On the Cutting Edge of Societal Satire

Charlton Heston's New Book Hits the Shelf "The Courage To Be Free" is destined to be an NRA bestseller

The chapter begins:

Normally when I take my sunset stroll through the woods I strap on my holster and make sure my .44 mag is loaded. I twirl it playfully on my finger for my wife, she's always thrilled by my gun-handling abilities, before slipping it back in my holster. Many times on these walks I've faced grave danger and have had to slap leather, as we fast draw artists say. Once while walking, a maniacal woodpecker challenged me to a showdown. Let it suffice to say that in a blink of an eye, he lost.

Anyway, that evening, it struck me that maybe I ought to take a little more firepower with me. Just as I was about to walk out the front door of our inspirational mountain retreat, I opened the gun cabinet and pulled out my bazooka, a vintage weapon used by my Uncle in the war.

After a few passages some might consider too graphic, where he describes the pain he feels thanks the lack of tendons and the hideous grinding of his knees when he walks, he continues.

The mountains give me a feeling of calm, and I love to breathe deeply, taking in the fresh air, always challenging myself, pushing myself to the edge of hyperventilation. The euphoric feeling often leaves me staggering along the trail, but that evening, I kept my wits about me for some strange reason. And it's a good thing, because I was about to save lives.

I could hear them laughing without a care in the world, those boney little girl scouts, long before they noticed me lumbering along the trail. At almost the exact same moment they saw me, I saw it...a huge Grizzly bear. It had reached the peak of the small hill overlooking the camp and was feasting it's eyes on the innocent girl scouts out to earn badges or whatever the hell they do on these camping trips.

The mighty bear stood up on its back legs, growling for all the world to hear or at least those of us within earshot. "Not today you hairy behemoth!" I cried with vengeance, shaking my fist in the air before athletically swinging my bazooka into position. "Not today!" An explosion rang out that sent the girls scout troop diving for cover. The trail of sparks acted as a tracer for the round, perfectly placed, which blew the Grizzly down the other side of the hill.

At this point, Heston made the comparison between the scent of the smoldering bear and the time a fellow cub scout got too close to the campfire and singed his eyebrows. He says that's what caused the scarring on "little Larry" but something tells me that it had more to do with the big stick Heston used to "...beat out the flames." We pick up the story after his flashback.

I ran into camp, keeping a sharp lookout in case the bear had a few friends along who wanted a taste of my bazooka. "Are you girls alright?" I asked. They shook their heads, looking at me with wide eyes, their savior. I'm no savior, just a man who happened along with a bazooka, my constitutionally protected right, unless those freak liberals have their way. "Let that be a lesson to you girls, the second amendment saves lives." I said. They all nodded their heads, wiping away the tears. "Now...who wants to help me gut a Grizzly, huh?"

Hands shot up in the air and together we jogged over the hill and took turns slicing and dicing our game.

Milt Sporndecker is the literary critic with the Deluthe Times Journal and he says the essays are fiction. "I talked to a half-dozen people who know Heston, and they all say he doesn't own a bazooka, and they've never heard him tell the story about the girl scouts." He said. "And tell me, do you really think a bunch of young girl scouts are going to jump at the chance to 'gut' a bear?"

Wayne LaPierre, Heston's boss at the NRA, says the book is accurate. "These liberal tooty-fruities don't like it because it destroys the myths they've been trying to promote that all weapons are evil." He said. "I can't count all of the stories I've heard about how it's lucky this person had a flame thrower along or that one had a grenade launcher handy when trouble occurred...to deny this is to deny our heritage."

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