September 19, 2007, 6:51 pm
Giuliani to Face the N.R.A.
By Sarah Wheaton
The sportsmen (and the politicians who love them) are set to converge on the capital this weekend as the National Rifle Association holds a “Celebration of American Values.”
Speakers include some of the movement’s best-known conservatives, both on and off the presidential ballot, including Newt Gingrich, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Fred D. Thompson and Senator John McCain. But perhaps the most-watched remarks will be those given by Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was a vocal supporter of gun control as mayor of New York.
During a 1995 appearance on PBS’s “The Charlie Rose Show,” Mr. Giuliani was critical of the influential gun group.
“I agree that it’s the person who uses the gun that is the source of the real problem, but the gun is also the source of a very big problem,” he said, referring to the classic N.R.A. slogan, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
He continued, “And the N.R.A.’s in essence defense of assault weapons, and their unwillingness to deal with some of the realities we face here in cities, is a terrible, terrible mistake.”
“This really should be an indication. Let’s have national licensing and gun control,” Mr. Giuliani says in another interview currently circulating on YouTube. “Ninety-five percent of the shootings in New York City occur with guns from outside of the city of New York, and they’re really victimizing us at this point with the craziness of this ‘you can buy any gun you want, anyplace you want, you wait five days…’”
That video also has a clip of him calling a Second Amendment objection to the gun control laws he endorses “an overstated argument.”
CNN’s John King asked Mr. Giuliani about those and other comments today:
Mr. King: On Friday, you’ll give a speech back in the States to the National Rifle Association. Back in the Clinton administration, you sat in the front row when the president signed into law the Assault Weapons Ban. That law has since expired. Back at that time in ‘95, you said the NRA was going, quote, “way overboard” in its opposition to the Assault Weapon Ban…Are you willing to now go before that group and say, There are cases where you must not go, quote, “way overboard?”
Mr. Giuliani: Well, sure, we’re at a different time, now. And we’re in a different situation. I mean, the reality is that I always believed that it made the most sense for state and local governments to deal with this, that we should do everything we can to reduce crime. The programs that I had just begun back then have now turned out to be even more successful than I thought they would be, which largely focused on people who were using guns, and to treat them in a way in which we had zero tolerance for them.
Mr. King: Wouldn’t the mayor of Baltimore or New York City today say that, if you just do this state by state, then they can bring in the assault weapon from Virginia or they can bring the assault weapon in from New Jersey?
Mr. Giuliani: You know, I think actually, if you do it state by state, you can get tremendous impact. I did it state by state; look at the impact that I had. I dealt with enforcing the laws that existed in New York, and what was the impact — 74 percent decline in shootings. And I believe that decline in shootings has continued to go on since I left office, with the ConStat program, with a tough on criminal approach, tough on criminals who use guns.
So the reality is, the proof is in the pudding. I mean, we actually made the local laws work in a way that created the safest large city in America.
Mr. Giuliani’s new approach reflects that described in an article by The Times’s Richard Pérez-Peña about the candidate’s shifting tone on guns:
“His history is of enforcing gun laws, not of gun control,” said Anthony V. Carbonetti, a senior adviser. “Rudy took over a city that averaged over 2,000 murders a year, and 90-some-odd percent were gun-related murders. It was all about taking guns out of the hands of criminals.”
The above quote is from March, and as his campaign was quick to point out to us, Mr. Giuliani’s comments as mayor are “old news.” But whether his new tone has actually been effective remains an open question, and the response to him at the N.R.A. conference could be a significant clue.
At the very least, Mr. Giuliani is likely to get credit from N.R.A. members for actually showing up. Mitt Romney, another candidate who has faced Johnny-come-lately accusations from gun rights advocates, will be addressing the group via videotape. The only Democratic presidential candidate scheduled to speak at the conference, Gov. Bill Richardson, will also use video. He has touted his gubernatorial endorsement from the N.R.A. to suggest that he would be more viable in the general election.
From: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/giuliani-to-face-the-nra/
