Third Way Dispatch

A little-noticed oddity of the 2008 presidential election field is that the three leading candidates for the Republican nomination have, at one time or another, gone to war with the NRA and its allies on the gun issue.

After six years of thumb-twiddling boredom – the issue has been off the radar in elections and in Congress – the gun lobby must have been a bit shocked when they realized what they faced: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, all once proud champions of sensible gun laws, are the odds-on favorites to carry the GOP banner.

Consider their histories:

McCain was the lead sponsor of federal legislation to close the gun show loophole. In 2000, he appeared in television ads in Colorado urging voters to pass a ballot initiative closing the loophole there.

Romney signed a state ban on assault weapons into law as Governor of Massachusetts. And as the Boston Globe has reported, he said during a debate in 2002 that he supported his state’s tough gun laws and vowed that he would not “chip away at them” because they “protect us and provide for our safety”

Giuliani aggressively went after illegal gun traffickers when he was mayor, and he filed a lawsuit against a bunch of major gun manufactures and dealers. He’s on record supporting tougher gun laws, including the assault weapons ban.

Now, the gun lobby is not subtle in responding to perceived threats. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre gave a speech six months after 9-11 comparing our old organization, Americans for Gun Safety, to al Qaeda and our founder to Osama bin Laden. LaPierre concluded, not without some hyperbole, that we were “a far greater threat to your freedom than any foreign force”.

So it’s no surprise that the NRA responded to this problem with overwhelming firepower.

First, they attacked John McCain, slathering his caricature on their magazine covers and calling him “one of the premier flag-carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment.” McCain buckled like he was gut-shot – he has stopped talking about guns (despite the fact that the gun show loophole remains open in most states), and he just brought on James Jay Baker, once the NRA’s lead man in Washington, as a strategist for his “kitchen cabinet.”

Then they took on Mitt Romney. After getting peppered with criticism for his gun positions, Romney, who does not own a gun, now calls himself a “proud” NRA member. He even toured a gun show with the NRA’s chief lobbyist Chris Cox, (the guy who took over for McCain’s kitchen-mate Baker).

Most recently, they trained their sights on Rudy Giuliani. In a press release this week, an NRA ally called the National Shooting Sports Federation warned: “Giuliani No Friend to Gun Owners.”

How Giuliani will respond is not yet clear – as the NSSF notes, there are conflicting signals out of his camp about where he stands today on guns.

But if Rudy Giuliani is anything, he’s tough. We hope that he treats these thugs the way he treated them back when he was cleaning up New York one turnstile-jumper at a time.

Our advice to Rudy: tell the NRA and its minions that you will not be cowed, and stick to your guns: you are a strong supporter of the rights of law-abiding citizens to own firearms. But rights come with responsibilities. And anyone who isn’t responsible about owning, selling, or using their guns should lose those rights.