Pajamas Media has a piece written by Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. One of the worries I, and many others, have about Giuliani is his stance on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA), which is one of the most cherished of our rights guaranteed under the United States Constitution. It’s also the one that’s most attacked and threatened by those in power or those seeking power. In the past, Giuliani Giuliani favored restrictions on the 2nd Amendment including the so-called “assault weapons ban” during the Clinton administration.

“It was very important to have a visible Republican to make the case that this wasn’t some liberal Democratic agenda,” said Paul Helmke, a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., and the president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “I was at the signing ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House when Bill Clinton signed the crime bill with the assault weapons ban, and Giuliani had the most prominent seat in the front row.”

The March New York Times article linked in the last paragraph indicates that Giuliani may be changing his tone. A recent Boston Globe article reports that in South Carolina, Giuliani had this to say about the 2nd Amendment:

“It doesn’t matter if I believe in it or not — and I do — it is the Second Amendment,” Giuliani said. “I’m a strict constructionist. The Second Amendment says you have an individual right to bear arms.”

That’s a big shift from the Giuliani who was the Democrats’ favorite Republican in the 1990’s. What I want to hear are details of how Giuliani would act as President when the call from the Left comes up for restricting legal gun ownership. Giuliani is taking the Federalist view and stating that each state has a right to pass gun ownership laws as they seem fit. This is completely different from what he championed 10 years ago. From the Times article:

In his brief run for the Senate in 2000, he picked up an old theme, saying there should be uniform national standards for all gun owners. He also endorsed a bill in Albany that gave New York the toughest gun laws in the nation, including requiring that all new guns be test-fired so the police would have ballistic records and background checks even at gun shows and flea markets, which were not covered by federal law.

The same piece has Anthony Carbonetti, Giuliani’s senior adviser, declining to say whether Giuliani still believed the laws of other states (other than New York) are adequate. Carbonetti did say that Giuliani’s comments from a decade ago do not mean that he feels that Washington should mandate what states’ gun laws are.

My reservations on Giuliani are found right there. While I applaud his stance on states’ rights, something too many Republicans of late have forgotten about, I worry that his track record will prevail over his too-vague statements about the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment is a right applied to all citizens, not state-by-state. Yes, there are restrictions on it - convicted felons not being able to buy a weapon, etc. - but that is not the same as talking about it at a state level versus national, which is what Giuliani appears to be doing.

I want to hear more of the Giuliani as depicted by the Boston Globe article and less of the Giuliani as depicted by the New York Times.

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