I'll bet this is something most of you don't know about me: I'm a gun owner. My most recent acquisition is an AR-15L--a present from my Dad and brother, who worked together to create the gun from parts (I'm left-handed, which means something if you consider where that hot brass goes once you pull the trigger)--that I'm going to glam-out with pink, purple and green camo in case I have to hide in a field of pansies and it will have a Hello Kitty (or PowerPuff Girl) sticker on it comme ca:

(That's a pink, crocheted Hello Kitty bootie on the stock in case you were wondering)

When Momma died a couple of years back, I got her jewelry, the fine china, her Derringer and her Ruger. Can't help it: I'm a semi-rural Hoosier kid who spent my summers at the Conservation Club with my brothers and Dad in Linden (even more rural), shooting and fishing with the best of them. Hated putting the worms on the hook, but I can shoot the shoelaces off a bad man at 50 feet.

For me, responsible gun ownership is my right and, as a Black woman raised in rural and semi-rural Indiana (and having had the Klan throw my Mother a parade and having had an abortive one planned in my honor--on a quiet dirt road on the way to work) I take personal protection seriously. My family is watching the Supreme Court for any inkling of what it's going to do with the Second Amendment case before it and we regularly discuss it when we sit down to eat together on Fridays at the Golden Corrale in Lafayette where they live.

So, it meant something to me when I heard that Charlton Heston, died on Saturday at age 84. To me, he was an odd mix. He was an early and staunch supporter of civil rights though he later quit Actor's Equity because it wouldn't support a white actor playing the part of an Asian in Ms. Saigon (what the fuck, Chuck! not like there aren't a billion parts for whites and, like, two for Asians) and he embarked on a very long and public war with Ed Asner over his more liberal tack with the Screen Actor's Guild saying (at a commencement):

...the God fearing, law-abiding, Caucasian, middle- class Protestant-or even worse, evangelical Christian, Midwestern or Southern- or even worse, rural, apparently straight-or even worse, admitted heterosexuals, gun-owning-or even worse, NRA-card-carrying, average working stiff-or even worse, male working stiff-because, not only don’t you count, you are a down-right obstacle to social progress. Your voice deserves a lower decibel level, your opinion is less enlightened, your media access is insignificant, and frankly, mister, you need to wake up, wise up, and learn a little something from your new-America and until you do, would you mind shutting up?"

He was talking to the "working stiffs" he found at the commencement of the Harvard Law School!

He was in memorable movies like Ben-Hur and forgettable ones like  Antony and Cleopatra. He was an early support of gun control, urging President Johnson to sign the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the same man who famously exclaimed that they'd have to take his gun from his "cold, dead hands."

Heston seemingly turned on a dime from noble gentleman to remorseless zealot without passing "Go" or collecting his $200. A life-long friend of Ronald Reagan's (who only wished he was a good an actor as Heston) he become every bit the pitiless, patronizing idealogue, particularly on civil rights and social and Constitutional freedoms.

Still, Heston's work with the NRA, though ridiculed, appropriately in content but not in context, by Michael Moore struck a cord that was more than about owning a weapon.

"...from my cold, dead hands..."

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