The Brief

The Queen Mary in Long Beach is many things — a popular tourist attraction, a music festival backdrop, and a source of haunted tales.

But before it permanently docked on Southern California’s shores, the Queen Mary was a symbol of British luxury and prowess. Nearly 100 years ago, the record-setting ship made its mark as a feat of engineering, commanding attention and awe on the ocean.

The ship’s origins

The Queen Mary sprang from a desire to bring something new to the waters.

The company Cunard Line wanted a set of fancy new ocean liners to replace the ships on its North Atlantic route.

In 1930, construction started on what was known as Hull No. 534 in a Scotland shipyard renowned for its building skills. This shipyard was the only one in Great Britain set up for design experiments. With the aim of being superfast and nimble on the water, crews ran over 7,000 performance tests with wax models.

But the ship almost didn’t materialize, as Cunard was hit hard by the Great Depression. The company was strapped financially, and the ship was estimated to cost about 4 million pounds, about $100 million in today's money. So, the British government stepped in with a loan to cover the cost to complete construction. The company was forced to merge with a rival in 1934 as part of the funding agreement.

Over 300,000 people were involved in the ship’s creation. It had an art deco interior with bright colors, geometric shapes, and different textures like wood and glass and velvet. Some mocked the ship for this kind of old money, conservative take on luxury sea travel, but the designers were trying to appeal to the world.

According to the Scotland design museum, V&A Dundee, a promotional brochure described it as pairing a cosmopolitan sense of culture “with the comfort of a country home.” It was also the first British liner to have a small synagogue onboard, largely in response to rising antisemitism in Germany.

As an upper-class British passenger ship, the royal family was quite involved. This was during the time of Queen Elizabeth II’s grandparents, King George V and Queen Mary. Family members would visit the ship to check on progress.

Hull No. 534 was originally going to be named in honor of the King’s grandmother, Queen Victoria, according to Washington Post editor Felix Morley in an autobiography. He alleged a Cunard executive told him why the name changed — swearing him to secrecy until his death.

Cunard’s custom was to give ships names ending with “ia.” But when the King was informed of the goal to name it after Victoria, considered “Britain’s most illustrious Queen,” he smiled and replied: “Mary will be pleased.”

The Queen Mary’s maiden voyage was a 470-mile round trip in May 1936, from one part of England to another. And those thousands of tests paid off. The ship was incredibly quick, at its best taking just four days to cross the Atlantic.

It set a record for fastest transatlantic crossing within its first year, cutting an hour and 25 minutes from the four-day journey.

The Gray Ghost

The ship would ferry thousands of wealthy passengers and millions in goods until World War II. Wartime stripped the Queen Mary of its opulence and beauty — but it would earn a historic spot in the war.

The ship was converted to carry not civilians but large numbers of troops. To make enough space, one of the dining rooms was converted to a large mess hall, and even the drawing room was turned into a sick bay for soldiers. Its sleek black, red, and white exterior was repainted gray, which eventually got it the nickname “Gray Ghost” for its speed and agility.

The Queen Mary arrives in New York City with thousands of U.S. troops on board on June 20, 1945.

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As the war continued, the Queen Mary was modified multiple times to carry more troops, P.O.W'.s and crew. In 1942, the expanded capacity made it the first ship with over 10,000 people on board — and it likely still holds the record for most people on a ship at one time (16,683).

In total, the Queen Mary transported 810,000 troops, contributing hugely to the war effort.

The ship’s speed also drew Hitler’s ire. It outran German boats so many times that the dictator put a $250,000 reward out to anyone who could sink it. The danger was so high that passengers were told to carry a life preserver, water canteen and rations on them at all times, according to a nurse’s personal account.

One time the ship encountered a rogue wave so fierce that it almost destroyed the ship. Fifteen thousand American troops were on board when a wall of water dozens of feet tall struck the side of the ship, almost capsizing it and flooding the decks. Some reports say it was up to 90 feet high. Crews were able to steady the Queen Mary and no passengers were lost.

The ship’s last wartime voyage was in 1946 to Southampton, England. It stayed there for months as crews restored it back to passenger service, painting it again with that iconic black, white and red. Pieces of its traditional interior had to be recovered from ports around the world.

