Well last week Charlton Heston died. I have certainly enjoyed some of his movies over the years, but I think he totally undermined his own popularity by his own actions as President of the NRA. Not that I have a problem with gun ownership. There are plenty of responsible gun owners, but you can't legally allow something as dangerous as guns amid the public without rules, because not everyone is going to be so trustworthy with them, which is why in Canada, since we instituted the FAC (Firearms Acquisition Certificate), no one can legally own a firearm without also undergoing rather extensive training in how to safely use firearms. They don't have that in the US, so the average gun owner in the US relies on Uncle Bubba to train him/her on the safe use of firearms.
A rather interesting and politically unpopular fact has come out in a Canadian study that looked at the drop in accidents, injuries and deaths related to firearms, and it showed that the drop did not coincide with the rise in regulation, but with the creation of the FAC.
But I digress. I didn't blog today with the intention of debating gun control, but was merely pointing out some reasons why, when I heard the news of Ben-Hur's death, I couldn't really be bothered. But in his obituary, I learned something that I didn't know....
Charlton Heston isn't his real name. It was John Carter.
Yes, you might wonder why the hell was his name changed from such a manly, easy to say in a western sense name? Well, as it turns out there already was a man named John Carter, and he had been gracing the pages of pulp novels for some time. Only the geeky set would today know about Edgar Rice Burroughs and and his series of novels that started with John Carter of Mars. Wanting to distance himself from the titular character, he changed it to Heston.
I thought that was kinda funny. So that explains why Heston did what he did with the NRA. He'd spent too much time on Mars.
So in honour of this discovery, here's a what if thing that was posted on Ain't It Cool this week.
