Rudy's Problem With Gun Rights

Washington, DC (TLS). Rudy Giuliani shot himself in the foot yesterday with a comment he made about gun control. He may well have lost the tentative support of gun rights groups in the process.

Giuliani, in attempting to explain his support for gun control while Mayor of New York City, stated that it was new gun control laws that reduced the crime rate in the city. The former Mayor and his handlers had previously made overtures to conservative groups by stating that New York City was a special circumstance when Giuliani became Mayor and that strict gun control legislation was needed to bring violence under control.

Within this spin is the slight hint that Giuliani was saying that in principle he does not support restricting the right of the people to bear arms, as guaranteed in the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Gun rights advocates had one brief moment of hope that the candidate was getting ready to state that his support for 2nd Amendment rights is one of his core values and that the New York City situation was an emergency scenario that required emergency measures to correct.

Most of us lost that hope when Giuliani made his remarks about gun control yesterday.

The key issue is not the fact that Giuliani has backed away from his initial hint that they may be making a move to the right on gun rights. This is bad enough in and of itself. Rather, the key issue is that Giuliani has obviously bought into the gun control lobby propaganda that strict gun control measures reduce crime and violence in our cities. This notion is simply not true. The statistical data from both the CDC and the National Institute of Science shows NO correlation between strict gun control laws and a reduction in gun violence.

The fact that Giuliani would cite an erroneous theory based upon Leftist propaganda is highly problematic for one who would be President. The lapse points to a penchant for failing to think rationally and to base one's opinions on solid, observable data rather than conjecture or theory that arises out of one's political bias. We already have this very same problem with candidates such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama, and John McCain. We certainly don't need yet another candidate who exhibits a failure to consider cold, hard scientific facts rather than push an unproven hypothesis.

In short, Rudy gained no friends among conservative groups with his remarks on gun control in New York City. It was a big mistake to even bring it up. Most Americans in the heartland, the South, and the Mountain States of the West already have suspicions about Rudy Giuliani. His comments on gun control yesterday took those suspicions to an ominous level--a level of distaste--which is a terribly bad sign for a candidate right out of the starting gate.