Wayne LaPierre

Everything from the flintlock rifle to the dialogue was planned — somehow people often don’t realize that, even when there’s a Hollywood actor on stage. When Charlton Heston raised the prop above his head at the 2000 NRA convention and bellowed, “from my cold dead hands,” those gathered in Charlotte reacted just as the ghostwriters thought they would. It didn’t matter that the line in question had been a bumper sticker for decades, or that the septuagenarian Oscar-winner was reciting a phrase Vincent D’Onofrio had parodied just three years earlier in the blockbuster Men in Black. Viewers of the film today won’t realize the cart is pulling the satire horse until they check IMDb.

DC Council member Charles Allen is facing a recall effort from fed-up citizens as carjackings in the nation’s capital nearly doubled last year while violent crime rose by 39 percent. Murders hit their highest level in two decades in 2023.  The campaign to recall Allen is being led by Jennifer Squires, a former federal government worker who says she voted for Allen previously but found herself troubled by the councilman’s attempts at so-called criminal justice reform. Allen was behind the attempts to revise DC’s criminal code last year. His changes would have eliminated nearly all mandatory minimums and lowered some mandatory maximums, including for carjackings.