Back in 2000, actor Charlton Heston helped rally the conservative base behind the embattled National Rifle Association with a convention speech asserting that then-Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore was planning to demonize NRA members as “gun-toting, knuckle-dragging, bloodthirsty maniacs.” Heston concocted a scenario in which a President Gore would dispatch fictitious agents to confiscate his guns. Holding up an antique flintlock rifle, Heston delivered his signature line: “I want to say those fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: From my cold, dead hands!”
Gore, in fact, never advocated gun confiscation, only expressing outrage at NRA marketing ploys designed to put more guns in more American hands in direct response to the April 20, 1999, slaughter of 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado. It happened only 10 days before the NRA’s national convention was set to open in nearby Denver, prompting panic among NRA officials as they pondered ways to spin the tragedy.
National Public Radio obtained 2½ hours of recordings from a conference call in which panicked NRA officials scrambled to devise a response. Some proposed expressions of remorse and offerings of million-dollar payouts to the victims.