Retiring to Long Beach

The Queen Mary continued passenger service for the next 20 years — but the ship was on borrowed time.

The cover of a first class menu aboard a 1950 Queen Mary voyage.

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The first class luncheon offerings on June 27, 1950.

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At the turn of the 1950s, sea travel popularity dipped because of the jet age. The Queen Mary was aging and losing money. Its era as the top ocean liner on the Atlantic was at an end, so Cunard was ready to sell the ship.

This was Long Beach’s opportunity. The city was itching for a major attraction — so why not a famous ocean liner? There were 18 bids in total for the ship, including an offer from New York to turn it into a floating Brooklyn high school, but Long Beach won. In 1967, the city paid $3.5 million for the Queen Mary to become its historic maritime museum and hotel.

The ocean liner 'RMS Queen Mary' at Southampton Docks, UK, October 1967. Shortly after she sailed to a permanent mooring at Long Beach in California.

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The ship’s “last great cruise” left England for California on October 31 that year. The ship was packed with famous people for the 39 day trip, which crossed the Canary Islands, the eastern coast of Brazil, down to Cape Horn and around to the U.S.’s west coast. The ship faced some trouble in the hotter weather. It got so hot on board that a chef died from heat exhaustion and was buried at sea.

Still, it was a celebratory journey. Crews threw hundreds of bottles stuffed with notes overboard, according to former Long Beach councilmember Renee Simon. The notes asked would-be readers to reach out with their location in exchange for a Queen Mary memento.

Chief deck steward Joe Allen also was among the crew. He wrote a poem called “The Mary”. Line by line, he affectionately recounted its accolades in war and peace:

To injured seamen broken in fall
She dashed to their rescue at the S.O.S call
The time has come for this Old Beauty
To retire from Atlantic duty
Setting sail for Long Beach in atmosphere terse
She will "finish with engines", her grand crew disperse
The toast is ‘The Queen,’ the end of an era
Here’s to the ‘Mary,’ the greatest ship ever

It was supposed to stay private, but “The Mary” ended up being printed in the ship’s farewell booklet and read aloud by the captain. Allen’s words made people cry.

Thousands of spectators welcomed the Queen Mary when it arrived in Long Beach on December 9, 1967. It’s been a peaceful, if not quiet retirement — millions more have gotten to know the ship on land than were ever able to visit at sea.

According to new data from TikTok and theater trade group Cinema United fan-made TikToks can now do what big marketing campaigns couldn't always achieve: keep a movie thriving after opening weekend.

At this year's CinemaCon, the annual convention for movie theater owners, director Denis Villeneuve showed the first seven minutes of his third Dune film. He told the crowd he made his latest installment of the science fiction saga for the fans. And long before the December opening, fans have been posting their own reactions on TikTok.

"There's this incredible chant in Dune 3 that's in the trailer and what we've seen is it's a soundbite that users on TikTok have embraced and made their own content with," says Cameron Curtis, executive vice president of global digital marketing for Warner Bros.

He says TikTok is a tremendous platform for reaching new audiences.

"We often see that the creator content on [the] platform outperforms our traditional advertising content by 3-to-1. It's become just critical to our strategy and everything that we do," says Curtis.

He says Warner Bros. and other studios have been partnering with TikTok creators to market their films. According to TikTok executives, that's for good reason. "We really saw that the buzz doesn't stop with the opening weekend," says Dennis Papirowski, TikTok's global head of Entertainment and News.

He says every day, the platform's users create 6.5 million posts related to content from new and classic films and TV shows. According to TikTok, half of their users say they discovered a new movie through the platform. And of those, more than a third looked up showtimes and purchased a movie ticket.

Dawn Yang, the company's global head of entertainment partnerships and business development, says studios tend to do a lot of marketing for the first weekend a film opens.

"But on TikTok, it really takes off after the first weekend," she says, "because people have seen the entire movie and they want to talk about it."

TikTokers post enthusiastic movie reviews, they cosplay and reenact scenes, and some create new edits from the official trailers and footage. For instance, 24-year-old college student Josiah Pilet remixed Spider-Man clips set to music.

