FIRlnGLlne HOST: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

Transcription

1 The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. FIRlnGLlne HOST: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. GUEST: SUBJECT: CHARLTON HESTON "WHY rs THE SEC01'.1D AMENDMENT so IMPORTANT?" FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of FIRING LINE program #2727 /1156, taped at HBO Studios in New York City on January 19, 1998, and telecast later on public television stations. 0 Copyright 1997 FIRING LINE Transcripts and videocassenes are available through Producers Incorporated for Television, 2700 Cypress Street, Columbia, SC so3n

2 MR. BUCKLEY: Last September, newly deputized as an official of the National Rifle Association, Charlton Heston gave a speech to the National Press Club in Washington. There cannot have been any scolding so unmerciful since John Brown thundered at the accommodationists just before he was hanged. [laughter] This was unexpected for several reasons, one of them being that Charlton Heston, for all that he plays fiery apocalyptic roles in the movies, is a man of gentle manners. What he said was not only that he was proud to defend the Second Amendment, but that he thought it the most important of any of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution, and he said that the press studiously mismanages every mention of the Second Amendment and of the National Rifle Association. Charlton Heston was raised in Michigan, attended Northwestern, married an actress, and went off to war. After his return he became a major star, his name associated with Moses and Ben-Hur and Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan. In politics he was a Democratic activist, accompanying Martin Luther King to Washington for his famous protest. He turned then to the Republican Party after a few years, and is active in helping conservative candidates and conservative causes. He has been a member of the National Council of the Arts, president of the Screen Actors Guild, and chairman of the American Film Association. He was recently awarded the Kennedy Honors in a widely televised ceremony. Before getting down to current issues involving guns and gun control, let me ask Mr. Heston to explain why he named the Second Amendment as more important than any other. MR. HESTON: It's not more important. They are all of equal importance. The Second Amendment is the only one equipped to protect and defend the others, and that is really its prime function in American life. Those wise old dead white guys that invented this country understood that very well. I took the trouble of writing down what some of them said when they were writing out the Second Amendment. I didn't want to misquote those fellows. Richard Henry Lee said, "It is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught when young how to use them." George Mason and Patrick Henry said, "The object is that every man be armed." James Madison said, "Americans possess over the people of almost every other country the advantage of being armed." The great man, Thomas Jefferson, said, "No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." I think that's a formidable way-- 1

3 MR. BUCKLEY: MR. HESTON: Yes. --to seek and give an opinion. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, yes. MR. HESTON: We understand what they meant by that. MR. BUCKLEY: It certainly gives you the perspective of the 18th century. But when you said it is the only way by which one is equipped to defend the other freedoms, surely the freedom of speech and the freedom of election is a way to protect your freedoms, isn't it? MR. HESTON: One would think so, but the freedom of speech, as we were discussing at lunch, is under serious attack now, oddly enough, from the liberal left, who are beginning to adopt the position that government has a responsibility to make certain that certain kinds of speech are not allowed, are censored. This, when I read it in Nat Hentoffs column that we were discussing at lunch, stunned me. I couldn't believe that this was true, but obviously-- MR. BUCKLEY: What should we do? Shoot people who say that? [laughter] MR. HESTON: [laughing] No, no, I wouldn't shoot them. No, no. At least not in extremis. MR. BUCKLEY: But if you want to stress the importance of having a gun, it's presumably to cope with people in ugly circumstances, right? MR. HESTON: Well, you-- Let me take it back a bit, Bill. Our revolution, as Abraham Lincoln later said, created a country that is man's last, best hope on earth. The revolutions since then have not been so successful. The French Revolution collapsed in a bloody terror, followed by the brutal dictatorship of Napoleon, quickly followed in due course by Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Fidel Castro,!di Amin, Mobutu, Kabila, and Pol Pot. Every one--every one of those monsters on seizing power also seized control of all private firearms, and then of course turned them on their own subjects and slaughtered them in the tens and tens of millions. Hurrah for gun control, the joys of gun control. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what you're saying-- 2

