http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/5/21/165857 -- Bard Take My Gun 'From My Cold, Dead Hands' BUCHANAN-Reform http://gopatgo2000.com/default.htmTitle: Heston to Gore: Take My Gun 'From My Cold, Dead Hands'
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Heston to Gore: Take My Gun 'From My Cold, Dead Hands'
NewsMax.comAlso: Heston, re-elected as NRA president, criticizes Clinton.
Holding an antique Revolutionary War-era muzzle loader aloft, a defiant NRA President Charlton Heston told a cheering crowd of 20,000 delegates to the 3.6-million-member National Rifle Association convention that this symbol of his Second Amendment right to gun ownership would be taken from him by Al Gore "from my cold, dead hands." Emboldened by a rapidly expanding membership (200,000 new members in a mere six weeks), the fact that a million people have flocked to join the NRA since 1996, polls showing that a majority of Americans support the right to own weapons of self-defense, and a growing war chest of as much as $15 million for use in this year�s presidential and congressional elections, Heston and his fellow NRA executives declared all-out war on Al Gore and his fellow gun control advocates. Zeroing in on Gore, NRA officials accused the Clinton administration of plotting to confiscate guns from law-abiding Americans, starting with licensing and registration restrictions, and then going on to ban them entirely. The organization�s top executives lashed out at Gore and Clinton, picturing them as calculating liars attempting to deceive Americans, especially women, with the lie that restricting gun rights will somehow result in lowering crime rates and making schools safer. Said Kayne Robinson, the NRA's first vice president: "If Gore is elected, the Second Amendment will face 16 cumulative years of Clinton-Gore attacks. It cannot survive." Some of the toughest attacks came from the NRA�s hard-nosed executive vice president, Wayne R. LaPierre Jr., who said: "Al Gore has gravely miscalculated his political strategy. He's been convinced by his handlers and pollsters and spinmeisters that he should scare America's moms and run against the Second Amendment. With the media's help, he paints a fictional nightmare of a nonexistent world where a reckless population of stupid gun owners cause 13 innocent kids to die a day from guns." "Well," LaPierre continued, "it's all a big, stinking, dangerous, Al Gore lie." NRA officials and scholars who have studied the issue have shown that the 13-children-a-day-killed-by-guns slogan adopted by gun control advocates and used at almost all anti-gun events is a dishonest distortion that lumps in young children in with 17-, 18- and 19-year-olds, many of who die in gang and drug wars. LaPierre raised the chilling specter of a Supreme Court dominated by left-wing extremists as a probable result of a Gore victory. "Just imagine the lifelong peril of a Gore Supreme Court, with his fresh new appointees of Justice Dianne Feinstein, Justice Charlie Schumer, Justice Frank Lautenberg [all rabid gun control supporters] and imagine this one: Chief Justice Hillary Clinton," LaPierre said. "These elections will set the heading of freedom's course for your lifetime." Setting their sights on the November election, NRA officials said they mean to turn the 2000 presidential election into a national referendum on gun rights. James J. Baker, the NRA's top lobbyist, said the organization would spend between $10 million to $15 million during the campaign, at least 25 percent more than the NRA has ever spent in any election. "By Nov. 8, I don't expect there will be a nickel left" in either the NRA Political Action Committee or in its unrestricted "soft money" treasury, Baker said. Speaking to reporters, Baker said the NRA planned to set the record straight on the real issues surrounding the Second Amendment guarantee of the right of citizens to own guns to defend themselves. "It's difficult in a lot of those areas for individuals to understand what law-abiding gun ownership is about as opposed to criminal misuse of firearms, and those are the sort of distinctions we are going to try to be making in those districts." But the most dramatic moment of the convention came when Heston waved the muzzle-loading musket, symbol of the fabled Revolutionary Minute Men, and said: "So as we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take our freedom away, I want to say those words again for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore." Hoisting the musket over his head, Heston roared: "From my cold, dead hands!"
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