The man who shot former President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s said in an interview this week that he is a victim of cancel culture.
John Hinckley Jr., who spent years confined to a mental hospital for trying to murder Reagan, was freed from all restrictions in 2022.
The 68-year-old has tried to become a singer since gaining his freedom, but has had numerous planned concerts canceled by venues because the businesses do not want controversy.
“I think that’s fair to say: I’m a victim of cancel culture,” he claimed in an interview with the New York Post. “It keeps happening over and over again.”
“They book me and then the show gets announced and then the venue starts getting backlash,” he claimed. “The owners always cave, they cancel. It’s happened so many times, it’s kinda what I expect. I don’t really get upset.”
He claimed that he was not the same person that he used to be and that he did not want to “dwell on the past.”
“I’m just caught up in the cancel culture, I guess,” he complained. “It would be a venue for new artists, distinguished artists and they wouldn’t get canceled [at] the last minute like I’m getting canceled.”
Hinckley shot Reagan on March 30, 1981, just 69 days after his inauguration. Reagan was leaving the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., at around 2:30 p.m. after having given a speech to about 5,000 members of the AFL-CIO when Hinckley opened fire with a .22 revolver.
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Hinckley fired six shots at Reagan and his security team. One bullet ricocheted off of Reagan’s limousine and struck the president under his left arm, according to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. It was initially thought that Hinckley missed Reagan, until the president began coughing up blood and was taken to the hospital. It was later discovered that the bullet grazed one of the president’s ribs and became lodged in his rib just one inch from his heart. The injury left Reagan with a punctured lung and internal bleeding, resulting in a 12-day hospital stay.
Also injured in the attack were Press Secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, and policeman Thomas Delahanty. Brady was hit in the head and became permanently disabled, requiring a wheelchair for the rest of his life and affecting his speech. He died on August 4, 2014, with a medical examiner ruling his death a homicide resulting from Hinckley’s gunshot 33 years earlier.
Delahanty was struck in the back of his neck trying to protect Reagan, while McCarthy was struck in the abdomen. Both men survived and fully recovered.
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. One of his attorneys, Greg Craig, went on to become assistant to the President and White House special counsel under Bill Clinton and White House counsel under President Barack Obama. In 2019, he was indicted for lying to federal prosecutors about his work at a private law firm for the former president of Ukraine without registering as a foreign agent.
By 2011, Hinckley was allowed to leave the hospital for several days at a time to visit family in Virginia. In 2012, therapists in Virginia withdrew a plan that would allow Hinckley to leave the hospital and live full-time with his mother. At the time, the Department of Justice said Hinckley hadn’t changed and should remain in the hospital. Four years later, in 2016, Hinckley was released from St. Elizabeth’s to live with his mother and gain more privileges.
In September 2021, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman announced that Hinckley would be fully released without conditions if he continued to show he was “no longer a danger to himself or others,” the Associated Press reported. Hinckley was granted his freedom without any restrictions on June 15, 2022.
Ashe Schow contributed to this report.