-=Continued from previous post=- 
HESTON TAKING ON TIME WARNER'S PROMOTION OF "COP KILLER" ALBUM
(Conversation between host Tony Snow and Charlton Heston)
SNOW: "You have one of the great voices in the entertainment
world.  A few years ago, you showed up at a Time Warner
stockholders meeting and started reading the lyrics from a rap
album and just froze everybody in their tracks."
HESTON: "That was that terrible album by Ice T called `Cop
Killer.'  And I'm very proud of this, I really am.  I owned some
Time Warner stock and I went in and confronted their full board
meeting and read the lyrics.  I can't repeat them on television."
SNOW: "No, you can't."
HESTON: "And I shamed Time Warner, the largest entertainment
conglomerate in the world, into firing Ice T and dropping the
album.  Now, he threatened to kill me.  He hasn't done that yet."
SNOW: "I believe your quote was something like, `Let him try.'"
HESTON: "Well, maybe I scared him.  And I haven't gotten a job
from Warner Brothers since or a good notice in Time, but I'm as
proud of that as anything I've ever done."
CHASTISING NATIONAL NEWS MEDIA FOR THEIR ANTI-GUN BIAS
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a
weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder.  Yet in
essence, that is what you have asked our loved ones to do,
through an ill-contrived and totally naive campaign against the
Second Amendment."
(Speech to National Press Club / 9-11-97)
In response to those self-serving dissidents who have criticized
him, Mr. Heston said simply, "I stand by my record."  We, too,
stand on that record along with nearly three million NRA members
committed to preserving our Second Amendment freedoms.
=+=+=+=+
This information is provided as a service of the National Rifle
Association Institute for Legislative Action, Fairfax, VA.
This and other information on the Second Amendment and the NRA is
available at: http://WWW.NRA.Org
------------------------------
Topic No. 3
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 19:22:15 -0500 (EST)
From: NRA Alerts 
To: general-rkba-real.nra
Subject: FAXALERT: California Gun Ban Dealt Serious Blow
Message-ID: 
                        NRA-ILA FAX ALERT
           11250 Waples Mill Road * Fairfax, VA  22030
    Phone: 1-800-392-8683 * Fax: 703-267-3918 * GROOTS@NRA.org
Vol. 5, No. 9                                              3/6/98
              CALIFORNIA GUN BAN DEALT SERIOUS BLOW
     Stating that California's Roberti-Roos gun ban "defies
rationality," the California Third Appellate Court of Appeal
struck a serious blow to anti-gun zealots by striking down a key
portion of the law.  The court ruled as unconstitutional a
provision of the law allowing the state's Attorney General --
with a judge's consent -- to add guns to the list of banned
firearms.  The court even went so far as to suggest that the
entire law unconstitutionally "violates equal protection" because
the 75 banned firearms are indistinguishable from other guns not
affected by the law.  "The court's ruling is a great victory for
California's law-abiding gun owners," said Mrs. Tanya K. Metaksa,
NRA's chief lobbyist.  "It is also a decision that repudiates the
whole gun ban movement in California and across the country.  The
court wisely recognized what NRA has been saying for years: 
Whether it is Roberti-Roos or the president's own gun ban, these
laws ban only the way some guns look, and bans on such
meaningless cosmetic features make for meaningless legislation." 
In its ruling, the court asserted, "...even assuming that
'ugliness' constitutes an unstated but valid 'harm' the
Legislature sought to alleviate, the Act defies rationality.  As
indicated, the term 'assault weapon' itself adds nothing to our
discussion because a gun only becomes an 'assault weapon' by
virtue of its inclusion on the assault weapons list, not because
of any objective quality that discriminates between 'assault
weapons' and other semiautomatic guns."  While this is great
news, this issue is far from over in California.  The March 6
edition of the Los Angeles Times reports that Attorney General
Dan Lungren will appeal the ruling.  Also, the recently amended
AB 23, Assemblyman Don Perata's (D) effort to replace Roberti-
Roos with language defining what a so-called assault weapon is,
rather than listing prohibited firearms by name, is on the move
in Sacramento.  Of course, should Perata's bill pass, it would
affect far more firearms than the original ban.  NRA will
continue to work to defeat this measure.
                       TAGGANTS, YES OR NO?
       Once again, media reports have affirmed NRA's view that most
mainstream "news" outlets exhibit a lack of concern for accuracy
in their coverage on stories that may interest gun owners.  On
March 4, CNN reported that introducing taggants into commercial
explosives holds "great promise," based on an interim report by
the U.S. Treasury Department.  Taggants, you might recall, are
the tiny markers some lawmakers wish to have placed into
explosives and propellants, including black and smokeless
powders, in an effort to combat terrorism.  The problem is that
most experts who have studied taggants say that not only are they
unlikely to help fight terrorism, but they could also pose an
actual danger.  A team of researchers assembled by the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS) to study this very issue recently
submitted their report stating the exact opposite of the Treasury
Department.  Edward M. Arnett, Professor of Chemistry Emeritus,
Duke University and Co-Chair of the NAS committee, stated that,
"[o]ur Committee...concluded that, at today's level of threat, it
is not appropriate to require commercial explosives to contain
identification taggants...  All of the taggant technologies
currently available raise concerns about long-range environmental
consequences, effectiveness in law enforcement, safety issues,
and costs."  While NRA's concern regarding taggants is based on
their possible inclusion in black and smokeless powders, and this
report focuses on actual explosives, most legislative efforts to
mandate the use of these markers includes putting them into the
propellants used by millions of reloaders and black powder
enthusiasts.  The big question regarding this issue is, who would
you believe, scientists and researchers, or the media and Clinton
Administration bureaucrats?
                    EDDIE EAGLE HONORED AGAIN
       Virginia Governor James Gilmore (R) has officially
recognized the month of March as Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Month in
Virginia.  This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Eddie
Eagle program, which was created by NRA President Marion P.
Hammer in 1988, and has reached more than 10 million children
with its simple safety message of "STOP!  Don't Touch.  Leave the
Area.  Tell an Adult," when they come across a firearm in an
unsupervised situation.  In conjunction with this award,
beginning March 2, 1998, the 15,600 elementary students in all 32
of Richmond's schools started learning Eddie Eagle's lifesaving
message.
-=Continued in next post=-
...          ******** NOTE: THIS IS A FORWARDED MESSAGE ********
--- FMail 1.22
---------------