Heston waved to the crowd from the dais with gritty determination and what appeared to be a dead raccoon stapled to his head. He began his opening remarks by addressing Mayor Webb's request that the NRA not "come here. We don't want you here."

The crowd booed at the mention of Webb's name, and one attendee shouted out, "Get out of our country, Wellington Webb!" much to the amusement of the crowd.

"They say, 'Don't come here,'" Heston said. "I guess what saddens me most is how it suggests complicity. It implies that you and I and 80 million honest gun owners are somehow to blame, that we don't care as much as they, or that we don't deserve to be as shocked and horrified as every other soul in American mourning for the people of Littleton. 'Don't come here.' That's offensive. It's also absurd, because we live here. There are tens of thousands of NRA members in Denver and tens upon tens of thousands in the state of Colorado ... 'Don't come here?' We're already here."

After a moment of silence of their own for the people of Littleton, and a prayer, and the pledge of allegiance, NRA members were officially welcomed to the state by Vikki Buckley, Colorado's first African-American female secretary of state. Buckley implicitly took a shot at Webb, saying that it was ironic that some of those who would "run you out of town" wouldn't even be able to vote were it not for those who fought for the Constitution's guarantee of voting rights. Buckley was just the first of several speakers to argue that the Second Amendment provides the right of every law-abiding American citizen to own as many guns as he or she so desires, with no restrictions whatsoever.

No high court has ever ruled that the "well regulated Militia" guaranteed the "right to keep and bear arms" in the Constitution applies to anything other than a state's National Guard. Even the uber-conservative former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Berger once called the NRA's Second Amendment interpretation "a fraud on the American public."

NRA tradition has held that after the official welcome, the next order of business is to welcome both the oldest and youngest NRA members present. But this year, Heston said, "given the unusual circumstances" of the meeting -- and, no doubt, the horrendous public relations disaster a video clip of an 8-year-old with an NRA-sanctioned rifle would surely prove -- that tradition was not honored at the convention.

The room was so packed, the fire marshal reportedly told NRA leadership that overflow seating would have to be provided outside the ballroom. "To think that a week ago, there were anxious murmurs that we might not have anyone show up," Heston chuckled.

Then NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre strode to the lectern. LaPierre, the brains behind Heston's charisma, said that the NRA's positions "have become so widely mischaracterized ... America can't keep in focus a clear understanding of what our principles are." He then outlined a number of policies that the NRA purportedly supports in an attempt to put a more moderate and reasonable face on the demonized organization.

"First," LaPierre said, "we believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America's schools, period."

But Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., says that when she was assistant minority leader of the Colorado House, the NRA worked tirelessly for seven years straight to allow guns on school property. "They said [any gun ban on school property] would be inconvenient for rural children who wanted to go hunting after school," DeGette says. "Then they have the nerve to stand up there today and wear those blue and silver ribbons and say that schools should be gun-free."

LaPierre outlined even more examples of his group's dedication to reason and rationale. "The National Rifle Association believes in no unsupervised youth access to guns, period," he said, despite his organization's opposition six years ago to a proposal by then-Colorado Gov. Roy Romer to ban the possession of handguns by kids under the age of 18 except in supervised activities like hunting and target practice.

"We have always supported holding adults responsible for willfully and recklessly allowing access to firearms," LaPierre said, despite the fact that the NRA has consistently battled "child access prevention" laws holding adults responsible if they improperly store their weapons so that a kid is able to get his hands on it.

"We support and encourage the distribution, development and use of safety locks, trigger locks, gun safes or any voluntary means," LaPierre said. In 1997, after a proposal by President Clinton that would have required gun manufacturers to provide child safety locks with each handgun, one of the NRA's top lobbyists said that the proposal would "mean no hunting, no self-defense and no safety ... President Clinton's proposals for trigger locks on all firearms encourage all Americans to abandon armed, lawful self-defense in our homes, including federal law enforcement agents."

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