NRA’s Heston an Unlikely Target of LAPD Affection

Charlton Heston is confiding that in the upcoming issue of Guns & Ammo he will blame the poll-skewing media for whipping up this fiction that the people want gun control. He is on the phone in Beverly Hills, so his face is invisible, but his voice sounds tired of gun statistics. The only time it perks up is in mentioning that he doesn’t own Saturday night specials because “my hands are too large.”

Well, who wouldn’t sound weary? One day you’re an actor with large hands and a gun collection, the next you’re the president of the National Rifle Assn. in a metropolis where even the top police chief has gone anti-gun. Still, you have to admire Heston--he’s a trouper, arguing away when most advocates would be as tuckered out as a spent cartridge.

Maybe that’s why, its chief notwithstanding, the LAPD can’t shake its fondness for guys like him.

How else to explain the LAPD Police Reserve Foundation’s decision to let the head of a group denounced by their own police chief chair their fund-raising banquet tomorrow night? That’s right. In the strange bedfellows category, enter this tidbit:

Of all the marquee names in all of Southern California, the Los Angeles Police Reserve Foundation has, for its first-ever benefit, chosen a guy who defends cop-killer bullets and whose group has derided federal law enforcement as “Gestapo” and “jackbooted thugs.” A guy who has fought the closure of gun law loopholes that leave cops perpetually outgunned. A guy who, in the words of LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks, is at the helm of a movement that is “peddling something that is far more dangerous than other special interest groups, and hiding behind a constitutional issue that I don’t think exists.”

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The flap over the reserve gala--even in the hands of a seasoned media whipper-upper--is only a footnote in this season of firearm anxiety. But it does say something, both about rank-and-file law enforcement and about the way celebrity trumps politics, especially in Los Angeles.

Asked why Heston was chosen from among 25 celebrity candidates as the front man for Friday’s event at the Universal City Hilton, the hired promoter, Bill York, had this only-in-L.A. explanation: “To tell the truth, I was unaware until after he accepted that he was the head of the NRA.”

Police Cmdr. Betty Kelepecz, who is the LAPD’s reserve coordinator and a member of the nonprofit foundation hosting the Friday dinner, didn’t see a conflict. “This doesn’t have anything to do with guns or gun sales,” she told me, “just with supporting the reserve officers and the community.”

At this point, you may be thinking: They’ve gotta be kidding. People in China know that Heston’s the voice of the NRA. Also, how can you claim to support people who risk getting shot at daily when you’re against tough limits on the number of guns?

But I believe York and Kelepecz. For one thing, rank-and-file cops do draw a kind of emotional support from Heston, a law-and-order conservative who took on the gala, he said, “just because I like cops.” (That may be mutual. The police union hasn’t polled its membership on gun control yet--Parks’ reasoning may appeal to their heads, but the NRA appeals to their hearts.)

Also, the foundation’s main focus was on getting a chairman who could wangle donations to subsidize uniforms, insurance and other support for the LAPD’s 830 citizen volunteers. And, as the kids like to say now, Heston is money, baby.

“There are more gun enthusiasts in Hollywood than you might imagine,” the actor laughed knowingly. The gun control groups in Washington, D.C., may view Heston as the best-known big-handed citer of the 2nd Amendment in the nation. But here, his first reference is as a veteran insider, one of Hollywood’s best-connected--and most money- attracting--names.

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This is slim comfort for some of the honorees who’ll be feted Friday for supporting the reserves. Councilwoman Laura Chick, for example, fired off a fax Wednesday to the foundation president. Guns & Ammo notwithstanding, the councilwoman doesn’t think the media whipped up the apparent gun control groundswell, and as a supporter of a gun ban, she isn’t wild about doing a grip-and-grin with the head of the NRA.

“Here we have volunteers who basically put their lives on the line for citizens,” said a Chick staffer, “and the person hosting their dinner is advocating against tough gun laws. I mean, really. Didn’t they think?”

Sure they did.

“We’ve gotten a lot of support, especially from the entertainment community,” York, the promoter, enthused via car phone. “Universal Studios, UPN, NBC . . . “

Shawn Hubler’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.