4 MR. HESTON: Of course, what I meant to say was that many people say, Well, that was then; we don't need that kind of thing now. Pol Pot just finished slaughtering his last batch a few years ago. Kabila is still at it. I am suggesting that the right to defend yourself with firearms can be very useful. It's not an archaic, outmoded solution to a problem. MR. BUCKLEY: No, no, but I am trying to place your enthusiasm for the Second Amendment in perspective. Let me say that I am in favor of gun control. On the other hand, I do think that the constitutional mandate in favor of gun control is not-- MR. HESTON: You mean against gun control. MR. BUCKLEY: Against gun control. --is not incapable of definition. In the case of the United States v. Miller, it was tried in 1939 by the Supreme Court. And the defendant--two defendants--were using sawed-off shotguns, which had been outlawed by the Firearms Acts of It had to be at least 18 inches to be legal, and theirs were 16 inches. So the Supreme Court said yes-- MR. HESTON: And it had to be of no military use too. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what the Supreme Court said was that unless you could prove that this 16-inch shotgun had a military aspect to it, use to it, then it was okay to outlaw it. Now if you will remember, the case was not very well defended because the defendants sort of skipped town. They didn't make it a very important issue. But in World War II these small shotguns were widely used-- MR. HESTON: Indeed they were, yes. MR. BUCKLEY: --in trench warfare. But what was interesting was the court did not say the fact that Miller was not a member of the National Guard disqualified him from the protection of the Second Amendment. So it tacitly said everybody is permitted to have arms. And then of course we get into the business of limitation. You said in a conference right after your speech that you didn't think, to use your word, it was "appropriate" for Americans to have an AK-47. If that's true then one might be tempted to say, Well, at what point does one reasonably draw a line? You're unhappy about that, aren't you? 3

5 MR. HESTON: I think that the fact that in the Constitution, other than the use of the word "the people"-- MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. HESTON: --only occurs four times in the Second Amendment, and the First Amendment being one of them. And that therefore it is really sacrosanct. And you also, I think, have to take into account the prevalence of firearms in this country, in this culture, not as an outmoded old tradition going back to the 18th century, but alive and well today. There are some 200 million firearms in private hands in this country. It is believed that about half the households have firearms, up to by now as many as four per household--that all these- For example, the second most popular item of sporting goods sold are firearms, the first being sneakers. But the second most popular item are firearms. MR. BUCKLEY: Aren't you making the case for the popularity of guns, but that really hasn't anything to do with the thrust of your argument. The thrust of your argument is that these guns are our protection against the diminution of other freedoms. MR. HESTON: I think that can well happen, and certainly they act as a protection as it stands. For example, there are now 31 states that have legislation for concealed-carry permits of firearms. In every one of those states, crime rates have shrunk. The I hope soon-to-be-former Sena tor Boxer in California is particularly exercised a bout what she calls the "junk handguns, those cheap handguns." No handguns are cheap, I promise you that, but there are cheaper handguns than others. The fastest growing group purchasing handguns--you could probably guess if you took two minutes--single women. Single women probably with long-absent fathers trying to raise two kids in a single-person household, working cleaning office buildings late at night. They finish work at three o'clock in the morning, the bus only takes them to within five blocks of where they live. They certainly need a handgun in their purse-- MR. BUCKLEY: Well now-- MR. HESTON: --in those neighborhoods. MR. BUCKLEY: --are you telling us that the people who wrote the Bill of Rights were talking about the need for handguns, or arms-- 4

