This Day In History, 1981: President Reagan Is Shot

I was at home, sick with the flu or something, ensconced on the couch and ready to watch a couple of soap operas. Ryan's Hope and All My Children, to be specific. (It was about 2.30 p.m. in Washington, D.C., 11.30 a.m. on the west coast, where I was.) Then this happened:

March, 1981 was only 17 1/2 years since President Kennedy's assassination and just 13 years since Martin Luther King and RFK were shot. President Ford had been shot at on two occasions in 1975. At the time it seemed very plausible that the president could be killed by gunfire. (In the clip reporter Frank Reynolds keeps saying that the president hadn't been hit, but his initial information was inaccurate. President Reagan was hit and seriously wounded by the bullet.) 

On the other hand, 1981 was 20 years before 9/11 and in those more innocent days, we didn't automatically assume an event like this was politically-motivated terrorism, and it turns out it wasn't. A mentally-ill loner named John Hinckley shot the president trying to gain the attention and favor of actress Jodie Foster, who was at that time a student at Yale. (Note that Hinckley was an affluent white American whose family was socially connected to the Bushes. In fact, Hinckley's older brother Scott was scheduled to have dinner with Neil Bush, son of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, the night following the shooting. After the shooting, the dinner was cancelled.)   

In the 36 years since President Reagan was shot, things have happened in our country and the world that would have been unimaginable at that time. For what it's worth, however, at least as far as I'm aware, no one has taken a shot at a president.

Note: I often say that #EditorsAreImportant and I could have used one yesterday. I misspelled the shooter's name as "Hinkley." The correct spelling is Hinckley and I've corrected the post.