Posted on 02/18/2007 12:46:51 PM PST by dirtboy
Rudy Giuliani's interview on Hannity and Colmes, 2/6/2007
HANNITY: Generally speaking do you think it's acceptable if citizens have the right to carry a handgun?
GIULIANI: It's part of the constitution. People have the right to bear arms. Then restrictions have to be reasonable and sensible. You can't just remove that right. You got to regulate consistent with the second amendment
If there is a terror attack involving guns on US soil during the tenure of a President Rudolph Giuliani, will President Giuliani adhere to the sentiments about the right to bear arms that he expressed recently during his Hannity and Colmes interview? Or be more inclined to respond similar to his actions as mayor of New York City when his administration took guns away from long-term permit holders who had never engaged in wrongdoing? Some would say that we should listen to what a candidate says. Others say we should look at what a candidate has done in the past. As it so happens, Rudy did have a chance to express his opinions about what he thought was the proper federal response to a terrorism attack involving guns. The attack in question happened February 23, 1997 when a Palestinian opened fire on tourists at the observation deck of the Empire State Building. One person was killed and several injured. A note found on the terrorist said the attack was punishment against the "enemies of Palestine." So how did Mayor Giuliani respond to this attack? By calling for gun control and supporting Bill Clinton's proposed gun control law?.
Citizens Crime Comission
Archives of Rudolph W. Giuliani
1095 Avenue of the Americas
March 6, 1997, 8:15 a.m.
A couple of weeks ago, all New Yorkers and people throughout the world were appalled by the senseless and horrifying act of violence that occurred at the Empire State Building.
The Empire State Building is such an important landmark... such an important symbol of America that, like so many other places in New York City, when a tragedy happens there, it receives a great deal of attention in the media.
[snip]
Because of this transformation of perception, when this latest tragedy occurred, instead of having to defend New York City, we were able to focus national attention on the real problem, which is gun control.
And even as we grieve for those who lost their lives, and our hearts and prayers go out to the victims and their loved ones, we may be able to find some sort of meaning in this tragedy by using it as a catalyst to revive national gun control efforts.
[snip]
Yesterday, President Clinton outlined his proposals for more stringent, federal gun licensing requirements.
[snip]
I applaud the President's proposals, and I will support them any way I can.
I only hope that he is right, and that Congress is finally ready to recognize that the vast majority of Americans want more gun control. It makes sense. It is time. And we can no longer let special interests dominate this vitally important issue. ---
-----------------
Now, Rudy Giuliani has said recently that federalism dictates that New York and New York City should be able to pursue avenues of gun control that are not needed in more rural areas. However, he did not adhere to that federalist sentiment in response to this terror attack
At City Hall, Mayor Giuliani attempted to shift the focus toward gun control. He was accompanied by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., whose husband was killed and son wounded in the 1993 shootings on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train that killed six people and wounded 17. In both that incident and Sunday's shooting, the gunmen circumvented New York's strict gun control laws by traveling out of state to buy the murder weapons, officials said.
"New York State, New York City have great gun control laws," Rep. McCarthy said. "But as the mayor said, we cannot control all the guns that are coming in from other parts of the country and that's what has to be stopped."
----------------
So voters concerned about the Second Amendment have to decide if what candidate Giuliani says now carries more weight than what Mayor Giuliani did back then. Candidate Giuliani recently said that gun control was a state issue. But Mayor Giuliani had no problem wanting to use federal power to overrule state laws about gun rights.
Gun rights advocates rightly decried efforts by groups such as the Brady Center and Handgun Control Inc. to exploit school shooting tragedies to push for gun control laws that had no relevance to the shootings.
And here we have Mayor Giuliani ... exploiting tragedy to push for gun control laws. And asking that gun control not just be applied to New York City, but other states. In complete opposition to his stated fealty to federalism when it comes to gun control laws.
So those who are concerned about 2nd Amendent rights to bear arms in self-defense, both of homes and of society when confronted in public by criminals and possibly terrorists, must decide what carries more weight.
What Rudy Giuliani says now as he runs for president. Or what he has done in the past.
Because the gun-grabbers are still out there, pushing for more laws, despite what Giuliani's posters claim to the contrary, that gun control is a dead issue. In response to the latest Salt Lake City shooting, Carolyn McCarthy was again calling for more gun control laws. So if Rudy Giuliani becomes president in January 2009, and there is a school shooting two months later, will he resist call for gun control? Or stand with Carolyn McCarthy as he did in 1997, exploiting tragedy to call for more federal gun control laws?
