From His Cold Dead Hands

Charlton Heston died this week. He was known to many as a great actor, who portrayed Moses and Ben Hur, who discovered that Sloylent Green is people, and who uttered among other memorable lines "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"

It is for a very different line and an appearance that Mr. Heston made not on the silver screen but in real life that he will be most remembered by many Americans particularly among our younger generations.

Mr. Heston will forever be associated with, as he used to put it, five words- "From my cold dead hands."



Immortalized in Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine, Mr. Heston spat forth those five words as a taunt to the community and its citizens who had asked him not to hold a pro-gun National Rifle Association rally in nearby Denver, just ten days after the massacre at Columbine High School.

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Mr. Heston we're here for your guns.