Hinckley, John

Pain can act in strange ways. Many people suffer traumatic injuries but later state that, at the time, they felt no pain at all. For example, on March 30, 1981, John Hinckley, Jr., attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan with a handgun. When the gunshots were fired, President Reagan s aides pushed him into his limousine to protect him and then sped off. No one, not even President Reagan, knew immediately that he had been shot in the chest with a 9-mm bullet. 

Quoted in E. Walsh, Strange love The woman who wants to start a new life with John Hinckley, Jr., New Yorker, April 5, 1999, pp. 51-67 pp. 54, 60. 

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