Another GOP Presidential wanna-be flip-flops on guns

12:10am Tuesday, May 29, 2007

By Chad D. Baus

Last month, I asked the nation's gun owners if they were willing to be Mitt Romney's cheap date - if they were willing to forget his years of anti-gun philandering and buy into his election-season pandering.

"Is it just me," I asked, "or is it incredibly insulting every time a politician expects America's hunters, sportsmen, concealed handgun license-holders and gun owners to fall for a couple of drunken one-liners in an election year?"

It seems Mr. Romney isn't the only Republican presidential-hopeful who thinks gun owners are as easy as that airheaded college girlfriend who watches as their date gropes and fondles waitresses, but forgives him as soon as he says "I love you baby. Now go get me another beer."

Rudy Giuliani established a solid anti-gun record in New York. In the 1990s, Giuliani and anti-gun President Clinton talked about establishing uniform national gun control laws. And in 2000, while defending his use of taxpayer dollars to file junk lawsuits designed to put gun manufacturers out of business, he accused these American businesses of knowingly calculating sales to an illegal market by intentionally overproducing guns.

Early in his presidential campaign, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was unapologetic for his record of support of the Clinton Gun Ban and credited his use of New York City's gun control schemes for crime reduction crime in New York.

At the same time, however, he began to test a talking point designed to fool Mr. and Mrs. American Gun Owner, telling FOXNews' Sean Hannity he understands that what works in the city may not work in more "rural" areas. At about the same time, his campaign website was launched with the statement "Rudy Giuliani is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment."

Giuliani must now realize that America's gun owners aren't as stupid as he first hoped - that we are not going to be so quickly wooed by a couple of cheesy pickup lines. According to a Newsday.com article entitled "Rudy flips gun stance", Giuliani's days as a crusading anti-gun mayor are behind him now that he's running for president.

Rudolph Giuliani Wednesday sounded open to letting anyone who's not a criminal or mental patient carry a concealed handgun -- even telling a woman who packs a piece in New York that it's OK with him.

Giuliani later backpedaled -- saying decisions on concealed-carry permits are up to the states -- but his answer had been different to Julie Trevor, of Stowe, Vt., at a campaign stop. Trevor told Giuliani she gets nervous every time she enters New York while toting a concealed handgun she got for protection after her house was burglarized.

Giuliani's days as a crusading anti-gun mayor are behind him now that he's running for president, and Wednesday he staked out a simple test for concealed-carry permits, which are tightly controlled in New York. He asked two questions -- Are you a criminal, and have you ever been institutionalized? -- and to the laughter of the audience, rendered his verdict when she said no to both.

"As far as I am concerned, you can have a concealed weapon," he said. "The Constitution of the United States in the Second Amendment gives you an individual right to bear arms; that individual right is as strong as your individual right to free speech, free assembly, being safe against unreasonable searches and seizures."

Just how stupid does he think we are? It is just incredibly insulting to me that people like Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani (and anti gun GOPer Betty Montgomery and all those who have come before) think an election-year conversion will work on us any better than did John Kerry's Ohio goose hunting debacle in 2004. I suppose next we'll be treated to awkward photos of Mr. Giuliani squatting in an Iowa wheat field sporting a borrowed shotgun and a blaze orange vest.

There is one simple fact that Rudy Giuliani is never going to escape from, no matter how much camo he dons to hide the absolute lack of trust in law-abiding citizens he displayed through his anti-gun policies as mayor of New York:

The extremist gun control agenda coming out of New York City did not start with current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and it is up to gun owners everywhere to make sure it does not end up in the White House in 2008.

Chad Baus is a Member of the Fulton County, OH Republican Central Committee and the Buckeye Firearms Association Northwest Ohio Chair.

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