Charlton Heston
Tuesday, March 20, 2001

Many people think of me as Moses parting the Red Sea. But if the 20th century ever had a real Moses who led his people to the promised land, that man was Dr. King.

Those days, working in my own small way beside Dr. King for the cause of civil rights, are among the proudest days of my life ... like coming home after World War II. He and I and 200,000 people marched on Washington, D.C.

We've come a long way on race relations since that day – socially, economically, morally and in many other ways. The water cannons and police dogs of Selma and Montgomery are silent now.

Even the demographics are becoming a study in diversity. The American generation now reaching adulthood is the most racially diverse generation in our history.

For most young people today, the shape of your eyes or the color of your skin mean nothing, nor should they. Racism for them is an anachronism. It's as remote to them as eight-track tapes.

Yet when we look for guidance to many of the so-called civil rights leaders today, we get the same hatred and division that Dr. King sought to heal some four decades ago.

And so we get TV campaign commercials that try to tar and feather a presidential candidate by blaming him for the atrocious dragging murder of a black man in Texas by two white racists.

We get supposed "civil rights champions" raving for the TV cameras about how conservatives engaged in "Nazi tactics" to win the election by conspiring to target Holocaust survivors, women and minorities with "voter suppression" and "massive disenfranchisement."

Instead of being respected for its diversity in gender, color and creed, the U.S. Supreme Court is accused of leading a "coup d'etat" in the election and of rendering an opinion as racist and wrongheaded as the Dred Scott decision!

What is so harmful and hideous about all this isn't that it's racism – but that it's politics and personal ambition disguised as racism by people who should and do know better. It's hypocrisy of the highest order because it perpetuates the kind of hatred, racism and class division that it pretends to expose and extinguish. And in so doing, it goes against the last, best virtue worth fighting for: It undermines and denigrates the honest pursuit of equality.

I started out my own personal march as a civil rights Democrat. Today, I'm seen as a conservative and as a leader of the NRA. But that's really not such a stretch.

What civil right could possibly be more fundamental than the right to protect your life, your family and your freedom from whomever would take them away?

The right to keep and bear arms may be our Second Amendment as Americans, but you can bet on this: It's our first freedom as humans.

Let's not gloss over this truth: The gun debate isn't about firearms – it's about freedom and what it takes to protect it. And in that, we all share a stake.

That's why untold millions of us fight to defend this freedom, undistracted by political labels, undivided by those who use race as a weapon, and united by our passion to protect it.

"All men were created equal" may have been our message in 1963.

Today, let our message be just as simple: "All people have an unalienable right to defend their lives and their liberty from whomever would harm them, and with whatever means necessary."

I won't presume to know, but in this I have a hunch Dr. King would agree.

Editor's note: NRA President Charlton Heston addressed the Congress of Racial Equality in January at its annual banquet in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The above excerpts of his remarks were printed in this month's issue of America's 1st Freedom. Reprinted with permission.

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