Rudy is further left on most issues than even the ghastly Hillary Clinton. Pointing that out is an clear-visioned act of patriotic courage.
If it makes you feel better, here's what he said last week.
HANNITY: The issue of guns has come up a lot. When people talk about mayor Rudy Giuliani New York city had some of the toughest gun laws in the country. Do you support the right of people to carry handguns.GIULANI: I understand the second amendment. People have the right to bear arms. As mayor of New York I took over at a very, very difficult time. We were averaging--
HANNITY: You inherited the gun laws in New York.
GIULIANI: Yeah. And I used them to help bring down homicide. We reduced homicide I think by 65, 70%. And some of it was by taking guns out of the streets of New York City. So if you are talking about a city like New York, a densely populated area like New York, I think it's appropriate. You might have different laws other places and maybe a lot of this gets resolved based on different states, different communities, making decisions. We do have a federal system of government in which you have the ability to accomplish that.
HANNITY: So you would support the state's rights to choose on specific gun laws?
GIUILANI: Yeah. A place like New York that is densely populated or maybe a place that is experiencing a serious crime problem like a few cities are now. Thank goodness not New York but some other cities. Maybe you have one solution there and in other place more rural, more suburban, other issues you have a different set of rule.
HANNITY: Generally speaking do you think it's acceptable if citizens have the right to carry a handgun?
GIULIANI: It's part of the constitution. People have the right to bear arms. Then restrictions have to be reasonable and sensible. You can't just remove that right. You got to regulate consistent with the second amendment
HANNITY: How do you feel about the Brady Bill on assault ban.
GIULIANI: I was in favor of that as part of the crime bill. Because I thought it was necessary to get the crime bill passed and also necessary with the 2000 murders or so we were looking at, 1800 to 2000 murders that I could use that in a tactical way to reduce crime. And I did.
In Rudy's opinion the 2nd amendment is subject to the "tactical" necessities of law enforcement on state and local level.
Accept the fact that some of us don't think the 2nd amendment is governed by "reasonable and sensible" as defined by Rudy Guiliani.
Be positive, go on to other issues.
In Rudy's case I'd skip social issues.
Try leadership and the WOT.
I'm not a supporter, but he isn't.
It would be a lot less constant if Rudy didn't have so many liberal positions.
Second....who's your candidate?
I guess it's asking you too much to ask you to read my tagline. But, then again, you're a Rudy booster, so those kind of subtleties often exceed the grasp of such.
Third, I believe there is a Pre-9-11 and After-9-11 mentality.
I agree entirely. 9-11 showed that we need armed citizens to prevent Islamifascists with box cutters from taking out our financial nerve center. So gun rights are a critical issue in that department. Rudy apparently believes that only the authorities are those who should be allowed to project force in defense of self and the homeland, not the great unwashed. However, it was a small, brave, UNARMED contingent of the great unwashed who ended the terrorist attack on Flight 93 - and they paid with their lives for the idiocy of a federally-mandated gun-free zone. Imagine if one of the passengers or the pilots had been armed. 9-11 would not have happened.
Last, can we listen to what the man says in today's world rather than dig up his druggy college days?
Please point out where I dug up what he said in his druggy college days. Last I checked, Rudy Giuliani was not a druggy undergrad at SUNY-Binghampton in 1997 when he supported Bill-Clinton sponsored gun control in response to the Empire State terrorist shootings. He was the mayor of NY at the time and a tad above a college student in station and in ability to influence the gun-grabber debate.
Now, if I am wrong in that regard, please correct me, but I do recall he was mayor in 1997. Especially since the Rudy boosters point out that his tenure during that time is proof he should be president, for some strange reason.
As one who disagrees with many of his positions, the question you raise concerns me the most. I certainly don't think he's dishonest, but my impression is that his worldview is based on the possible, positions be *amned. An opportunist.
It goes beyond that.
Rudy basically made a federalist case for some states having stricter gun-control laws that others.
He said NYC and the state of New York needed more gun control than, say, Oklahoma.
However, after the 1997 Empire State Building terrorist shooting, he demanded the Fedgov do something about other states that had looser gun control laws than New York.
Which means his newly-found federalist position is just a bunch of horse hooey.
And since that is the case, just how viable is his stated believe in only appointing strict constructionists to SCOTUS? Federalism, after all, is the first cousin of strict constructionism. So if Rudy is BSing us about the first, why should we believe that he is being truthful about the second?
Do either of you guys have a copy of his vulnerability study that was leaked last month. I want to compare & contrast it to the copy of his vulnerability study that was leaked when he was running for mayor in 1993. PDF copy at: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0212072giuliani1.html
scroll down. It has some real gems in it.
