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http://www.newsmax.com/us/wallace_shooter_release/2007/11/08/47929.html
Wallace Assailant Getting Out of Prison
Thursday, November 8, 2007
HAGERSTOWN, Md. -- After 35 years in prison, the man who shot and paralyzed
Alabama Gov. George Wallace during his racially charged 1972 presidential
campaign is scheduled to be released Friday into a society more diverse and
more restrictive on guns.
The state's automated victim-notification system sent e-mails announcing the
impending release of Arthur H. Bremer, 57.
Wallace, a fiery segregationist during the 1960s, was wounded on May 15,
1972, during a campaign stop in Laurel, Md. He abandoned his bid for the
Democratic nomination, spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair and died
in 1998.
Bremer, a former Milwaukee busboy and janitor, was convicted of attempted
murder and sentenced to 53 years. He has been held at the medium-security
Maryland Correctional Institution near Hagerstown, about 70 miles from
Baltimore, since 1979, earning his mandatory release through good behavior
and by working in prison.
Bremer's diary, found in a landfill in 1980, made it clear he was motivated
by a desire for attention, not a political agenda. He had also stalked
President Nixon.
A prison system spokesman declined to say where Bremer would go once he got
out. The head of the state's parole commission has said there will be
restrictions on Bremer's activities, including a requirement to avoid
political candidates and events.
"My father forgave him and my family has forgiven him. That's consistent
with God's law," George Wallace Jr. said in Montgomery, Ala. But he added:
"Then there is man's law. I doubt the punishment has fit the crime."
Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the governor's daughter, said of Bremer: "I think
he's getting out 17 1/2 years too early."
The Alabama governor made his famous "stand in the schoolhouse door" in
1963, decrying the enrollment of two black students at the all-white
University of Alabama in a standoff against the Justice Department and the
National Guard.
By 1972, he had tempered his racist rhetoric and adopted a more subtle
approach, denouncing federal courts over the forced busing of children to
integrate schools orders and pledging to restore "law and order," a phase
sometimes regarded as a coded appeal to white racists.
But Wallace recanted his segregationist stand later in his career and won
his final term with the help of black votes. The kind of fiery racial
rhetoric he employed is history. And a black man is one of the leading
candidates for the presidential nomination in 2008.
In another measure of how things have changed, the 1993 Brady Bill, named
for the White House press secretary wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt
on President Reagan, requires background checks to prevent felons and
mentally ill people from buying guns.
Four months before the attempt on Wallace's life, Bremer was arrested and
underwent a psychiatric evaluation after firing bullets into a ceiling at a
shooting range, and was fined for disorderly conduct.
Had the Brady Bill been in place, "it might have been something to stop him
from buying a gun," said Paul Helmke, president of the Washington-based
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Helmke said that the law has stopped 1.4 million people from buying guns,
but that the national database is missing 90 percent of the mental health
records and 20 percent of the felony records because states are not required
to supply them.
Bremer was partly the inspiration for the deranged Travis Bickle character
in the 1976 film "Taxi Driver." The movie, in turn, fascinated John
Hinckley, who tried to kill Reagan in a twisted attempt to impress the
film's co-star, Jodie Foster.
Wallace Assailant Getting Out of Prison
Thursday, November 8, 2007
HAGERSTOWN, Md. -- After 35 years in prison, the man who shot and paralyzed
Alabama Gov. George Wallace during his racially charged 1972 presidential
campaign is scheduled to be released Friday into a society more diverse and
more restrictive on guns.
The state's automated victim-notification system sent e-mails announcing the
impending release of Arthur H. Bremer, 57.
Wallace, a fiery segregationist during the 1960s, was wounded on May 15,
1972, during a campaign stop in Laurel, Md. He abandoned his bid for the
Democratic nomination, spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair and died
in 1998.
Bremer, a former Milwaukee busboy and janitor, was convicted of attempted
murder and sentenced to 53 years. He has been held at the medium-security
Maryland Correctional Institution near Hagerstown, about 70 miles from
Baltimore, since 1979, earning his mandatory release through good behavior
and by working in prison.
Bremer's diary, found in a landfill in 1980, made it clear he was motivated
by a desire for attention, not a political agenda. He had also stalked
President Nixon.
A prison system spokesman declined to say where Bremer would go once he got
out. The head of the state's parole commission has said there will be
restrictions on Bremer's activities, including a requirement to avoid
political candidates and events.
"My father forgave him and my family has forgiven him. That's consistent
with God's law," George Wallace Jr. said in Montgomery, Ala. But he added:
"Then there is man's law. I doubt the punishment has fit the crime."
Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the governor's daughter, said of Bremer: "I think
he's getting out 17 1/2 years too early."
The Alabama governor made his famous "stand in the schoolhouse door" in
1963, decrying the enrollment of two black students at the all-white
University of Alabama in a standoff against the Justice Department and the
National Guard.
By 1972, he had tempered his racist rhetoric and adopted a more subtle
approach, denouncing federal courts over the forced busing of children to
integrate schools orders and pledging to restore "law and order," a phase
sometimes regarded as a coded appeal to white racists.
But Wallace recanted his segregationist stand later in his career and won
his final term with the help of black votes. The kind of fiery racial
rhetoric he employed is history. And a black man is one of the leading
candidates for the presidential nomination in 2008.
In another measure of how things have changed, the 1993 Brady Bill, named
for the White House press secretary wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt
on President Reagan, requires background checks to prevent felons and
mentally ill people from buying guns.
Four months before the attempt on Wallace's life, Bremer was arrested and
underwent a psychiatric evaluation after firing bullets into a ceiling at a
shooting range, and was fined for disorderly conduct.
Had the Brady Bill been in place, "it might have been something to stop him
from buying a gun," said Paul Helmke, president of the Washington-based
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Helmke said that the law has stopped 1.4 million people from buying guns,
but that the national database is missing 90 percent of the mental health
records and 20 percent of the felony records because states are not required
to supply them.
Bremer was partly the inspiration for the deranged Travis Bickle character
in the 1976 film "Taxi Driver." The movie, in turn, fascinated John
Hinckley, who tried to kill Reagan in a twisted attempt to impress the
film's co-star, Jodie Foster.