6 MR. HESTON: Pistols, as they called them then. MR. BUCKLEY: --to protect yourself against criminals because they weren't being protected from criminals by the police, or-- MR. HESTON: Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: But I thought a moment ago you were talking in the revolutionary context. MR. HESTON: No, no. I'm talking today-- MR. BUCKLEY: For political reasons. MR. HESTON: No, no, I think today this is crucial. For example, the item I just cited about single women and the number of people that- Firearms are used in self-defense close to a million times a year. A million times a year. Not always or even frequently by actually firing the gun, but I promise you to a criminal in a strange house, the sound of a 12-gauge shotgun sliding in a round is very disturbing. MR. BUCKLEY: Are you calling that the use of a gun? MR. HESTON: Not necessarily the use. You know, just sliding the shell-- MR. BUCKLEY: You mean like cocking a gun would be the use of a gun by-- MR. HESTON: A 12-gauge shotgun sounds-- MR. BUCKLEY: --this arithmetic. MR. HESTON: --meaner than any other kind of gun when you cock it. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, 1-- MR. HESTON: By the way, that is not the central point there, but the fact that they are used. MR. BUCKLEY: No, what I am trying to do is to distinguish between a weapon for self-defense and a weapon for political reasons, i.e.-- 5

7 MR. HESTON: Define political reasons in the context you use it. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, to kill the people who are threatening to take away your liberties. That's the political use. MR. HESTON: You mean to search them out? MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you-- MR. HESTON: As in Bosnia? MR. BUCKLEY: You mentioned seven revolutions just a moment ago- MR. HESTON: Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: --and guns would have been handy--taking the French Revolution--would have been extremely handy if people were coming to take you to the guillotine. MR. HESTON: Yes, indeed. MR. BUCKLEY: But that's a political use, and I think that was the context in which the Constitution spoke. They weren't talking about a situation in which the policemen were doing so bad a job that before you could cross the street you had to be armed. MR. HESTON: Do you know that policemen or police forces cannot be prosecuted for failing to protect your home by coming late? There is no recourse under law for that. You are in the end responsible for yourself. In 1988 I was asked to go to Beijing and direct an American play with a Chinese cast speaking Mandarin, which by itself was an interesting undertaking. And we left shortly before Tiananmen Square came down, but several of my actors were in Tiananmen Square, and afterwards, one of the survivors--not one of my actors, but one of the survivors of that--went on television. This was just a couple of years ago, and he said, You know, as a student of your Constitution and your Bill of Rights, of course freedom of speech is crucial; freedom of speech doesn't help you if you're standing in front of a tank. MR. BUCKLEY: No. That's eloquently correct. As a matter of fact, not even a pistol would help you very much. [laughter] 6

8 MR. HESTON: No, not even a pistol. Indeed. A grenade launcher might do the trick. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, that's right. The point that you made a moment ago, that if your house is robbed or if your wife is raped or whatever, you can't sue the city-- MR. HESTON: No. MR. BUCKLEY: --by saying, You haven't in fact lived up to your covenant to guard my rights. There's no civil possible. MR. HESTON: There's no civil recourse. MR. BUCKLEY: But it's also true, there have been, as you know, in the last 20 or 30 years high-level discussions on whether that oughtn't in fact to be enacted, i.e., that there is an implicit commitment by the city-- And just as you pay your taxes and you get free schooling, you pay your taxes and you get a right to call the fire department, by the same token, if you are neglected you ought to have a right to sue. Now this is simply interesting in terms hypothetically, but it doesn't contradict your point. But what is interesting, I think to resurrect from that is that we see a world in which the consensus is very sharply on the side of diminishing the access to weapons as a means of diminishing violence. You reject that, don't you? MR. HESTON: That's probably true in every country except this country and Switzerland. And of course-- MR. BUCKLEY: In Switzerland you're required to have a weapon. MR. HESTON: Yes, yes. In Britain, for example--which has gone through one dictatorship under Cromwell, in which, of course, firearms were forbidden--up until 1960 there was no restriction on the use or ownership of firearms in Britain. Now they are repressed with draconian severity. It remains to be seen whether they escape another dictatorship in the future. It's interesting to me how-- MR. BUCKLEY: Are you conjecturing that the recent laws there-- MR. HESTON: I don't really expect a dictatorship again, a second dictatorship in Great Britain. I do think that, for example, in the case of people-- I'm puzzled and made uneasy by the thought that people 7

