When Reagan was shot, country rallied around, but he hadn't spent months downplaying assassins

WASHINGTON - When President Ronald Reagan was shot and nearly killed by a would-be assassin, the country rallied around him. But he also hadn't spent eight months downplaying the threat of deranged gunmen.

With President Donald Trump's announcement that he and his wife had tested positive for coronavirus, I thought back to the last time the country confronted a major presidential health scare and what we might learn from those dramatic few days in the spring of 1981.

Reagan was shot by John W. Hinckley Jr. on March 30, 1981, as the president and his entourage left the Washington Hilton, where he had given a speech to union members. It was just 70 days into Reagan's first