Fan edits would have been no-nos in the old Hollywood strategy of protecting intellectual property, says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore, which analyzes the box office.

"There was a time when studios did not want marketing messaging going out that wasn't from them," he says. Now, he says even negative responses to movies are welcome "as long as it's not something horrible, that can boost the profile of a movie and excitement around it, because sometimes people want to see what the fuss is all about."

Dergarabedian says studios are increasingly embracing and harnessing the power of short TikToks made by the key Gen Z audience.

"You have some movies that open huge, have a huge opening weekend, then drop by 70% or more in their second weekend," he says. "But the way you keep people coming back is that you not only have a great movie, but the social media engagement continues, amplifies and creates that excitement and the FOMO factor among potential moviegoers."

Take last year's box office hit Sinners. Cinema United and TikTok's report found that buzz about the film surged on the platform during its opening week — and ticket sales barely dipped the following week.

But social media platforms, including TikTok, have also sometimes caused minor headaches for theaters. Last year, fan-made posts chronicled the mayhem sparked by a line spoken by Jack Black's character in The Minecraft Movie.

Audiences shouted "chicken jockey" along with him and tossed popcorn in theaters. The ruckus was so chaotic that one fan even carried a live chicken into the movie, as shown by one viral video.

At CinemaCon, Warner Bros. executives offered a good-natured apology to theater owners for the mess.

But it's not just fans posting TikToks. As executive director of communications and content for B&B Theatres, Paul Farnsworth makes funny TikToks, starring himself and the staff — often in the lobby, playing around with the latest movies.

"It's like a little wink-wink joke, nothing that you're going to like, pay money to go see a stand-up comedian say," he says. "But I think for us, it indicates to our guests a sensibility of like the playfulness of the movies, the magic of the experience, the shared communal thing that we're all trying to achieve with them."

Farnsworth says he asks the studios for guidance on the material — hoping his viral TikToks get people into movie theaters.

The man arrested in connection with the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner Saturday night was identified as Cole Allen by two sources familiar with the matter. The sources spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Shooting details

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., third from left, is taken out of the ballroom by security agents during a shooting incident at the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.

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The shooting took place outside the ballroom at the Washington Hilton, where the dinner was underway. President Donald Trump on Saturday released what appears to be video surveillance footage that shows a man quickly moving past security officials, who then draw their weapons. Trump, who was safely evacuated with his wife, Melania, and other top officials, also shared images via his Truth Social account late Saturday of a shirtless man detained on the floor of the hotel.

Todd Blanche, the acting U.S. Attorney General, told Meet the Press on Sunday morning that they believed the gunman was targeting "administration officials," but didn't want to be more specific since the investigation was still underway. He said the targets "likely" included the president.

He also said investigators believed the gunman had traveled to D.C. from California via train and was staying at the hotel with two firearms. Blanche said the man purchased those firearms within the last couple of years.

At a news conference following the shooting, Jeffery Carroll of D.C.'s Metropolitan Police said that the suspect said the suspect "was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives."

Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said at that same news briefing that the gunman would face federal charges. Authorities say the man will be charged Monday.

What we know about the gunman's SoCal ties

FBI personnel confer with Torrance police officers on the street of the house connected to Cole Tomas Allen, the shooting suspect at the White House Correspondents' Dinner late Saturday.

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The FBI searched a home connected to Allen in Torrance late Saturday.

According to a LinkedIn profile under his name, Allen obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2017, and a master's degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 2025.

The profile also says that one of his employers is C2 Education, a tutoring and college test prep center with a location in Torrance, where he was named "Teacher of the Month" in a December 2024 post.

A search of California's Commission on Teacher Credentialing did not surface a credentialed teacher by that name.

“We were shocked to hear the news of the horrifying incident that transpired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. We are cooperating fully with law enforcement to assist them in their investigation. Violence of any kind is never the answer," C2 Education said in an email response to LAist seeking comments.

Statements from local schools

As news reports spread identifying the gunman as a California teacher from Torrance, the Torrance Unified School District said in a statement Saturday night that the alleged gunman is not an employee of the school district and has never worked there.