9 are perfectly willing to entrust their safety, their families, their households in the hands of a 22-year-old policeman making $35,000 a year to risk his life coming into a strange house, a strange yard, knowing nothing about where the bad guys are, who the bad guys are-- MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. HESTON: --who are the good guys. Is that guy just coming out the front door the guy that owns the house or has he just killed someone inside? People are perfectly comfortable with accepting that, but they seem very unwilling, by and large, to say well, this is partly up to me; it's my house, it's my family. I know that you own or have owned firearms, and so to some degree you perhaps share that at least discomfort in the fact that you're counting on kids, young guys, who are going to do their best, but are not liable if they fail. MR. BUCKLEY: Well now, wait a minute. We do believe, don't we, that the training of a policeman gives him special qualifications? MR. HESTON: Indeed it does. I'm not saying they are unqualified. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. Yes. MR. HESTON: I am saying they are at a handicap coming up a long, dark driveway, such as the driveway to my house in the hills, and with-- As I said, they're doing this for $24,000 a year. They're risking their lives every day. And I have always felt some responsibility to undertake some portion of this myself. MR. BUCKLEY: But you-- MR. HESTON: I've never had to do it so far. MR. BUCKLEY: About 30 years ago I wrote a piece saying that such security as is felt by the 84-year-old woman in the Bronx who has been twice pillaged rests in the fact that she has a pistol at her bedside. It's illegal, but she has it anyway. And she does the best that she can to advertise the fact that she has it because that is-- MR. HESTON: As do I. That's one of the reasons that I'm doing this show. [laughter] 8

10 MR. BUCKLEY: I remember there was that professor of philosophy. He wrote his book a bout the Democratic Party being the smartest party, and I knew him-- In any case he and his wife were murdered out here in the suburbs 25 years ago, just some random killing-- MR. HESTON: Extreme punishment for being a liberal. [laughter] I wouldn't go that far. MR. BUCKLEY: In any case I think that that did send out an alarm to a lot of people about the usefulness of the ultimate sanction being in your own hands, not at the other end of a legal maneuver. But this will interest you. James Burnham wrote a book 25 years ago in which he took 52 issues that divided conservatives and liberals--sort of walking down the line, you know--90 percent of liberals believe this, 88 this. And the one that absolutely separated them the most was gun control. MR. HESTON: I don't doubt it. MR. BUCKLEY: It was sort of the prime mover in distinguishing a liberal from a conservative. MR. HESTON: Certainly in Hollywood. MR. BUCKLEY: Certainly in Hollywood. MR. HESTON: Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: Absolutely, yes. Yes. MR. HESTON: I had an interesting experience in the '91 riots we had there after the decision on what's his name. Thomas. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. HESTON: And most of my friends in the film industry are firm liberals, though we remain friends and we work together. But we conservatives meet openly, you know, in restaurants. MR. BUCKLEY: All three of you? [laughter] MR. HESTON: Yes, all three of us. But when they started and you could see the smoke from Vermont Avenue from my ridge, I got calls 9

11 from two of my liberal friends, and the conversations, though half an hour apart, were identical. Each man said, Chuck, you have guns in your house, don't you? I said yes. They said, You have shotguns and like that? I said yes, yes. They said, Could you loan me one? [laughter] This is getting pretty nervous, and you know, I'm worried about this. And I said, Well, in the first place, the Marines are coming up and it will be all over then. But I said, Do you know how to use a shotgun? And each guy separately said, No, no, I thought you could teach me. And I said, Well, I could, but not in half an hour. [laughter] You might shoot my foot or something. And I said, it's going to be okay, but I said, When it's over you can buy a shotgun and take some lessons. And he said, But they've got this waiting period. I said, John, I think you voted for that, didn't you? [laughter] I had a marvelous time. MR. BUCKLEY: Now wait, let's focus on that a moment. The Brady Bill says you've got to wait a week, right? MR. HESTON: California has a law for 14 days. MR. BUCKLEY: What's the matter with the Brady Bill? MR. HESTON: The Brady Bill doesn't do anything. Sarah fought like a tigress to eliminate the move in Congress to substitute instead of the Brady Bill with the waiting period the kind of credit card that you use when you buy a shirt or pay for lunch at a restaurant. No, she didn't want that. She wanted this draconian measure which doesn't do a thing. For one thing-- MR. BUCKLEY: It's not that draconian, is it? One week? MR. HESTON: That isn't draconian. I withdraw draconian. It is true, as proved to be the case, that the federal government cannot require a state to undertake something they have mandated without paying for it. And all the police chiefs said, Hey, wait a minute. We don't have the personnel to go searching through all these records and filling out all this stuff. So in effect the Brady Bill doesn't mean a thing. I think it's grandfathered out in a year anyway. I promise you a bill like it will never again pass. MR. BUCKLEY: To say that it doesn't work because there is ineffective machinery to support it isn't an argument for saying it's not a good idea. 10

