Charlton Heston’s Public and Private Lives

Published April 23, 2017 1:30pm ET



It’s a moment that washed-up comedians and humorless TV hosts still use when they’re running low on material. On May 20, 2000, Charlton Heston lifted a revolutionary-era style flintlock long rifle over his head at the 129th National Rifle Association convention in Charlotte and announced that if the government (and Al Gore, who was running for president at the time) wanted his gun, they would have to take it from his “cold, dead hands.”

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