He's good on terror, and I admit that's the primary issue facing us, but I don't think he has an edge on Newt-Hunter-McCain in that regard.
I have a copy of the 126-page document that Giuliani lost in November. There's no vulnerability study in it. There is a handwritten page that has a couple of bullets on it of perceived weaknesses and the press has made much ado about those. But that's it. The rest is budgets, strategies, lists of potential BIG donors and campaign leaders, etc. It's a huge document but without some real digging there's not too much there to use.
The 1993 vulnerability study, on the other hand, is the gift that keeps on giving. Only 27 pages of that have been released and I'm trying to get the other 423 pages. I think the one person that holds it and has been releasing it is leaking it out in dribs and drabs to maximize the damage. I'm impatient and want it all now. We'll just have to wait and see what else gets released.
Its probably for the best. I'm sure it will come out in time for the primaries. :)
I particularly enjoyed the part where they described how they would go to any lengths to distance themselves from the Reagan Republicans.
"The Giuliani campaign should emphasize its candidate's independence from traditional national Republican policies. Especially useful in this strategy is Giuliani's role in overturning a Reagan administration attempt to throw disabled people off of Social Security rolls, his prosecution of Republican elected officials -- especially his authorization for calling his boss, Attorney General Edwin Meese III, a sleaze, and his un-Republican views on many social issues of concern to New Yorkers, like abortion, gun control and bias protection for homosexuals."
When you read these strategies, isn't it kinda creepy. You see the same MO here everyday, except they have flipflopped in the other direction.
My father, who in 2000 was somewhat jacked into Texas politics, told me that the Bush camp hired private detectives to see what dirt they could find on Bush and report back.
And I can see why that is smart politics. If your private D can find it, so can opposition researchers.
But it also would be a nice change for a guy to say, "here's my past, here is what some say is my dirt, it's on the table, judge for yourself."
Oops, that's what Hunter did after the House bank scandal. And he also is the only Congresscritter to make public his earmarks for public inspection.
I wish more pubbies would do that. No one is perfect. But the better ones show their warts instead of covering them up.
BUMP to an excellent post
Do you mean that if Rudy is the nominee, you are voting for Hillorat orare you staying home? What message will Hillorat be sending?
Don`t know but I` not worried about that. The War is what really matters now.
If pilots had been allowed to be armed prior to 9-11, 9-11 would not have happened. That is the importance of proper 2nd Amendment thinking. Rudy instead has taken guns away from long-term NYC permit holders. He confuses taking away legal guns with fighting crime. Which makes me think he will also confuse taking away legal guns with fighting terrorism.
Rudy supported Bill Clinton's call for more gun control in 1997 after a shooting incident at the Empire State Building. So I don't buy that argument.
2- Right now the most important issue is the War. He`s on the side of the angels , why try to knock him out now?Plenty of time for that later.
Quite the contrary. We are being told that Rudy's momentum is invincible and that the front-loaded primary schedule next year makes it impossible to stop him. So we have to start now - due to the very words of his supporters.
3- He said that he believes that the 2nd amendment is unbreakable with some reasonable local controls. Most Americans can live with that.
Except that with the 1997 shootings, he supported the fedgov imposing standards HE WANTED on other states. That means he is not being truthful about federalism and gun laws. Plus, I never found the state-by-state exemption in the 2nd Amendment that he is talking about.
4-If he comes out for increased gun control, it`s over, he won`t win the nomination
He won't win either way. That's the entire problem.
Rudy has time, if he gives a damn, to mend bridges. He must be sincere, no condecension. It cannot be a "kin I git me a huntin' liscense hyar" stunt like Kerry pulled.
I've been involved in the RKBA battle for 50 years. I know that when I say, "out of my cold, dead hands", many of you just chalk it up as a bluff. It is no such thing.
Don't get into the idea that you can screw the RKBA voters, because "we have no other place to go", that may be the biggest miscalculation you ever make.
Well, just exactly where are you going to go? Was that supposed to be scary? What`s scary is President Clinton all over again.
The GOP owes me, for unwavering support, from 1963 to date.
I expect reciprocation. We either honor and defend The Constitution, or, we are not Republicans.
If you are truly concerned, enter your voice, you tell
Rudy that his take on gun control is unacceptable, even if you own no guns, or have any interest in them. Don't go splitting the party further by demanding that a major faction of the party takes a hit. There is no doubt that the party is in danger of splitting, and some part of that is YOUR fault.
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