"While details are still emerging and facts remain under investigation, early reports have referenced a teacher from Torrance as being involved," the statement from Torrance Unified said. "We want to clarify that the individual named in the news is not an employee of the Torrance Unified School District and has never worked in our district."

Cal State Dominguez Hills, in a statement, said a man with the name of the alleged gunman had graduated from the school in 2025, but could not confirm if it was the same person.

"A student named Cole Allen graduated with a master’s degree from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 2025. The university cannot confirm if this is the same suspect identified in the April 25 shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner," the statement said.

Caltech also said it had not independently confirmed the alleged gunman was the same person who attended their university.

"An undergraduate student by the name of Cole Allen graduated from Caltech in 2017," university officials said in a statement. "Based on media reports, we are aware that federal authorities have identified a suspect by the name of Cole Allen in the April 25 shooting incident at the Washington Correspondents’ Dinner. We do not have details from the investigation to confirm that the suspect and our undergraduate alumnus are the same person."

The math club at Bella Vista Elementary School is not a quiet affair — not with more than a dozen 10- and 11-year-olds stacking sets of mahjong.

But before the games can begin, it's time for math lessons.

"Remind me, math is the study of what?" fourth grade teacher Andy Luong asks the class.

Buena Vista elementary school teacher Andy Luong goes over different elements of mahjong with the afterschool math club.

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Some of the 16 students that make up the mahjong math club at Bella Vista Elementary, with club co-founder Rachel Hwang.

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"Pattern, patterns," the kids say.

Luong clicks through several slides, each featuring a mahjong tile the students call "seven sticks."

 "When you first learned this tile, what did you use to memorize this?" Luong, co-founder of the Mahjong Math Club, asks.

"They look like sticks," a boy says.

Luong locks in on a slide for a few seconds, just a flash. It features six tiles, divided into two rows. He asks the class how many tiles they see.

 "Three on the top and three on the bottom," a girl says. " So when I saw the pattern, I was like, 'Oh, it's six.'"

Luong nods. " Recognizing those patterns are a lot faster than counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6," he says.

The game that never goes out of style

The tile game of mahjong is believed to have started in China in the 19th century, after decades if not centuries of evolution. It spread globally, adopting regional specificities, including in the U.S. after it landed in the late 1910s from Shanghai by way of an American businessman. A few decades later, a group of Jewish American women established the National Mah Jongg League in New York.

The game never stopped being a staple of Chinese and many Asian cultures — anywhere in the world.

Intergenerational Mahjong is a monthly series held in Monterey Park, one of many new mahjong social clubs in L.A.

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In recent years, fueled in part by the COVID-19 shutdown, an interest in the game has sparked among young Asian Americans. They form or attend social clubs in L.A. dedicated to the pastime, creating their own bond with the game.

Luong is one of them. When he was growing up in Illinois, the game came with certain connotations.

" Mahjong has such a bad rap in the Asian American community," Luong said, who moved to the San Gabriel Valley about a decade ago. "Part of a big reason why my parents don't play is because they associate it with gambling."

The 30-year-old finally gave the game a spin in 2024, learning it from third grade teacher and math club co-founder Rachel Hwang. She cut her teeth by watching her family play. Naturally, she threw Luong in the deep end.

" I was like, 'Here, we're just gonna play,'" Hwang said. " I just put the tiles on."

"I was so overwhelmed. It's like, 'What do you mean I had to get a set? A set of how much?' I'm like, 'I don't know what I'm doing,'" he said.

Still, Luong fell head over heels, quickly becoming a regular at the mahjong social clubs (in fact, it was at one of those events where I first met him) and a student of the game.

In learning it, Luong figured out how to teach it.

Principal Jennifer Martinez of Bella Vista Elementary in Monterey Park

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"He was the one [that] as a learner didn't grow up playing this game," Hwang said. "He was the one that found the tutorials, watched the tutorials, and he really, from a learner's perspective, figured out what a kid needed to learn and how they needed to learn in order to play the game."

Last year, Luong submitted a proposal to start a math club focused on mahjong at the school.

