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Mr. Heston, please deliver final message
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Mr. Heston, please deliver final message
August 21, 2002
BY ROCHELLE RILEY
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
To: Charlton Heston c/o National Rifle Association
From: A mom
Dear Mr. Heston:
It was with great regret that I heard the news that you may have Alzheimer's disease and eventually won't be able to challenge and debate in the powerful way you've done in the past.
You've handled this diagnosis with the same grace and dignity you've brought to the big screen, offering practical eloquence at a difficult time.
You'll receive many well wishes. This letter does that, too. But this also is a plea for you to consider saying something while you still have voice.
As the president of the National Rifle Association for so long, you've been a persistent advocate of gun rights. You have stood firm and stood fast.
I don't ask you to change your stance. Let's not debate killing for sport. It's an American right. Let's not debate the American right to bear arms. Those are both duels whose endings will not change soon.
The purpose of guns
But would you just consider addressing this: We here in Detroit have a serious problem with guns. Kids are dying regularly, either by their own hands or by those of drive-by thugs whom even you'd probably agree shouldn't have guns.
Who, you ask? How about the two guys arguing about a $40 radio who shot up a family's car as they were about to go shopping? Ajanee Pollard was shot in the head. She was 7. Her 6-year-old brother, Jason, lost his pancreas. Her sisters, Aerica, 6, and Alyah, 4, also were injured.
Those guys may not be the responsible gun owners you fight for, but they've got the guns nonetheless, because it's so hard to change the rules.
While you can, would you consider reminding Americans that, while they have the right to bear arms, guns have no other purpose except death?
Guns are not steak knives used to make dinner a little easier until someone misuses them. They are not sleeping pills that can hurt only in certain quantities. The only purpose of a gun is to kill.
Everyone should not have the right to kill, which is a gun's bill of sale.
Could you tell gun owners that when they bring guns into their homes, they bring death into their homes?
Could you remind them that they won't know the day or the hour that death comes, but that the possibility of death is as much a part of the weapon as its trigger?
Could you tell them that death could come as quickly when a burglar breaks a window as when a child gets up unexpectedly for water and breaks a glass in the kitchen?
Could you tell them that every time they put their guns in hiding places like cabinets, but forget to lock the door, their only sad reminder might be the bullet hole in their child's chest?
Remember the children
Mr. Heston, you've won the battle and the fight to bear arms for protection, pleasure or principle. But as one of the nation's greatest fighters for the right, could you, one last time, remind your fellow gun owners that if they want the guns, they have to know where they are? And that they have to take the blame when people kill people with their guns? And they have to, at all times, remember the children?
Maybe they'll listen to you. Maybe they'll be more careful. Maybe they'll keep an eye out for folks who give them a bad name, folks who, unlike them, really shouldn't have guns.
Then, maybe the only gun deaths are the ones that gun owners plan.
Thank you, God bless you, and Godspeed.
Sincerely, Rochelle Riley
http://www.freep.com/news/metro/riley21_20020821.htm
Contact ROCHELLE RILEY at 313-223-4473 or e-mail riley@freepress.com. Her columns appear on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
August 21, 2002
BY ROCHELLE RILEY
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
To: Charlton Heston c/o National Rifle Association
From: A mom
Dear Mr. Heston:
It was with great regret that I heard the news that you may have Alzheimer's disease and eventually won't be able to challenge and debate in the powerful way you've done in the past.
You've handled this diagnosis with the same grace and dignity you've brought to the big screen, offering practical eloquence at a difficult time.
You'll receive many well wishes. This letter does that, too. But this also is a plea for you to consider saying something while you still have voice.
As the president of the National Rifle Association for so long, you've been a persistent advocate of gun rights. You have stood firm and stood fast.
I don't ask you to change your stance. Let's not debate killing for sport. It's an American right. Let's not debate the American right to bear arms. Those are both duels whose endings will not change soon.
The purpose of guns
But would you just consider addressing this: We here in Detroit have a serious problem with guns. Kids are dying regularly, either by their own hands or by those of drive-by thugs whom even you'd probably agree shouldn't have guns.
