Former White House spokesman James Brady, who became a tireless gun control advocate after being severely wounded during a 1981 assassination attempt against then-US president Ronald Reagan, has died at the age of 73.
In a statement to US news media on Monday that specified no date or place of death, Brady’s family said he passed away “after a series of health issues.”
“We are enormously proud of Jim’s remarkable accomplishments — before he was shot on that fateful day in 1981 while serving at the side of Reagan and in the days, months and years that followed,” they said.
Brady was among four people shot and wounded — including Reagan — when John Hinckley Jr tried to kill the newly inaugurated president on a rainy day outside the Washington Hilton hotel on March 30, 1981.
A serious head wound left him with partial paralysis and slurred speech. Unable to return to work, the Illinois native nevertheless retained the title of White House press secretary throughout the Reagan administration.
With his wife, Sarah, Brady took a front-and-center role in efforts to enact tougher handgun laws in the US, notably through an advocacy group that came to be known as the Brady Campaign.
Success came in November 1993, when then-US president Bill Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act, which required background checks for anyone buying firearms from a licensed retailer in the nation.
He remain committed to gun control throughout his life, saying in 2011: “I wouldn’t be here in this damn wheelchair if we had common-sense legislation.”
“Since 1993, the law that bears Jim’s name has kept guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals,” said US President Barack Obama, whose own push for wider background checks after the Newtown school massacre in December 2012 collapsed on Capitol Hill.
“An untold number of people are alive today who otherwise wouldn’t be, thanks to Jim,” he said in a statement.
“Jim was the personification of courage and perseverance,” Reagan’s widow, Nancy Reagan, said in a statement.
“He and Sarah never gave up, and never stopped caring about the causes in which they believed,” she said.
More than 2 million attempts by prohibited individuals to buy firearms have been foiled since the “Brady Bill” — which did not extend to gun sales between individuals — came into force, Brady Campaign president Dan Gross said.
“Jim never gave up fighting and never lost his trademark wit,” said Gross, whose own brother suffered a traumatic brain injury during a shooting at the Empire State Building in New York.
“In fact, there are few Americans in history who are as directly responsible for saving as many lives as Jim,” he said in a statement.
As a press secretary, Brady — a longtime Republican for whom the White House press briefing room was renamed in 2000 — was known for his feistiness and good humor.
For his attempt to assassinate Reagan, Hinckley — who got his .22 pistol from a pawn shop in Texas and claimed he was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster — was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Now 59, he resides at a Washington mental hospital, but has court permission to pay regular visits to his mother’s home in Virginia.
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