by Ken Kreps
©2000, all rights reserved
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - Charlton Heston told more than 5,000 National Rifle Association members Saturday that he wants to serve an unprecedented third term as their president to complete a mission: ensuring Al Gore's defeat in November...
As Heston concluded his speech, he was handed a vintage musket, then gave an encore of his performance at his first NRA convention in 1990 in St. Louis, when he intoned the Second Amendment...
Lifting the musket over his head, Heston grumbled: "From my cold dead hands!"...
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre accused Gore and Clinton of lying about guns "to scare America's moms and run against the Second Amendment."....
"He (Gore) paints a fictional nightmare of a nonexistent world where a reckless population of stupid gun owners cause 13 innocent kids a day to die from guns," LaPierre said. "Well, it's all a big, stinking, dangerous Al Gore lie."
And with that, folks, the inmates have truly taken over the asylum. Chuck Heston and his cronies are leading the Gunsters of this nation to war over their right to carry enough firepower to blow away half the country. NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre has thrown down the gauntlet over Al Gore's insidious plan to "scare" the moms of America into believing that 13 innocent kids a day die from gun inflicted injuries.
Actually Wayne, the statistics show it to be 12 kids a day and, as for this figure coming from a "nonexistent world", perhaps you're preaching to the wrong audience. Instead, maybe you should be talking to the parents of the high school students murdered in Colorado or to the parents of other students killed in schools last year. Or perhaps you'd like to speak with the thousands of other parents who lost their children, due to gun violence, in that same year. Tell them about your nonexistent world.
At a meeting (shown on C-Span) after the Moms March for common-sense gun regulations, mother's who had lost their children to gun violence tearfully told their heart wrenching stories to people at the meeting and to those of us in the television audience. Hear this, Wayne.....their children are DEAD....not in some nonexistent world, but in the real world. Your remarks are a slap in the face to every parent who has lost their child to gun violence and you should be ashamed of yourself for dragging the memory of those children through the litany of lunacy you and your pals refer to as gun rights. Your were right about something stinking and something being dangerous, Wayne. It's the NRA that stinks, and it's the NRA that's a danger to this country.
Since you're so high on the rights of the American public, Wayne, try these on for size. How about the right of a parent to send their child to school without the nagging fear that they might get shot and never return home. How about the right of a motorist in Texas to know that, due to the fact that they've incensed the driver next to them with some imagined or real driving infraction, they won't get shot by the other driver with a concealed handgun, legally carried due to an idiotic state law which allows people to do so. How about the right of every citizen to know that they or a loved one won't be part of the 60 people (including 12 children) killed by guns, on average, every day in this country. Those are the rights we want for all citizens and that's why so many of us want to see stronger gun legislation passed. We're sick and tired of hearing the NRA's musty old line that "guns don't kill people. "The Hell they don't!! They kill, on average, over two thousand people each month and over 30,000 people each year in this country and many of those guns are fired by the same defiant people who keep telling us to keep our hands off their guns.
You and Chuck just don't get it do you? Sure, some of the murders in this country are done by life long criminals, but over half are done by one, previously non-criminal, person to another person (a wife, friend, associate or passerby) in a fit of rage. These people kill because they lose control, or because (as was the case of the two teenage monsters in Colorado) they feel that killing will in some way help them get even. In both cases, firearms are just too damn easy for them to get and that, Wayne and Chuck, is why so many people in this country are determined to get stronger controls on firearm ownership passed into law. One pro gun article I read made the statement that legal gun owners don't kill people. That statement was as wrong as it could be since legal gun owners kill thousands of people in this country each year. The NRA with it's "shoot first and ask questions later" mentality adds fuel to the fire for this type of individual and we need to lay some of the responsibility for these people's actions right on the front doorstep of the NRA. No, the NRA didn't pull the triggers, but they fostered a climate in which pulling the triggers seems more acceptable.
For those of you who keep telling us that stricter gun control won't make any difference, let's take a look at gun control in England and, with that control, how their homicide rates compare with ours.
Gun control legislation was enacted in England in 1903. Below are statistics comparing Homicide deaths (for three different years) in England and the United States. As you will see, England's homicide rate is going down, while our rate has been increasing for years.
The following figures are homicides per 100,000
· In 1903 England had 0.93 while we had 2.6
· in 1920 England's figure dropped to 0.84 while ours rose to 7.1
· in 1988 England's fell to 0.6 and the United States figure rose to 9.0
This means that in 1988, fifteen times more people in every 100,000 were killed by firearm homicide in the United States than in England. Need I say more.
And finally, at the recent NRA meeting, there was Chuck Heston holding a musket over his head and growling (in his best Hollywood manner), "From my cold dead hands." Well Chuck, you missed the mark. It's not your cold dead hands that worry us. It's your cold dead heart that has no feeling for the destruction that guns reign on people in this country every day. It's your "guns at any cost" mentality. It's your alliance with the gun manufacturers. It's the uncaring manner with which you sweep aside the sorrow and misery that has touched so many families in this country, so you can further your mindless agenda of guns, guns, and more guns.
It's ironic that you held a musket above your head. A musket has no use today, as it's been replaced by more modern weapons. The same goes for your ideas, Chuck. They're outdated, from another time and have been replaced with more compassionate, humane thinking.
We can never stop all the gun violence in this country, but we sure as Hell can put a big dent in it and the time to do that is now. Understand this, Chuck....all the musket waving and Hollywood theatrics in the world won't stop us. We're committed to a just cause and we're coming right at you!! We're not just Al Gore and Bill Clinton. We're not just the moms of this country, but we're also the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the neighbors, the teachers, the students, the workers and the people that live all over this nation. There are millions of us and our numbers are growing every day. When you played Ben Hur, you won the big race, but that was Hollywood, and this is real life. We're tired of the killing, Chuck, so in this one, you're going to lose!!
©2000 by Ken Kreps. This article may not be re-published in electronic or print media without the express written permission of the author. All rights reserved.
Ken Kreps lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife. He has written a number of published articles, essays and short stories, as well as numerous consumer and business pieces. Ken has also written scripts for Imagination Theater, an award winning audio drama series heard on over 150 commercial radio stations across the nation.