He went from a leftist labor-organizer to a Barry Goldwater Republican and what's stranger, did so by way of epiphany--virtually overnight.
There must have been an untold story of some kind. Perhaps the influence of a woman. He explained his drastic change as the effect of a billboard, which stood over the highway on his daily drive home. It said: "In your heart you know he's right" {"he" being Barry Goldwater}. Heston (born Charley Carter) explained: "One day I thought . . . you know, he IS right . . " And that was it, transformation complete. What is left out is the fact that at the time of the billboard, the controversial issue was NOT gun control. It was nuke control. Goldwater's platform was a swift win in Vietnam--through the use of Nuclear weaponry. Reagan, another leftist actor turned reactionary was also a strong advocate of the nuclear solution in Vietnam. This controversy spawned the famous TV commercial featuring the mushroom cloud and the dead flower. "War is bad for children and other living things" was the tag line. Amazingly, Lyndon Johnson, the guy who actually started the Vietnam war in earnest (as a paranoid anti-communist), used this nuclear sound bite to claim electoral victory in 1964. Heston took out his frustrations by fronting for the NRA.
I wonder if Moses made it through the pearly gates with his .357 diamondback.(???)