The venue cited safety reasons in canceling the performance by Mr. Hinckley, who shot President Reagan and has turned to music since being released from a mental health facility.
The John Hinckley Jr. concert in Brooklyn, an oddity that was scheduled to feature the music of a man best known for trying to kill a U.S. president, was canceled on Wednesday by the venue, which cited fears of a backlash in a “dangerously radicalized, reactionary climate.”
Mr. Hinckley, 67, who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and was found not guilty by reason of insanity, has been living in Virginia under restrictions since 2016, but was granted an unconditional release that took effect on Wednesday. Mr. Hinckley has been planning to use that release to mount what he has called a “redemption tour,” playing his original music at venues around the country. But that plan has hit some roadblocks as venues have reneged on his scheduled concerts, including the Market Hotel, a concert hall in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn that posted a statement to social media on Wednesday saying it was canceling Mr. Hinckley’s July 8 performance.
“It is not worth a gamble on the safety of our vulnerable communities to give a guy a microphone and a paycheck from his art who hasn’t had to earn it, who we don’t care about on an artistic level, and who upsets people in a dangerously radicalized, reactionary climate,” the statement said. The venue seemed to announce the decision with regret, writing in the statement that “this guy performing harms no one in any practical way.”
“This is a sexagenarian with an acoustic guitar,” the venue said. The statement went on to say that although they believed ex-cons and people with mental illnesses should be able to earn a chance to “fully rejoin society,” they made the decision after reflecting on “very real and worsening threats and hate facing our vulnerable communities.
