The Nation - News from March 30, 1987

Sarah Brady, the wife of White House Press Secretary James S. Brady, is marking the sixth anniversary of the shooting of President Reagan and her husband with an appeal for tougher U.S. handgun laws. “If our country had a law, favored by police to require a waiting period and background check for those purchasing handguns, John Hinckley would have been stopped,” she said in a statement. Brady suffered a head wound on March 30, 1981, outside a Washington hotel when Hinckley fired a handgun, wounding the President, his press secretary, a Secret Service agent and a policeman. Hinckley, acquitted by a jury by reason of insanity, remains in a Washington mental hospital.