Would-be presidential assassin John W. Hinckley Jr. has announced he will open a music store in eastern Virginia this month.
“I’ll be opening a music store in Williamsburg, Va.,” Mr. Hinckley posted Monday on X. “The address is 455 Merrimack Trail. Grand opening is in a week or two!”
Mr. Hinckley, who shot President Ronald Reagan in March 1981, has been singing the blues since he launched a failed career as a rock musician after leaving a psychiatric hospital.
In June 2022, a New York hotel canceled a sold-out concert he planned to headline after deciding it was too risky.
In a statement posted to social media, Brooklyn’s Market Hotel cited “the safety of our vulnerable communities” for its decision to disinvite Mr. Hinckley from performing the following month.
“There was a time when a place could host a thing like this, maybe a little offensive, and the reaction would be ‘it’s just a guy playing a show, who does it hurt — it’s a free country,’” the statement read in part. “We aren’t living in that kind of free country anymore, for better or for worse.”
The statement added that while hotel management believed ex-convicts “can recover,” it was “not worth a gamble” to proceed.
Mr. Hinckley, who was touting his “redemption tour” online, responded to the cancellation by noting that Americans live in “very scary times.”
“I would have only gone on with the show if I was going to feel safe at the show and feel that the audience was going to be safe,” he told the New York Times.
Mr. Hinckley was 25 when he shot Reagan in Washington, D.C., claiming he did it to attract the attention of actress Jodi Foster. The attack also wounded Secret Service agent Timothy J. McCarthy, D.C. police officer Thomas K. Delehanty and presidential press secretary James Brady, who died of his injuries in 2014.
A D.C. jury found Mr. Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity, and a judge committed him to a D.C. psychiatric hospital.
Mr. Hinckley has lived in Virginia under restrictions since 2016, with an unconditional release taking effect in June 2022 after a judge declared him mentally stable.
Some x users this week wished Mr. Hinckley good luck with his store. Others responded with a mix of threats, hostility and sarcasm.
“Glad you’re giving it a shot,” the X account Ask America with Edgar posted Monday.
Steven P. Ray, a former Iowa Department of Public Safety official who unsuccessfully sought the Republican Party’s nomination for governor in 2018, said Mr. Hinckley’s “mental excuse” kept him out of prison.
“It is an injustice you’re even free to do this,” Mr. Ray posted Tuesday. “Another sad decision by a liberal justice system.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.