Lock and Load

SEATTLE: After his landslide election to the National Rifle Association board, Charlton Heston is launching a crusade to unseat Neal Knox, the NRA's controversial first vice president, in elections Tuesday. Heston hopes to counter Knox, a longtime NRA member who is working to wrest control of the group from 56-year-old president Marion Hammer and executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre. Knox and his followers blame Hammer and LaPierre for the lobby's huge drop in membership and a massive $56 million debt. If successful in his bid for control, Knox and his followers, labeled by LaPierre as "a band of militia gun devotees," could drastically change the face of the group by opposing such things as the prohibition on the manufacture of armor-piercing bullets and mandatory child-safety locks on handguns.