Books, Arts & Manners: My Favorite Amendments

THIS may surprise you, but I’m not the only man in Hollywood with an appreciation for the Second Amendment. There are numbers of gun owners—collectors, hunters, sport shooters—in the film community, plus many more who keep firearms for protection. I suspect, in fact, that there are more filmmakers who are closet gun enthusiasts than closet homosexuals. Steven Spielberg has one of the finest gun collections in California, but never refers to it, and never shoots publicly. Can you imagine the most famous filmmaker in town worried about his reputation?

Still, many people in the film community oppose firearms, some quite virulently. During the Los Angeles riots in 1992, a good many of these folk suffered a change of heart. As smoke from burning buildings smudged the skyline and the TV news showed looters smash-ing windows, laughing as they carted off boom boxes and booze, I got a few phone calls from firmly anti-gun friends in clear conflict. “Umm, Chuck, you have quite a few . . . ah, guns, don’t you?”

CH

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Charlton Heston

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THIS may surprise you, but I’m not the only man in Hollywood with an appreciation for the Second Amendment. There are numbers of gun owners—collectors, hunters, sport shooters—in the film community, plus many more who keep firearms for protection. I suspect, in fact, that there are more filmmakers who are closet gun enthusiasts than closet homosexuals. Steven Spielberg has one of the finest gun collections in California, but never refers to it, and never shoots publicly. Can you imagine the most famous filmmaker in town worried about his reputation?

Still, many people in the film community oppose firearms, some quite virulently. During the Los Angeles riots in 1992, a good many of these folk suffered a change of heart. As smoke from burning buildings smudged the skyline and the TV news showed looters smash-ing windows, laughing as they carted off boom boxes and booze, I got a few phone calls from firmly anti-gun friends in clear conflict. “Umm, Chuck, you have quite a few . . . ah, guns, don’t you?”