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What I Meant Was…

September 24th, 2007

Formerly pro-gun-control Giuliani trying to win over the NRA by explaining his support of a gun control lawsuit:

“I also think that there are some major intervening events — September 11, which cast somewhat of a different light on the Second Amendment, doesn’t change it fundamentally but perhaps highlights the necessity of it.”

Um, okay. So, is he saying that the terrorists on 9/11 would have been foiled if everyone on board the planes were allowed to fly armed?

Or is Giuliani simply pandering without respect to reason?

Either way, he’s a hypocritical idiot. With all due respect to “America’s Mayor.”

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  1. September 24th, 2007 at 00:39 | #1

    So, is he saying that the terrorists on 9/11 would have been foiled if everyone on board the planes were allowed to fly armed?

    No, no, no. That would have been crazy.

    The smart thinking is: If everyone on the streets of New York was packing heat, they could have shot the planes down before they hit the buildings.

  2. Luis
    September 24th, 2007 at 09:52 | #2

    Wow. That’s almost not funny, considering that I have met Second Amendment types who actually have argued, seriously, that there should be no limit to the arming of individuals, up to and including tanks and missiles.

  3. September 24th, 2007 at 18:13 | #3

    Giuliani is pandering to the NRA.

  4. September 24th, 2007 at 18:38 | #4

    Wow. That’s almost not funny, considering that I have met Second Amendment types who actually have argued, seriously, that there should be no limit to the arming of individuals, up to and including tanks and missiles.

    You’re right. The hardcore NRA types are beyond belief. I was just looking at a NYT editorial that demonstrates this. The piece urged California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign a bill requiring that new semi-automatic weapons be manufactured with a technology that would make it easier to associate the gun with bullets fired by that gun. Of course, the NRA is against the bill. The editorial does not explain their reasoning, but I’m sure it’s nothing I’d much buy in any case.

    My point is this: the NRA loves to talk about “responsible gun owners” and never tires of chanting their favorite mantra: “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will own guns.” Yet every time something is proposed that would make it easier to crack down on criminal use of guns, the NRA goes, um, ballistic.

    I think their core principle is the slippery slope argument, that if they allow any regulation to come into law, then the anti-gun nuts like me will try to take another step.

    Viewed in the abstract, this is good politics. Absolutist stances are easy to craft into sound bites, which in turn are easily memorized and parroted by mouth-breathers.

    Viewed in reality, of course, it’s nuts.

  5. September 25th, 2007 at 15:10 | #5

    Well, to be fair, many of the so-called “gun control” measures that purport to make it harder for criminals to get and use guns would really only serve to stop or slow down law abiding people. Waiting periods are not going to stop a guy from sticking a gun in your face and taking your watch and wallet, for example.

    Some of the gun control measures probably would have a bit of an effect, but not much- like the proposed restrictions for gun show sales. Still, the vast majority of sales at gun shows are from law-abiding (in a general sense) citizens to other law-abiding citizens.

    Getting back to the original post, though- Giuliani (and Romney and Thompson, the other main Republican front-runners) are crass liars trying to have their positions both ways. When they were in charge of their liberal city/state (or working for more liberal clients as lobbyists), they happily espoused liberal positions; now they’re hoping to be President, and so they’re sucking up to any/all special interest groups on the righty side of the political spectrum.

  6. Luis
    September 25th, 2007 at 22:36 | #6

    Well, to be fair, many of the so-called “gun control” measures that purport to make it harder for criminals to get and use guns would really only serve to stop or slow down law abiding people.

    Paul, really, do you still believe that? It is demonstrably false. Waiting periods do not hurt the law-abiding. It’s an inconvenience, not a roadblock–it prevents not one single law-abiding person from getting a gun. If you decide to give up on buying a gun because you have to wait 48 hours, then you don’t really want a gun so much, do you? Hell, most people wait that long for a book to get sent from Amazon.com. And the waiting-period measure, without doubt, tamps down far more deaths by passion-incurred homicides than it causes for people who need immediate protection and don’t know that they can appeal to local authorities for an exemption.

    Criminals, on the other hand, are massively hurt by such waiting periods, because more often than not they are put into place in order to allow for a thorough background check. And as I reported in my gun control post, after such checks-and-waiting-periods were instituted in four states (California, Florida, Virginia and Maryland), in just four years 47,000 illegal gun purchases were stopped, and thousands of wanted criminals arrested. Does that sound like it’s not inconveniencing criminals?

    Some of the gun control measures probably would have a bit of an effect, but not much- like the proposed restrictions for gun show sales. Still, the vast majority of sales at gun shows are from law-abiding (in a general sense) citizens to other law-abiding citizens.

    And the vast majority of people getting on airplanes are not terrorists. Should we drop those security measures?

    If it is true that the vast majority of gun show buyers are not buying for criminals, does that mean that we should allow a huge, gaping hole through which still thousands of gun smugglers buy millions of guns to sell to criminals?

    And if your reply is that the criminals will get their guns elsewhere, I would remind you that they are already paying a heavy premium to get the guns from the smugglers, which says that they cannot easily get them elsewhere.

    The restrictions on gun shows proposed usually simply require the background checks–which you cannot realistically deny are a no-brainer–or they would prevent the sale of more than, say, three guns to an individual.

    Say what you want about such a restriction, all it would do would be to slow down collectors. It would not stop a single person from arming themselves. And if the true value of free access to guns is self-protection, then one is all you need. But you can’t tell me that putting up massive roadblocks to criminals getting guns takes a back seat to making a gun collector unwilling to go to the trouble of acquiring a license to put up dozens of guns on his wall and not wait a year or two in order to do so.

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