ARCHIVE – US Marshals accompany John Hinckley Jr. as he returns to a naval base by helicopter in Quantico, Va., Aug. 8, 1981. Hinckley Jr., who shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was released from court custody on Wednesday, June 15, 2022, officially completing decades supervision by lawyers and mental health professionals. (AP Photo / Barry Thumma, Archive) John Hinckley Jr., who shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was released on bail Wednesday, formally completing decades of supervision by lawyers and mental health professionals. “After 41 years, 2 months and 15 days, FINALLY FREEDOM !!!”, he wrote on Twitter shortly after 12 noon. The lifting of all restrictions was expected by the end of September. U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman in Washington had said he would release Hinckley on June 15 if he continued to remain mentally stable in the Virginia community where he has lived since 2016. Hinckley, who was acquitted of insanity, has spent decades in a Washington psychiatric hospital. Freedom for Hinckley will include a concert — playing guitar and singing — in Brooklyn, New York, scheduled for July. He has already gained nearly 30,000 followers on Twitter and YouTube in recent months, as the judge relaxed Hinckley’s restrictions before completely lifting them all. But the gray-haired 67-year-old is far from the well-known name that came after he shot and wounded the 40th president of the United States – and several others – outside a hotel in Washington. Today, historians say Hinckley is at best a question on a quiz show and someone who inadvertently helped build Reagan’s legend and inspired a push for tighter gun control. “If Hinckley had succeeded in killing Reagan, then he would have been a pivotal historical figure,” HW Brands, Reagan’s historian and biographer, wrote in an email to the Associated Press. “As it is, it is a deceived soul that history has already forgotten.” Barbara A. Perry, professor and director of presidential studies at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, said Hinckley “would probably be a question of danger.” But his impact remains on Reagan’s legacy. “For the president himself to be so badly injured and to come back from it – that made Ronald Reagan the legend that he became… like the movie hero he was,” Perry said. Reagan showed grace and humor in the face of death, Perry said. After being shot, the president told emergency doctors he hoped they were all Republicans. He later joked with his wife Nancy that he was sorry he “forgot to do the duck”. When the president first spoke to Congress after the shooting, he looked “a little thinner, but he’s still the strong cowboy Ronald Reagan,” Perry said. The assassination attempt paralyzed Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, who died in 2014. In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed into law Brady Bill, which required a five-day waiting period for arms purchases and background checks on potential buyers. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence are named after Brady and his wife Sarah. The shooting also injured intelligence agent Timothy McCarthy and Washington police officer Thomas Delahadi. McCarthy told the AP last year that he did not have “many good Christian thoughts” about Hinckley. “But in any case, I hope they are right,” McCarthy, then 72, said of Hinckley’s imminent release from custody. “Because this man’s actions could have changed the course of history.” Hinckley was 25 years old and suffering from acute psychosis when he shot Reagan and the others. When jurors found him innocent of insanity, they said he needed treatment, not a life of confinement. He ordered to live in the hospital of St. Elizabeths in Washington. In the 2000s, Hinckley began visiting his parents’ home in a fenced Williamsburg neighborhood. A 2016 court ruling allowed him to live with his mom full-time, albeit under various restrictions, after experts said his mental illness had subsided for decades. Hinckley’s mother died in July. He signed a lease on a one-bedroom apartment in the area last year and began living there with his cat, Theo, according to the courts. Over the years, the court banned Hinckley from owning a gun or using drugs or alcohol. He also could not communicate with actress Jodi Foster, with whom he was obsessed at the time of the shooting, nor with any of his victims or their families. One of Reagan’s daughters, Patti Davis, considered contact in a Washington Post article last year. “There is no manual on how to deal with this. “You just have to live with the fear, anger and darkness that a person constantly brings into your life,” he wrote. Stephen J. Morse, a professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, told the AP last year that Hinckley’s acquittal for insanity meant he was not guilty of what happened and could not be punished. “If he had not tried to assassinate President Reagan, this guy would have been released years ago,” Morse said. Barry Levine, Hinckley’s lawyer, told the court last year that Hinckley wanted to express his “sincere” apology and “deep regret” to the people he shot and their families, as well as to Foster and the American people. Friedman, the federal judge overseeing Hinckley’s case, said June 1 that Hinckley had shown no signs of active mental illness since the mid-1980s and had not shown violent behavior or an interest in guns. “It’s time to let John Hinckley go on with his life, that’s what we’re going to do,” the judge said.