" It was pretty much slam dunk. It explores other avenues of the cultural experience that we want our students to learn," said Jennifer Martinez,  principal of Bella Vista Elementary School.  "It was something that we wanted to get off the ground right away and support."

Since September, the club has been meeting on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. It was so popular Luong and Hwang brought in help to run the club.

“ I don't feel like they're really doing math,” said Ruolin Chen, a kindergarten teacher who was recruited. "It's like they're learning from playing or playing from learning.”

Let the games begin

Fifth graders Emily Le and Brianna Azpeitia at the mahjong math club.

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Fifth grader Liam Torres.

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Back in the classroom, Luong clicks to a last slide to remind the club how to maximize "points" with certain "hands." This semester, the club is playing Hong Kong style mahjong — three point minimum win.

Finally, it's game time. The group of mainly fourth and fifth graders take their seats at the tables: mixing the tiles, stacking them into starting formation, casting the die, so on and so forth.

Then, they build their hand, meticulously rearranging the 13 tiles according to their suits — or in math club parlance, patterns.

The clank of tiles and sounds of "pong" and "gong" soon fill the air.

Pattern recognition, strategy, situational awareness, probability, learning when to pivot or to fold — those are some of the learnings the math club intends.

"Andy is so structured," Hwang said of Luong's design of the club. " The first two weeks, they didn't even play a game. It was like, 'Let's look at the tiles. How many tiles do you see? Pick out and group them into sets.'"

Fifth grader Uma Alvarado.

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Fifth grader Benjamin Garcia.

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Fifth grader Uma Alvarado shows me her hand. She's going all "pong" — trying to assemble four sets of three identical tiles. It'd be worth three points if she wins.

Alvarado says what brings her to the club is the opportunity to hang out with her schoolmates. But trying something new is pretty cool too.

"I get to mix the tiles and find new ways to play a game I have never been introduced to before," she adds.

At another table, fourth grader Bonnie Kuang says the game keeps her on her toes.

Fourth grader Bonnie Kuang (left) and fifth grader Ian Maldonado.

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Fourth grader Sofia Mandic explains how the club has taught her pattern recognition.

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"I think it's fun to use different strategies, and maybe I need to change strategy mid-game," Kuang said. "And I like it when I win."

Sofia Mandic, her same grade classmate and opponent across the table, says the pace of the game makes quick tile recognition key.

"You need to think fast. You need to think to yourself if you need it or not," Mandic says, because oftentimes, there are just seconds to make a decision.

Bringing mahjong into the classroom

Pattern recognition, strategy, situational awareness, probability, learning when to pivot or to fold — those are some of the learnings the math club intends.

"Andy is so structured," Hwang said of Luong's design of the club. " The first two weeks, they didn't even play a game. It was like, 'Let's look at the tiles. How many tiles do you see? Pick out and group them into sets.'"

It's all part of a teaching method known as "counting collections" that focuses on hands-on, student-centered learning experiences to build informal math knowledge. It's one aspect of a body of research called Cognitively Guided Instruction, which all math teachers at Bella Vista are trained in. Luong is applying it to guide his approach.

A slide used in the mahjong math club to teach kids how to calculate points.

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A slide used in the mahjong math club teaching kids how to increase points with certain combinations.

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" We need to have them see there's four different types of tiles. There's [Chinese] characters, there's sticks, circles, and there's honorary tiles," Luong said. "They're not going to know unless they actually see it and they use their hands."

Even then, it's a lot to process. It could be downright overwhelming when a kid has to juggle all the elements all at once during game play.

"The very first time that we actually started playing, some of them didn't finish a game. It took an entire period," Luong said.

It took about a month into the club before the mechanics of the game — things like drawing a tile, discarding the ones they don't want — became routine; and another two months for the kids to play faster and without supervision.

Teachers Rachel Hwang, Ruolin Chen and Andy Luong. They run the Mahjong Math Club at Bella Vista Elementary in Monterey Park.

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"A lot of the students who don't know Mandarin, or have any Chinese background, are starting to recognize the characters. I'm really proud to say that," Luong said.

Ultimately, the teachers want the kids to take away from the game a lesson about life.

