RUDY RIPS HESTON'S TAKE ON GUNS, CRIME (From 1997; Says Gun Control is the Reason for Less Crime)

NY Daily News via LexisNexis ^ | 05/19/1997 | Bob Liff

[Ultra Sonic 007]

Mayor Giuliani laid down the law to Moses yesterday, telling Charlton Heston that the city's gun laws did help reduce the homicide rate.

Heston, who delivered the law in "The Ten Commandments," said the city's plunging homicide rate shows that it is good police work not gun control laws that reduces crime.

"In New York City, until very recently, when Mayor Giuliani took office, it shared with Washington the worst murder record in America," Heston, who was recently elected a vice president of the National Rifle Association, said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"Both cities have absolutely Draconian prohibitions oh, never mind waiting periods," Heston said. "You cannot own a firearm in New York or Washington.

"Mayor Giuliani saw the light, though, and he changed his tack and started prosecuting criminals and throwing them in prison for long periods, and since he started doing that, the crime rate in New York has gone down," he said.

But Giuliani, who thanked Heston for the kind words about his crimefighting efforts, said the actor was wrong about why the city crime rate went down.

"It says to me that gun control works," Giuliani said of the drop in homicides. "New York City has the toughest gun control laws in America and it's reduced shootings by guns by more than 60%. If the rest of America could do what we're doing, then we'd probably get another 30% or 40% reduction."

[Jet Jaguar]

Insert “vote” and delete the first “for”.

[Jet Jaguar]

Only because he has a “R” following his name.

[lepton]

Enforcement of gun control laws did indeed have a positive effect...because there was enforcement of laws in general against the actions of bad people. Normally NYC only enforced the laws against good people. When Giuliani took office, the penalty for simply possessing a firearm was about 1.5 times as much for murdering someone with the firearm.

So while yes, his enforcement of gun control laws was an improvement over what Dinkins et al were doing, it is still inferior to common ownership by decent citizens.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

“Giuliani isn’t in favor of gun control. He was just supporting what his constituents wanted.”

---

It does not matter “what his constituents wanted”. The Constitution protects individual rights from the stupidity of “constituents”, just as it does from the evils of government. Are you sure you’re not a democrat? You sure don’t seem to understand what a constitutional republic is.

[EternalVigilance]

"... I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can't understand it, don't like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That's why the Second Amendment is America's first freedom. ..." - Charlton Heston

[Rodney King]

He believes in a law that keeps hand gun’s out of the hands of street thugs, I have no problem with Him.

So do I. But that's not what the NYC laws said. The NYC laws kept guns out of the hands of almost everybody.

[EternalVigilance]

"... The Founders' intent in framing the Second Amendment is perfectly clear and undeniable. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." Some anti-gun elitists declare this notion outdated. However, many constitutional scholars from this country's most prestigious universities agree that the Founders' intent is clear and irreversible: To "keep and bear arms" is a right for all law-abiding citizens. ..." - Charlton Heston, letter to the NY Times

[Rodney King]

Chill, and read my whole post, I was clearly making fun of the rudy supporters.

[EternalVigilance]

"... He [President Clinton] boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in prison. You know, the president has entertained more felons than that at fund-raising coffees in the White House, for Pete's sake. ..." - Charlton Heston

[EternalVigilance]

"... You know, the Bill of Rights guarantees every citizen the right to own and bear firearms. It doesn't say anything about how many, how much you can pay for them. That's in the Bill of Rights. That's a sacred document in our country. There's no other country in the world that has such a document. And you know what its purpose is? To prevent the federal government from interfering with private citizens' rights. ... If you will read what the Founding Fathers wrote when they were writing it – Jefferson, Mason, Madison, Patrick Henry, Tom Paine – every one of them wrote at great length that they were talking about the individual rights of individual citizens. ..." - Charlton Heston

[lepton]

In fact, I question your assertion that Dinkins didn't enforce the gun laws. As I recall, gun laws were some of the few laws he did enforce.

Based upon what I saw, he enforced them in a completely backwards way...but yes, he did enforce those laws more than pretty much anything but civil regulations that generated fines. Do you recall his election year campaign to double the collection of fines? Eeek!

