The LaPierre legacy
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.
