Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [34]
* * *
LOOKING BACK AT the police sergeant from among the handful of reporters, photographers, and spectators was John Hinckley. His RG 14 revolver was stashed in the right pocket of his beige jacket. It was a small gun, its barrel only 1¾ inches long—the sort of weapon often called a Saturday night special because it was cheap and easy to obtain. The firearm had no safety catch and its trigger was considered heavy, meaning that it required more pressure to squeeze than a typical gun.
The RG 14 was also relatively difficult to load. Sitting in his hotel room less than an hour earlier, Hinckley had unscrewed a knob underneath the barrel and pulled out a pin that released the gun’s cylinder, which flipped out to the left on a hinge. He removed the six Devastator bullets from their box and inserted them into the round cylinder. The Devastators’ tips were filled with twenty-eight milligrams of lead azide, a high explosive meant to detonate on impact. Left untouched in one of his suitcases were thirty-five hollow-point bullets and two round-nosed bullets.
Hinckley had owned this revolver only since October 13, but he had been buying guns since 1979, when he picked up a .38-caliber revolver at a Texas pawnshop. He had spent time practicing with them, too: for the past two years, he had been visiting firing ranges to hone his shooting skills.
This was also not the first time Hinckley had stalked a president. Six months earlier, stung by Foster’s rejection and determined to get her attention, he had traveled to Texas to buy two revolvers and then flown to Washington to try out the idea of killing President Carter. He took a hotel room just three blocks from the White House—“Carter’s fortress,” as he referred to it in a postcard he sent his sister and her husband. After spotting a news story that mentioned the president’s campaign schedule, Hinckley flew to Ohio. On October 2, he attended a Carter campaign rally in Dayton where he stood within arm’s reach of the president, just one in a sea of about fourteen hundred screaming supporters. But he hadn’t brought a gun—his three revolvers were stowed in his luggage at the city’s bus station. The rally was a test run, an effort to prepare himself for the ultimate act. No agents searched him at the event, and Hinckley was astonished that he was able to get so close to the president.
Five days later, Hinckley flew to Nashville to attend another Carter rally. At the last minute, however, he changed his mind and decided not to approach the president again. Back at the city’s airport, he went to security and watched as his suitcases passed through an X-ray machine. A security officer noticed what she thought was a gun in one of them; a police officer searched the bag and found the three revolvers, as well as a pair of handcuffs and a box of .22-caliber ammunition. The guns were confiscated; Hinckley was taken before a judge and fined $62.50. He paid the fine in cash and was driven back to the airport, where he caught a flight out of town.
Hinckley felt especially lucky that day. The officer hadn’t dug particularly deep into his suitcase, so he had missed his diary, which told the whole story—his obsession with Jodie Foster, his stalking of Carter in Dayton, the reason for his trip to Nashville. The first chance he got, Hinckley destroyed the journal. Then, just days after losing the three guns in Nashville, he purchased two .22-caliber revolvers at a pawnshop in Dallas.
In November, Hinckley turned his attention to the president-elect. He flew to Washington, where he was photographed in front of the White House and Ford’s Theatre. He loitered for hours outside Blair House, the president-elect’s official guest residence, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. With a gun in his pocket, he watched