[bruoz]

New York City Sues Gun Industry By Mayor Rudy Giuliani "On June 20th, I was pleased to announce that the City of New York filed a lawsuit against two dozen major gun manufacturers and distributors. This is an industry which profits from the suffering of innocent people. The lawsuit is intended to end the free pass that the gun industry has enjoyed for a very long time, which has resulted in too many avoidable deaths. The suit alleges a number of illegal practices on the part of the gun manufacturers, including: Deliberately manufacturing many more firearms than can be bought for legitimate purposes such as hunting and law enforcement, and knowingly targeting these excess guns to criminals, youths and other persons unqualified to buy firearms; Deliberately undermining New York City's gun control laws by flooding other markets which have less stringent gun laws with firearms that the manufacturers know are destined to be illegally resold in New York City; Ignoring the illegal practices of gun distributors, many of whom openly engage in the above practices; Refusing to manufacture safer guns, with features such as trigger locks and "personalization" measures that allow only authorized persons to fire the weapon. More than 30,000 Americans each year - including 4,200 children - die because of gun violence. In addition, the city has found evidence of advertisements by gun manufacturers that claim their guns don't show fingerprints. This feature serves no purpose unless the user is intending to use the weapon for illegal purposes. It is our hope that this suit will result in substantial financial awards to the City for the many ways in which illegal practices and illegal guns harm New Yorkers; including the $17 million dollars each year that are spent by the City's Health and Hospitals Corporation treating gun-shot wounds. Over the past six years, New York City has reduced crime and murder more than any City in the nation. Our success has been built, in large part, on the tireless efforts of the Police Department to remove guns from our streets. But 95% of the guns that our police seize come from outside the City of New York. Their job of keeping New York safe is made considerably more difficult because of less restrictive guns laws in other parts of the nation and because of the illegal and immoral practices of the gun industry. This lawsuit is an aggressive step towards restoring accountability to an industry that profits from the suffering of others."

This is why I will never vote for this SOB.

[EternalVigilance]

HESTON TAKING ON TIME WARNER’S PROMOTION OF “COP KILLER” ALBUM

(Conversation between host Tony Snow and Charlton Heston)

SNOW: “You have one of the great voices in the entertainment world. A few years ago, you showed up at a Time Warner stockholders meeting and started reading the lyrics from a rap album and just froze everybody in their tracks.”

HESTON: “That was that terrible album by Ice T called ‘Cop Killer.’ And I’m very proud of this, I really am. I owned some Time Warner stock and I went in and confronted their full board meeting and read the lyrics. I can’t repeat them on television.”

SNOW: “No, you can’t.”

HESTON: “And I shamed Time Warner, the largest entertainment conglomerate in the world, into firing Ice T and dropping the album. Now, he threatened to kill me. He hasn’t done that yet.”

SNOW: “I believe your quote was something like ‘Let him try.’”

HESTON: “Well, maybe I scared him. And I haven’t gotten a job from Warner Brothers since or a good notice in Time, but I’m as proud of that as anything I’ve ever done.”

[lepton]

Why makes this idiot a Republican again?

Because he lived in NYC, and compared to the nuts running around there he was an arch-conservative.

[James W. Fannin]

You’re still wondering?

[Rodney King]

Here is what I don’t understand, and I hope you could help me. Now, I think Rudy was a great mayor. I lived in NYC when he took over and he cleaned the place up in a week. I was at Columbia, which at the time was a marginal neighborhood, so one could really see the transformation.

As I said earlier, if I believed him on taxes and spending (and I still might) I would vote for him.

Now, if I worked for him, I would make the case that he was a great mayor, tought on crime, would be great for homeland security, defense, fighting the unions, etc. And, that he would be great on taxes and spending. I would say these are the big issues of our time, and that he is a man of his word. So, although he is basically pro choice and pro gun control, he has promised not to persue those.

That’s a pretty positve message.

Yet, that is not the message the Rudy supporters present on FR. The message the Rudy supporters present on FR is to lie and pretend that he is not pro-choice and anti-gun. They lie about stuff like why he endorsed cuomo, etc.

Rudy has a good story. Lying about it really isn’t helping him.

[EternalVigilance]

Heston was a real man.

I’d say what I think of Giuliani, but I’d probably have to go to rehab.

[George W. Bush]

The Constitution protects individual rights from the stupidity of “constituents”, just as it does from the evils of government.

You know, that's a great post. You would have been right at home here at FR during the pre-Bush years when this was a notably constitutional forum.

[RetiredArmy]

Rudi can yap until hell freezes over or his head explodes. NO ONE IN THIS FAMILY IS GOING TO VOTE FOR THE LIBERAL RINO!!!

[Rodney King]

Ahh, the good ‘ole days.