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Heston's political commandment: Thou shalt not abridge gun rights
San Luis Obispo Tribune ^ | Apr. 06, 2008 | CALVIN WOODWARD

Posted on 04/07/2008 4:37:30 PM PDT by neverdem

Associated Press

As Moses, Charlton Heston thunderously rallied his people with the Ten Commandments in hand. The tablet of his political life was carved with something else - the Second Amendment.

Heston was not just the public face of the gun-rights movement but a good deal of the fire in its belly during a transformational time in the decades-old debate.

He lived to see Democrats running away from a cause they once embraced, scared off by the likelihood that they lost the 2000 presidential election in part because of their gun-control advocacy.

For a conservative champion like Heston, that was pretty close to the Promised Land.

His death Saturday night brought tributes from public figures whose fortunes were linked in some way to his.

President Bush praised his commitment to liberty. Former first lady Nancy Reagan remembered Heston's long association with her late husband.

Ronald Reagan, like Heston, was an actor who became more conservative over time - fellow strangers to Hollywood's Democratic mainstream - before walking into an Alzheimer's twilight.

The most pointed tribute may have come in 2003, when Heston stepped down after five years as president of the National Rifle Association, enfeebled by symptoms of the disease.

"Were it not for your active involvement," Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told him, "it's safe to say my brother may not have been president of the United States."

It was in the 2000 campaign that the NRA went after Democratic candidate Al Gore with a vengeance built up over years of confrontation with the Clinton administration and its "jack-booted government thugs," as others put it.

The Moses of gun rights may have had too regal a bearing to use such incendiary words. But in attacking a Democrat who favored mandatory photo ID licenses for future handgun buyers, Heston held little else back.

As he had once lifted Moses' staff in "The Ten Commandments," Heston held a musket above his head and dared Gore from afar to pry it "from my cold dead hands."

Gore lost blue-collar votes to Bush in an election so close any setback was perilous.

The key finding from 2000: About half of voters were from gun-owning households, and they voted for Bush by 61 percent to 36 percent. Voters from households without guns backed Gore 58-39.

Ever since, Democrats in presidential and many congressional and governors' races have scrambled to establish their bona fides as hunters, if they can, or as admirers of firearms or the Second Amendment if they can't.

After a student shot five people dead and then himself on the campus of Northern Illinois University in February, Democratic presidential rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton asserted their support for the right to bear arms.

Old positions, such as Clinton's support in 2000 for a federal requirement for state-issued photo gun licenses, were brushed aside. Clinton told an audience her dad taught her to hunt, and said to reporters that she shot a duck in Arkansas.

On his way to the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, John Kerry donned a flannel shirt and rubber boots on a hunting trip where he shot pheasants. In the 2004 campaign and again this year, John Edwards played up his hunting days.

To gun control activists, Heston was brought forward as a palatable, even comforting, face for a movement they consider extremist, aggressive and sophisticated.

Heston hadn't been a box-office star since the 1970s but upon his departure as NRA president, Eric Howard of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence credited him as a persuasive actor for his cause.

Heston was good at "acting as though these extreme measures - basically, what the NRA is doing - aren't extreme," he said.

Heston took up other issues, including violence in entertainment, and he marched for civil rights in the 1960s.

In 1992, he stunned a Time Warner annual meeting by reading aloud lyrics from an album by Body Count, a band featuring rapper Ice-T. The album included songs about killing police and sodomizing women.

"It's often been said that if Adolf Hitler came back with a hot movie synopsis, every studio in town would be after it," Heston said. "Would Warner's be among them?"

In response to such protests, Ice-T pulled the song "Cop Killer" from the album.

But gun rights are where Heston most left his mark.

He became NRA president in 1998 as the group was dealing with internal strife and hostility from Bill Clinton's administration and many in Congress. It raised its membership to 4 million members during his time as president.

After the 2000 election, Gore's campaign spokesman, Doug Hattaway, recalled flying over Gore's home state of Tennessee and overhearing two men talking in business class. "The problem with Al Gore is he'll take our guns away," one said.

