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.
WAKE-UP CALL: Firms in the private sector were not taking basic precautions, despite the cyberthreats from China and Russia, a US cybersecurity official said A ninth US telecom firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and telephone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said on Friday. Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden this month said that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger on Friday told reporters that a ninth victim
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
MISSING: Prosecutors urged the company to move workers out of poor living conditions to hotels, but residents said many workers had already left the town Brazil has stopped issuing temporary work visas for BYD, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday, in the wake of accusations that some workers at a site owned by the Chinese electric vehicle producer had been victims of human trafficking. The announcement came days after labor authorities said they found 163 Chinese workers who had been brought to Brazil irregularly in “slavery-like” conditions at the BYD factory construction site in the northeastern state of Bahia. The workers were employed by contractor Jinjiang Group, which has denied any wrongdoing. Later, the authorities also said the workers were victims of human trafficking,
RSS