What Will Come of This Shooting?

James Brady in 1986.

Comparisons have been drawn to the events of March 1981, when an assassination attempt was made on Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr. as he entered the Washington Hilton.

Out of the Hinckley shooting came the Brady Bill and Brady Handgun Act – the landmark federal gun-control measures that created the background-check system for handgun purchases. My question, which has only become more urgent, is – What will come out of this shooting, at the same hotel, this past weekend?

James Brady was press secretary to President Ronald Reagan when both he and the president, as well as Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and Metropolitan Police officer Thomas Delahanty were shot outside the Washington Hilton on March 30, 1981. Brady was shot in the head and suffered a serious wound that left him partially paralyzed for life. He ultimately died in 2014, his death ruled a homicide, caused by the wounds he sustained thirty-three years earlier.

Throughout those thirty-three years, Brady and his wife Sarah, took those wounds and turned them into something — the Brady Bill and the Brady Handgun Act, a federal background check system that has blocked millions of prohibited purchases. Out of enormous suffering came a genuine attempt to protect people

Among other things, the Brady Act bans gun purchases by people who are sentenced to a year or more in relation to a violent crimes – like the January 6th felons. Unless their convictions are pardoned or vacated, as theirs have been, by Donald Trump with the support of this administration.

Sarah Brady once said she never gave up because she couldn’t afford to. Neither can we. While we remember Hinckley and Reagan we should also remember the Bradys.