ABC Looks to Attempted Reagan Assassin for Thoughts on Gun Control

[See NewsBusters for more.] Who better to talk gun control with than the attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan? That’s apparently the thinking of ABC’s Nightline. In a little more than a week, the ABC program and CBS have devoted a whopping 13 minutes and 41 seconds to interviewing John Hinckley Jr., the man who shot the President in 1981 and also wounded three others. But it was Nightline’s journalists that seemed the most excited to promote the newly released mental patient’s thoughts on gun control. Byron Pitts opened Tuesday’s Nightline by hyping, “John Hinckley Jr. One of the most notorious criminals in American history is free and says he's a changed man.” He added, “Now what he's saying about mental illness and gun control.”