their behavior, required any qualifying mental disease to be “severe,” and shifted the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defendant, who now had to prove insanity by clear and convincing evidence. Congress also barred expert witnesses from offering opinions on whether a defendant had the mental state that formed an element of the offense, reserving that ultimate question for the jury.²⁰¹⁹

The states moved in the same direction. More than 30 amended their insanity-defense statutes during the 1980s and 1990s, many reverting to a M’Naughten-style test and shifting the burden of proof to the defense. Twelve created a “guilty but mentally ill” verdict. Three — Montana, Idaho, and Utah — abolished the insanity defense altogether. Eighty percent of all insanity-defense reforms enacted between 1978 and 1990 came in the years right after the Hinckley verdict.²⁰¹⁹

The Brady Act and Printz v. United States

Jim and Sarah Brady spent years leading a coalition of law enforcement officials, medical professionals, and civic leaders in lobbying for mandatory background checks on handgun purchasers. The effort took seven years, six congressional votes, and three presidencies before the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was signed into law in 1993. The federal background check system went online in 1994 and has since blocked more than five million prohibited firearm transactions.²¹

The Act faced an immediate constitutional challenge. In Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997), two county sheriffs argued that the interim provision requiring local law enforcement to conduct the background checks violated the Constitution. In a 5–4 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court held that the federal government cannot “commandeer” state and local executive officers to administer a federal regulatory program. The ruling struck down the interim mandate but had limited practical effect, because a permanent federal system took over in 1998.²²²³

What the Secret Service Changed

The attack exposed gaps in presidential protection that the agency moved quickly to close. Metal detectors became standard at presidential events; McCarthy later said the Service had pushed for magnetometers before the shooting but White House staff had resisted, and the devices “were introduced the next day.”²⁴ Security perimeters were pushed farther from the president. Tents began to shield arrivals and departures so that a gunman in a crowd would have no clear line of sight. The agency installed secure phone lines as standard equipment on the vice president’s aircraft and other official vehicles, closing the communications gap that had hampered coordination while Vice President Bush was airborne on March 30. Agent training intensified, with agents spending roughly two of every eight weeks at the Service’s Beltsville, Maryland, facility.²⁵

The 25th Amendment Muddle

While Reagan was in surgery and Vice President George H.W. Bush was flying back from Texas, senior officials at the White House debated whether to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president to assume presidential powers when the president is incapacitated. They decided against it, and Reagan resumed his duties after regaining consciousness that evening.²⁶

Into the vacuum stepped Secretary of State Alexander Haig. After Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes appeared shaken and could not answer questions about who was in charge, Haig held an impromptu press conference and declared, “I’m in control here.” Aides said his intent was to reassure the country. The effect was the opposite: critics called it a jurisdictional overreach, and the line became one of the most mocked moments of the Reagan era. Haig and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger also reportedly clashed over whether to raise the military alert status, with Haig opposing the move to project normalcy. State Department officials later acknowledged there had been “no real protocol in place” for a presidential incapacity that stopped short of death, and the episode prompted a review of emergency procedures.²⁷

Where Hinckley Is Now

After the verdict, Hinckley was committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. By 1983 he had stopped displaying active symptoms of mental illness, violent behavior, or interest in weapons. His restrictions began to ease in 2003. In 2016, with the government and hospital agreeing that his mental illness had been in “full and sustained remission” for more than 27 years, a court granted him convalescent leave to live full-time with his mother in Williamsburg, Virginia, under conditions that included movement restrictions and mandatory treatment.²⁸

In September 2021, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman approved Hinckley’s unconditional release, effective June 2022. The D.C. Department of Behavioral Health reported he posed a “low risk for future violence.” Friedman said that had Hinckley not attacked the president, “he would have been unconditionally released a long, long, long time ago,” and called the release “probably overdue given the record in this case.”²⁸ On June 15, 2022, Hinckley was freed from all court-mandated supervision.²⁹

Now 70, Hinckley lives in the Williamsburg area and continues to take psychiatric medication. He has pursued music and art, selling paintings online and releasing five singles in 2025, though he has had trouble finding venues willing to host live performances; a scheduled show at the Williamsburg Regional Library Theatre was canceled after public backlash. In late 2024 he announced and then abandoned plans to open a music store, citing “too much negative publicity.”³⁰ In December 2025 he published a memoir titled Who I Really Am through WildBlue Press, written with Jason Norman, in which he attributes the shooting to a period of isolation, depression, and delusions and describes the book as an attempt at “closure.”³¹

1
UPI Archives. The Gun Used in the Attempt to Kill President Reagan
2
UPI Archives. FBI Examined the .22-Caliber Bullets That Wounded President Reagan
3
U.S. Secret Service. Reagan 40th Anniversary
4
Loyola University Maryland. Alumnus May Have Saved Reagan
5
GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences Magazine. Ronald Reagan, Presidential Patient
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GW Today. Saving the President
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9
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Miller Center of Public Affairs. The Attempted Reagan Assassination
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U.S. Department of Justice. U.S. Attorney’s Office Will Not Pursue Charges Against John W. Hinckley Jr. in Death of James Brady
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UPI Archives. Delahanty Retires but Says He’s Thankful
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U.S. Secret Service. Retired Special Agent McCarthy Recalls Infamous March Day
15
Famous Trials. Hinckley’s Obsession
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UPI Archives. FBI: No Proof Hinckley Stalked Carter
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Yahoo News. John Hinckley Jr. Says He Stalked Carter
18
Famous Trials. The Trial of John Hinckley
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Famous Trials. The Insanity Verdict
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PBS Frontline. History of the Insanity Defense
21
Brady United. How Brady Background Checks Became Law
22
Oyez. Printz v. United States
23
Justia. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898
24
C-SPAN. 1981 Assassination Attempt on President Reagan
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CNN. Hinckley Presidential Protection
26
Reagan Library Blog. Who’s in Charge? The 25th Amendment and President Reagan’s Assassination Attempt
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Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. Al Haig and the Reagan Assassination Attempt
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Syracuse Law Review. The Unconditional Release of John Hinckley
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NPR. John Hinckley, Who Tried to Assassinate President Reagan, Is Granted Full Release
30
NBC Washington. Man Freed After Shooting Reagan Drops Plans to Open Music Store in Virginia
31
Virginian-Pilot. John Hinckley Jr.’s Memoir