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New Web Site Scrutinizes National Rifle Association On Eve of Annual Meeting

Site Shows Video Clips of Inflammatory Speech By Charlton Heston

Activists Condemn Remarks; David Duke Calls Them "Courageous"

VPC Exposes NRA's Internal Strife, Marketing to Kids

WASHINGTON—The Violence Policy Center today launched a new web site www.vpc.org/nrainfo in anticipation of this weekend’s annual meeting of the National Rifle Association in Philadelphia. The site explores controversies surrounding the NRA—particularly actor Charlton Heston, who is expected to be elected the organization’s president immediately after the meeting.

The new VPC web site includes video clips, audio clips, and text of a little-known speech Heston delivered recently, which includes inflammatory remarks about African Americans, women, and gays and lesbians, and trivializes Holocaust victims.

“The NRA is ready to make this man its president, and everyone should know how wildly out of the mainstream his views are. He praises ‘white pride’ while denigrating millions of Americans,” said VPC Executive Director Josh Sugarmann. “This web site shows, in words and pictures, that `Moses’ has joined the far right.”

In the site’s video clips, Heston repeatedly refers to “cultural warfare” and tells his ultra-conservative audience, “Mainstream America is depending on you—counting on you—to draw your sword and fight for them.”

The site also includes responses to Heston’s speech from leading activists, including NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond, Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal, Ms. Magazine Editor-in-Chief Marcia Gillespie, feminist author Gloria Steinem, and Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Executive Director Joan Garry.

Heston’s speech at the annual meeting—outlining his extreme platform of opposition to gun control—is scheduled for Saturday, June 6th, the 30th anniversary of the death of Robert F. Kennedy. Ironically, documents from the LBJ Presidential Library, which are available on the VPC web site, reveal that 30 years ago Heston pleaded for stricter gun control laws in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination.

The NRA also faced widespread criticism for holding its 1996 annual meeting on the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Other features at www.vpc.org/nrainfo include:

  • NRA Efforts to Market Guns to Kids: VPC studies and firearms industry advertisements exposing the gun lobby’s concerted strategy of marketing guns to kids as a means of recruiting new customers.

  • NRA Internal Strife: Memos and newsletters from NRA insiders outlining their grievances with current NRA leadership, including the organization’s declining membership and troubled finances.

  • Gun Violence in Philadelphia: News articles and statistics demonstrating that the city hosting the NRA has not enjoyed the same decline in gun violence as other urban areas. The biggest reason: an NRA-backed state law in Pennsylvania that increases criminals’ access to guns.

Heston delivered his controversial speech in Washington, DC last December before the conservative Free Congress Foundation. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre also attended, and later published a sanitized version of Heston’s comments as an interview in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine.

One observer who praised Heston’s rhetoric is former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. The VPC’s new web site offers a link to Duke’s site, where he reprints an excerpt of Heston’s speech and states: “I was astounded to read these courageous remarks by Charlton Heston. I am thankful to hear a man with such high esteem say essentially the same things for which I have been reviled by the liberal media. His words should be reproduced and put into the hands of every American.”

Back to Charlton Heston Page

For Release:
Monday,
June 1, 1998

Contacts:
Bill McGeveran
Violence Policy Center