"What we really want the kids to do is not to have such a fixed mindset," Luong said.

" We want them to, A) be flexible, B) change up your game plan," Hwang said. "It's OK. Life is going to throw curve balls at you."

Updated April 26, 2026 at 16:56 PM ET

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President Trump and the first lady are uninjured after a shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday in Washington, D.C. A suspect is in custody, according to a statement from the U.S. Secret Service.

In remarks from the White House after the incident, the president said a Secret Service agent is "doing great" after being shot in a bulletproof vest. The Secret Service said the incident took place at a security screening area inside the Washington Hilton hotel near the entrance to the main ballroom where the event was taking place. There are no reports of further injuries.

The suspect has been identified as Cole Allen, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Trump shared surveillance footage online which appears to show law enforcement reacting to an assailant sprinting through an area of the hotel. He also posted pictures of a man, shirtless, with his eyes closed lying face down on a carpet.

Cole is being charged with using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, with more charges likely, according to Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

At a law enforcement press conference, Jeffery Carroll of DC's Metropolitan Police said that the suspect "was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives." Law enforcement said they believe the suspect was a guest at the hotel.

He was evaluated at a local hospital after the incident and was not hit by gunfire, according to law enforcement.

Getty Images photographer Andrew Harnik takes photos as a security official points his weapon after an incident at the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.

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A chaotic scene

Gunshots were heard by gathered reporters shortly after 8:30 p.m. ET. Several guests were seen fleeing the ballroom where hundreds of journalists, politicians and attendees were gathered — including Trump, Vice President Vance and other members of the administration.

Video from inside the room showed security quickly clear the guests on the main stage — including the president and first lady. Someone can be heard shouting "stay down."

President Trump took to social media shortly after being rushed out to praise the Secret Service.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is taken out of the ballroom by security agents during a shooting incident at the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner.

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"Quite an evening in D.C. Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job. They acted quickly and bravely. The shooter has been apprehended," Trump wrote.

The president said in a later post that all cabinet members are safe.

"I said earlier tonight that journalism is a public service, because when there is an emergency, we run to the crisis, not away from it. And on a night when we are thinking about the freedoms in the First Amendment, we must also think about how fragile they are," Weijia Jiang, the president of the correspondents' association, said. "I saw all of you reporting, and that's what we do. Thank God everybody's safe and and thank you for coming together tonight. We will do this again."

First lady Melania Trump and President Trump were sitting next to each other just before they were rushed out of the ballroom at the Washington Hilton.

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Several members of Congress were seen leaving the event by foot, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla.

Attacks on Trump and the press

Both the president and members of the press have been targeted for violence in recent years.

During his 2024 reelection effort, Trump was injured in a shooting at a July rally in Pennsylvania when a bullet whizzed past his head, grazing his ear. Two attendees were wounded, and rally-goer and former fire chief Corey Comperatore was killed.

A Secret Service sniper shot and killed the perpetrator.

In September 2024, a Secret Service agent saw a man holding a semi-automatic rifle hidden in the tree line at Trump International in West Palm Beach. The suspect fled in his car and was arrested a short time later.

White House Correspondents Association President and CBS Senior White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang pauses while coming back to the stage to speak after a shooting incident at the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner.

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He was later sentenced to life in prison.

During the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol building, more than a dozen journalists were attacked in targeted assaults by rioters, according to a tally by the Freedom of the Press foundation. "Murder the media" was etched into a doorway during the attack.

In 2018, a man mailed pipe bombs to people and organizations he perceived to be critics of Donald Trump, including CNN offices in New York and Atlanta. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The Washington Hilton, which played host to Saturday's dinner, is also the site of past political violence — in 1981, President Reagan was shot and seriously wounded outside of the hotel.

Three others were also injured in the attack, including Reagan's press secretary James Brady, who sustained brain damage and was permanently disabled in the attack. He became a gun control activist, successfully lobbying alongside his wife Sarah Brady for a background check system for firearm sales.

The White House Press Briefing Room, where Trump made brief remarks after the incident, was later renamed in his honor.

Deepa Shivaram and Ryan Lucas contributed to this report.

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