Guiliani All Wrong on Second Amendment 
Now Guiliani has the religious right and the South's NASCAR dads to be concerned about. They fit solidly into the Republican Party's national constituency, and already there are strong warning signals being sounded that the former New York City mayor will not be able to rally the party's core constituencies.
With the Virginia Tech tragedy becoming a major national focus this week, the subject shifted abruptly for the need to monitor gun purchases. There was no better time than the present for Guiliani to assert himself in a manner to assure those who might otherwise dismiss him as a Republican national aberration due to positions he advocated in New York.
Guiliani sounded the same note that has been heard so many times through the years by the gun lobby as he solidly embraced the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, proclaiming that the Founding Fathers in their wisdom saw fit to grant the citizenry the right to bear arms and not be infringed upon in that pursuit.
What the gun lobby and other anti-gun control zealots leave out is what precedes those strong and seemingly definitive words that are recited as a mantra. A reference is made in earlier words to the necessity of maintaining a standing militia, and that therefore the rights of citizens to bear arms shall not be infringed upon.
To understand the dynamics behind the Second Amendment it is therefore necessary to, as they say in legal circles, "look at the four corners of the document" to determine what the framers were saying. At the time that the Second Amendment was written our forebears complained about British troops quartering themselves in their homes.
A militia was formed to help insure the privacy of the citizenry against invasion by British soldiers. When seen in that context the words hold no meaning in the context of a money-bloated gun lobby seeking to thwart Congress from enacting legislation for mandatory background checks on prospective gun purchasers.
The sad element concerning Guiliani's comment was that, considering his background as a top federal prosecutor, you get the feeling he knows better. He sounded a lot like Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with his current "conversion" to principles advocated by the Republican right while running away from positions that made him acceptable to voters of a state with more liberal voting trends.
Can we expect to see Guiliani pull a John Kerry from the 2004 presidential campaign and go hunting with gun enthusiasts? Will we see him wearing his familiar New York Yankees baseball cap while trudging in the brush with thick boots?
If so he will look as out of place as Kerry did. He should also proceed with caution in case noted Wyoming gun and hunting enthusiast Dick Cheney is in the same party.
KEYWORDS: Rudolph Guiliani, Gun Control, Political Expediency, Mitt Romney
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