Osler's Razor

A few weeks ago, while I was in DC working on the clemency project, I stayed at a hotel on Connecticut Avenue.  I had a room with three windows looking across the street at the Washington Hilton, a big convention hotel.  At dusk one night, I found myself watching the light fade over it as I remembered something that happened a long time ago, during my senior year in high school.  Ronald Reagan was President, and had given a speech at the Hilton.  As he stepped through the front doors, a young man named John Hinckley tried to assassinate him, in a deranged effort to impress the actress Jodie Foster.  He used a gun he bought for $29 at a pawn shop.  Four people were hit:  President Reagan, a DC police officer, a Secret Service agent, and Reagan's press secretary, James Brady.  Of them, Brady was the most badly hurt, as a bullet entered the right side of his head.

After that, he was confined to a wheelchair, and suffered impaired speech and memory. 

I remember thinking, as a student in high school, that it was terrifying that so much damage could be done by one unstable person if only he could get his hands on a gun, even a bad, cheap gun. 

James Brady went on, with the help of his wife Sarah, to crusade against the availability of guns to people like Hinckley.  He won, too-- he pushed for and got the law that requires background checks and waiting periods to purchase guns in most circumstances.  That law has prevented as many as two million gun transactions to people who shouldn't have a gun.


I am glad he lived those 33 more years; he became one of those people with influence rather than power who make things better.