Wednesday, August 22, 2007

FRED THOMPSON, RUDY GIULIANI

Rudy vs. Fred on the Federalist Approach to Guns

What an odd and direct early shot from Fred Thompson on Rudy Giuliani:

Anybody who knows me knows I’ve always cared deeply about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. So I’ve always felt sort of relieved when I flew back home to where that particular civil liberty gets as much respect as the rest of the Bill of Rights.

Unfortunately, New York is trying, again, to force its ways on the rest of us, this time through the courts. First, they went after U.S. gun manufacturers, seeking through a lawsuit not only money but injunctive control over the entire industry. An act of congress in 2005 blocked, but did not end, that effort.

Now, the same activist federal judge from Brooklyn who provided Mayor Giuliani’s administration with the legal ruling it sought to sue gun makers, has done it again. Last week, he created a bizarre justification to allow New York City to sue out-of-state gun stores that sold guns that somehow ended up in criminal hands in the Big Apple. 

The Rudy team’s response:

"Those who live in New York in the real world - not on TV - know that Rudy Giuliani's record of making the city safe for families speaks for itself.  No amount of political theater will change that."

Katie Levinson, Giuliani Communications Director

Thompson’s argument that Giuliani is insufficiently federalist is a bit ironic, because just a short while ago, Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times was dubbing Giuliani “the federalist candidate.”

In an interview last week, Giuliani said the key to resolving cultural arguments "where our society on a national level ends up being very divided" is to apply the "principle of federalism." Questions on topics such as gun control, gay rights or aspects of abortion, he continued, "are issues that I think the founding fathers would say should be consigned to state and local governments, experimenting, deciding, having different views, and the federal government having a more limited role."

That perspective leads Giuliani toward positions uncomfortable for both left and right. As mayor, for instance, Giuliani supported President Clinton's nationwide ban on semi-automatic assault weapons. But President Bush allowed that ban to lapse, and now Giuliani (in a view many gun-control advocates consider impractical) says decisions on whether to ban such weapons should be made "on a state-by-state, almost city-by-city basis."

As Ramesh noted, Giuliani certainly doesn’t fit the description of a down-the-line federalist, and even on this issue, there are odd wrinkles: “He used to be for licensure of gun owners, but now says that he favors Judge Silberman's ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. So does he think that states should have to respect that right? If he favors a state-by-state approach, that can reasonably be called federalist—but it would leave him in the odd position, for a Republican, of treating the Second Amendment as the only provision of the Bill of Rights that shouldn't be enforced against the states.

The NRA noted and presumably applauded Ramesh’s point. (I should also note that based on my interactions with NRA members, they do not find federalism an acceptable compromise; they believe that the Second Amendment rights are not optional depending on who your local officials are.)

It's an odd defense from the Giuliani folks, too. We knew at some point they were going to deploy an argument in the vein of, "Fred Thompson has made an acting career out of playing the kind of man that Rudy Giuliani is in real life." Used it awfully early, I think. Also, we know Giuliani and Bloomberg don't agree on a lot of topics, and aren't on the best of terms - so why didn't Rudy score some points with gun owners by criticizing Bloomberg?

08/22 09:03 AMShare