(September 28, 2021 at 2:25 am)Nomad Wrote:(September 27, 2021 at 5:53 pm)Spongebob Wrote: As a side note, after reading about Hinkley's trial and the aftermath, its kind of astonishing that the federal government and several states reformed laws regarding the insanity defense, some abolishing it altogether. Yet now, with so many mass shootings and so many deaths every year, we have almost no action in government to try and address the issue. I don't understand why the president getting shot is so much more important than random citizens getting shot, including 6 year olds.
Look at all the damage Hinkley would have prevented had he succeeded. Ordinary people don't have the malevolent influence on their country that Reagan did in the eight years his regime held the White House.
Sorry, but this is besides the point. In a civil society, we don't kill others because we don't like them. Hinkley in retrospect may have changed history if he had succeeded. But he wasn't doing it to change political history, he had a hard on for Jodie Foster. Oswald changed history too.