James Brady Out to Disarm Roberti Foes

It has been 13 years and one week since James Brady’s life was changed forever by a handgun during the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.

“It seems like it was only yesterday,” a woman comments.

“It feels like it’s been a century,” Brady responds.

Brady sits in a wheelchair, wearing leg braces with a cane at his side.

But his is a happy story, given the first few chapters. I saw Brady being wheeled off to George Washington University Hospital that traumatic, rainy day and, like most people there, wouldn’t have bet two cents on his life.

Then, for a long time, we wouldn’t have bet on his having much of a meaningful life. It was almost impossible for the President’s former spokesman to complete more than a sentence or two without his voice rising into a squeal that sounded like laughter, or crying, but actually was an uncontrollable reflex caused by the bullet damage to his brain. Memory and concentration suffered too.

But Brady is one of those scrappy, instinctively upbeat, “glass half full” people who never surrenders. He also is blessed with an inspirational wife, Sarah--”the raccoon,” he calls her--and a support group of longtime admirers.

Beyond that, he has been sustained, indeed enhanced, by fighting for causes--for people with disabilities and, especially, for gun control.

“Guns is a cause I can relate to,” he notes. “I’m the real item.”

And on this night, Brady is in the San Fernando Valley fighting for state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), who next Tuesday faces a recall election marshaled by the gun zealots.

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Roberti was being forced out of the Senate anyway by term limits next December. But firearms worshipers--a small minority of society, but uncompromising and unforgiving--decided to repay the veteran lawmaker for sponsoring a 1989 bill that banned semiautomatic assault weapons. At the same time, they would send a message to other elected officials.

“Our message to political pigs: ‘Slight us at your peril,’ ” wrote recall spokesman Russ Howard in a 1993 confidential memo to the National Rifle Assn. The long memo, laying out the recall movement’s goals and strategy, was leaked to Roberti by a mole and has become invaluable in his campaign.

“We may not win a particular election, but our methods have an extremely efficient ‘political cost exchange ratio’ making it exceedingly expensive, difficult and unpleasant for the target to remain in office,” the memo reads. “Victory springs from imparting excruciating political pain in unrelenting repetitive attacks on a single politician as an example to others. . . . “

The memo concludes: “This won’t be the last recall we will do. . . . We can certainly put the fear of God into state-level judges. . . . We are already investigating a potential judicial target.”

So this recall movement is less about Roberti than it is about intimidating public officials who might support gun control.

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Brady and Roberti are at the senator’s campaign headquarters in North Hollywood. The former presidential press secretary is urging about 50 volunteers to “get out the vote. . . . Flood the telephone lines and knock on every door. We must send the message loudly and clearly to the assault weapons extremists that we will no longer tolerate these weapons of war in our society.”

Brady is reading slowly in a monotone, but there is no mistaking his passion. Later he tells me, referring to the NRA and its allies, “You can’t reason with them. And they believe in taking no prisoners. . . . They can’t get any meaner.”

Thirteen years after the barrage of .22-caliber bullets and thousands of therapy sessions later, Brady can carry on a normal conversation. His voice is steady. We sit for awhile, talking about mutual friends, former White House staffers and Reagan.

“Hope I’m not telling stories out of school,” he says, then gleefully tells about once buying TV time to run a commercial showing Reagan endorsing the Brady Bill, requiring a national five-day wait for purchase of a handgun. The ad was spotted only in San Antonio, where the NRA was holding its convention, and at a time delegates most likely would be watching their TV sets. “They must have gone ballistic,” Brady says.

Asked how bitter he is about his wounds, Brady says: “I’ve tried to put that behind me. And I’ve been fairly successful. I wouldn’t say I’m in denial. But I’m picking up on positive causes--like returning Sen. Roberti to Sacramento. You put the bad stuff behind you and turn the pages.”

The zealots would be better off today if 13 years ago there’d been enough gun control to keep the pistol away from Brady’s assailant. But they’ll probably never understand that.