12 MR. HESTON: I don't believe it is. I think it's a waste of police personnel and it would require some policemen to-- They've got much more important things to do than to go through thousands or even hundreds or even dozens of applications. MR. BUCKLEY: I think it's pretty important, if somebody goes and says, I want to buy this pistol, to check in somewhere and find out if he's just murdered somebody awhile ago. MR. HESTON: Well, but why not then have the credit card? And say, Here's my credit card, and if it proves that you've never been convicted of a felony, then you get to buy the gun. MR. BUCKLEY: If you're here to suggest-- MR. HESTON: If you don't, you shouldn't be permitted to buy it anyway. It's against the law for a felon to own a firearm. MR. BUCKLEY: If what you're telling me is that you have a means of effecting Brady law purposes more efficient than those currently-- MR. HESTON: Exactly. MR. BUCKLEY: --I will yield. MR. HESTON: Yes. That's what I am telling you. If I stated that badly, I apologize. MR. BUCKLEY: Therefore you don't think it's a violation of the Second Amendment to require a waiting period. MR. HESTON: The law passed. It's the law of the land. There is no question of that. I think it's a bad law, it's an ineffective law. Bad laws should be repealed. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of personnel. MR. BUCKLEY: You haven't told me why it's a bad law. MR. HESTON: What? MR. BUCKLEY: You haven't told me why it's a bad law. You told me- MR. HESTON: Because it doesn't work. 11

13 MR. BUCKLEY: --why it's cumbersome. MR. HESTON: Because it doesn't work. MR. BUCKLEY: Well-- MR. HESTON: I am--as I said--! am not opposed, if I want to go buy another firearm, to using a credit card and saying, Here, I've never been convicted of a crime, and they say yes--they do an instant check, as when you buy a shirt or something, and then you get to do it. I have no objection to that. MR. BUCKLEY: It seems to me-- MR. HESTON: Again, I don't think the law is a good law, but it is the law. I believe in obeying the law. MR. BUCKLEY: Would you acknowledge that the rhetoric on both sides tends to be a little bit inflated? On the other side people are saying if you guarantee the right to buy a gun, you are guaranteeing all kinds of indiscriminate slaughter; but on our side, we have people like you saying, There can be no freedom of the press, no freedom to protest, no freedom to worship your God, no freedom to speak your mind anywhere unless you have the Second Amendment. That isn't true, is it? MR. HESTON: That's perhaps an excessive syntax, but I stand by the position that the Second Amendment is the only amendment equipped to protect the others with which it is equal--separate but equal. MR. BUCKLEY: On the grounds that in the last analysis only-- MR. HESTON: In extremis-- MR. BUCKLEY: --only a bullet. MR. HESTON: If you're living under somebody like Pol Pot or Fidel Castro, you can well lose your life or your liberty. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, if you're saying you can't fight wars without weapons, I don't think anybody can dispute that. MR. HESTON: No, that's not what I'm saying. 12

14 : MR. BUCKLEY: But the idea is presumably not to have to fight wars-- MR. HESTON: Indeed. MR. BUCKLEY: --and also to avoid unnecessary violence. MR. HESTON: I agree with that too. MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you very much, Charlton Heston; thank you, ladies and gentlemen. MR. HESTON: A pleasure, Bill. 13