This is the unofficial story. Flanked by Secret Service agents, he was walking to his limousine when John Hinckley, Jr. surged forward, .22 pistol in hand, and opened fire. A bullet richocheted off the limousine and took Reagan down, but he lived. That's the official story. Both concepts, needless to say, rely on a gigantic amount of random chance and coincidence.
Every lone nut has a doppleganger.
That's a law of nature, when it comes to assassination conspiracies. Hinckley's double was named Edward Richardson, who just happened to be a dead ringer for Hinckley himself. Richardson traced Hinckley's path from Connecticut to Colorado, writing demented love letters to actress Jodie Foster, just like Hinckley. A week after Hinckley's infamous attack, Richardson was arrested in New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal with a .32 caliber revolver, after threatening the lives of both Reagan and Foster. So both men were obsessed with the same actress from the same film.