"I knew we were in trouble," said Hattaway.

That exchange, it could be said, was his Holy Moses moment.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: banglist; charltonheston

1 posted on 04/07/2008 4:37:31 PM PDT by neverdem
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To: neverdem
In my local newspaper, a local cartoonist drew this pic.

http://www.showmenews.com/2008/Apr/20080407Comm051.asp

2 posted on 04/07/2008 4:48:15 PM PDT by GulfWar1Vet (Maranatha!)
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To: GulfWar1Vet
Well, THAT's pretty low, with the man hardly in his grave.

I hope you local citizens will tell your local paper in extenso about its bad taste and lack of respect for the dead.

3 posted on 04/07/2008 4:53:49 PM PDT by AnAmericanMother ((Ministrix of Ye Chase, TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary (recess appointment)))
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To: neverdem

I’m going to miss Charlton Heston. He was a principled conservative who lived by his values to become the leader of the Second Amendment Gun Rights Movement!!

Thank you, Mr. Heston - for all the films, the great conservative examples, your principled leadership, and your stalwart resolve and dedication. You are and will be sorely missed.

My prayers are for your wonderful wife of 64 years and your survivors. May their tears over your loss be tempered by the love and respect so many of us have for you and your life.

Rest in peace, your journey here has reached its conclusion and we are richer for having been privileged to share it with you.


4 posted on 04/07/2008 5:20:24 PM PDT by DustyMoment (FloriDUH - proud inventors of pregnant/hanging chads and judicide!!)
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To: AnAmericanMother

I email a letter to the Editor. This Darkow is an asshole anyhow.


5 posted on 04/07/2008 5:23:09 PM PDT by GulfWar1Vet (Maranatha!)
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To: neverdem
Charlton Heston was marching for equal rights for all before equal rights was cool.

A truly great American.

6 posted on 04/07/2008 5:25:53 PM PDT by jwalsh07 (El Nino is climate, La Nina is weather.)
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To: GulfWar1Vet
Photobucket
7 posted on 04/07/2008 5:30:09 PM PDT by GulfWar1Vet (Maranatha!)
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To: wardaddy; Joe Brower; Cannoneer No. 4; Criminal Number 18F; Dan from Michigan; Eaker; Jeff Head; ...
In memory of Mr. Heston, here's a Second Amendment Special.

Heston Death Puts Focus On Gun Control

Robert D. Novak: Obama's Second-Amendment Dance

Post Office Ban On Mailing Replica Or Inert Munitions

Gun Control is NOT Dead - No Room for Compromise

BATFE Spends $3 Million to Ruin Red’s - Popular Idaho gunstore is still operating but has spent $200,000+ in legal fees MUST READ!

8 posted on 04/07/2008 5:43:40 PM PDT by neverdem (I'm praying for a Divine Intervention.)
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To: edcoil

IIRC, you asked me about Second Amendment Specials. This thread has one.


9 posted on 04/07/2008 5:48:54 PM PDT by neverdem (I'm praying for a Divine Intervention.)
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To: neverdem

What bugs me about the reporting of Heston’s death is this idea that he marched with Dr. King in the 60’s but took a right turn in the 90’s by becoming President of the NRA. As if somehow, being a conservative means you are against black people’s civil liberties.

Hey everyone, whenever anyone’s civil liberties were being violated, be it blacks in the south or gun owners across America Chuck Heston was there as a bullwark for the BOR. That should be the story. To be a conservative is completely compatible with protesting against the abuse of another American’s civil liberties.


10 posted on 04/08/2008 5:55:07 AM PDT by Old Teufel Hunden
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To: neverdem
"In June 1998, Heston was elected president of the National Rifle Association, for which he had posed for ads holding a rifle. He delivered a jab at then-President Clinton, saying, “America doesn’t trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don’t trust you with our guns."


ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

11 posted on 04/08/2008 12:48:00 PM PDT by G.Mason (Duty, Honor, Country)
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