Who, you ask? How about the two guys arguing about a $40 radio who shot up a family's car as they were about to go shopping? Ajanee Pollard was shot in the head. She was 7. Her 6-year-old brother, Jason, lost his pancreas. Her sisters, Aerica, 6, and Alyah, 4, also were injured.
Those guys may not be the responsible gun owners you fight for, but they've got the guns nonetheless, because it's so hard to change the rules.
While you can, would you consider reminding Americans that, while they have the right to bear arms, guns have no other purpose except death?
Guns are not steak knives used to make dinner a little easier until someone misuses them. They are not sleeping pills that can hurt only in certain quantities. The only purpose of a gun is to kill.
Everyone should not have the right to kill, which is a gun's bill of sale.
Could you tell gun owners that when they bring guns into their homes, they bring death into their homes?
Could you remind them that they won't know the day or the hour that death comes, but that the possibility of death is as much a part of the weapon as its trigger?
Could you tell them that death could come as quickly when a burglar breaks a window as when a child gets up unexpectedly for water and breaks a glass in the kitchen?
Could you tell them that every time they put their guns in hiding places like cabinets, but forget to lock the door, their only sad reminder might be the bullet hole in their child's chest?
Remember the children
Mr. Heston, you've won the battle and the fight to bear arms for protection, pleasure or principle. But as one of the nation's greatest fighters for the right, could you, one last time, remind your fellow gun owners that if they want the guns, they have to know where they are? And that they have to take the blame when people kill people with their guns? And they have to, at all times, remember the children?
Maybe they'll listen to you. Maybe they'll be more careful. Maybe they'll keep an eye out for folks who give them a bad name, folks who, unlike them, really shouldn't have guns.
Then, maybe the only gun deaths are the ones that gun owners plan.
Thank you, God bless you, and Godspeed.
Sincerely, Rochelle Riley
http://www.freep.com/news/metro/riley21_20020821.htm
Contact ROCHELLE RILEY at 313-223-4473 or e-mail riley@freepress.com. Her columns appear on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
be outlawed because some people get drunk and drive.
I agree that parents should be responsible in keeping
firearms in the home. It's not my fault some people
are so damn stupid they don't care if their kids can
get their guns. Don't punish me because some people are
criminals and misuse guns.
And if I read or hear ....."for the children" .......again I
think I'll puke!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bruce
By this logic, seeing as how gun owners should lose there rights because of someone else action or inaction, why doesn't she advocate letting the government control the church, seeing as how some priests abused children and the church covered for them, and moved them to fresh parishes where they had a new supply of victims?
Oh dog-gone that pesky First Amendment gets in the way. But we all know the Second Amendment is about Duck Hunting.
This kind of reasoning just makes me want to throw up on her shoes.
Nil Illegitimus Carborundum
Bad people will lie and steal to acquire guns and use them for crime to prey on other people. Accidents will happen with guns and swimming pools and cars, which all, contrary to her statement, have other purposes besides death.
I suppose anti-gunners are always going to foist a groundless opinion on the public about 'what guns are for,' and they will always be selective depending upon the argument they are trying to sell. When it served them to say guns are for sport, they said the only good guns were for sport. This lady now says guns are only for death and, trying to anticipate and disarm the logical response, says that unlike steak knives and swimming pools, guns have no other purpose but death. This is propagandist writing. Steak knives, swimming pools, and guns all have recreational purposes -- entertainment purposes. You have to have blinders on not to see that.
Even the Olympics has a shooting event, and there are shooting events all over America, formal and informal, for trap and skeet and target shooting and competitive matches and the attendant gun clubs and associations. Then there's the stop-on-the-way-home-from-work-and-unwind shooting session at your local gun shop's range, which also, not coincidentally, serves as practice for home defense.
But knives are for steak and pools are for swimming and guns are for death? And accidents and crime can be prevented by Chuck Heston making an announcement that the NRA is right, but be careful to lock your drawers and don't indulge in illegal activity. Uh-huh.
She would have been more true if she had simply limited herself to complimenting Heston upon living a principled American life so far, and wishing him well with his medical condition.
- Life NRA Member
"If cowardly & dishonorable men shoot unarmed men with army guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary...and not by general deprivation of constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878