Movie guns displayed at NRA Museum

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Guns and movies go together like Bonnie and Clyde, Roy Rogers and Trigger, or the NRA and Charlton Heston.

So Philip Schreier, curator at the National Firearms Museum, knew for years that he wanted to put together an exhibit on Hollywood's famous firearms. He even had the name of the exhibit long before the exhibit itself: "Real Guns of Reel Heroes."

Putting such an exhibit together, though, wasn't so easy.

"Nothing gets done in Hollywood without a power lunch," Schreier said. "I swear I put on 40 pounds."

But the exhibit is up and running, and will be on display through December at the museum, located at the NRA's national headquarters in Fairfax.

Since the exhibit opened in March, attendance at the museum increased significantly. The museum draws roughly 30,000 visitors a year, but attendance nearly doubled in the weeks after the new movie exhibit opened.

"This allows us to reach out to thousands of people who haven't been in the museum before," Schreier said. "Everybody likes movies."

The movie characters linked to the exhibit might not all be poster boys for responsible gun use, Schreier acknowledged. But he purposefully selected guns used by heroic characters, even if, by any rational measure, the heroes are thugs. The characters of Jules and Vincent in "Pulp Fiction," played by Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, may be a prime example. Their pearl-handled semi-automatic pistols are on display.

"They're all heroes," he said. "Sure, he may be a felon or a prison escapee, but man, you're rooting for him at the end."