He shot Reagan, who was free after 41 years. That attack that changed history – Foreign

Free, finally! So John Hinckley on Twitter yesterday. He is 67 years old, turned on May 29th. He is balding, a little fatter, but the swollen cheeks, the dull eyes, the astonished expression are the same as that of March 30, 1981 when he shot President Ronald Reagan, his Press Secretary James Brady, and two policemen. Nobody died. At least not right away. James Brady was paralyzed. And John, who was 25 at the time, escaped death penalty. And he also escaped from prison. At the trial the verdict was “not guilty due to insanity”. He was interned at the St. Elizabeth Psychiatric Clinic in Washington DC and in recent years placed in the care of his old mother in Virginia. Fell in love. Why did you do that? he had asked him for the accusation. Because I was in love with Jodie Foster, he replied. He had seen her a few months earlier in Taxi Driver with Robert De Niro. He wanted to do something big. He wanted to get her attention on him. And what was bigger than murdering the most powerful man in the world, the American president? The jury believed him. After all, he had been subjected to a dozen psychiatric visits and the conclusion had always been the same: mentally ill, irresponsible, unstable and therefore innocent. But Congress did not accept that ruling and less than a year later passed a law that effectively excluded recognition of insanity in similar cases. Insanity? Bales. Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald Reagan, never took it seriously. Nor on the day of the shooting in front of the Hilton Hotel in Washington. And not even yesterday “after 41 years, 2 months and 15 days of imprisonment”, as John Hinckley recalled in his tweet. He’s not crazy, he said six years ago, when his father’s bomber was discharged from the psychiatric clinic. He never was. He is a narcissist and he has never regretted …