Thompson Brings Gun Control to the Fore
August 22, 2007
By MICHAEL COOPER
nytimes.com
Former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee, who has not officially declared his presidential ambitions, took a not-very-veiled swipe yesterday at the leading Republican candidate, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, for supporting gun control.
Mr. Thompson, who starred in “Law & Order,” wrote on his Web site: “When I was working in television, I spent quite a bit of time in New York City. There are lots of things about the place I like, but New York gun laws don’t fall in that category.”
Then he decried a recent court ruling on a gun case, writing that “the same activist federal judge from Brooklyn who provided Mayor Giuliani’s administration with the legal ruling it sought to sue gun makers, has done it again.”
The critique amounted to an unusual dive into presidential politicking for a man who is barred under federal rules from acting like a candidate. Mr. Thompson is officially only “testing the waters” of a presidential bid, a status that limits his ability to raise money and engage in active campaigning. But his comments suggest that he is ready to come out against the other contenders in the Republican field.
In his comments, Mr. Thompson went on to suggest that high gun ownership rates may be related to the nation’s low violent crime rates.
The Giuliani campaign responded. “Those who live in New York in the real world — not on TV — know that Rudy Giuliani’s record of making the city safe for families speaks for itself,” said Katie Levinson, the Giuliani campaign’s communications director. “No amount of political theater will change that.”
Mr. Giuliani has been leading consistently in national polls of the Republican field. But his status has also opened him up to increasing scrutiny. On Monday, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts began running radio advertisements that questioned Mr. Giuliani’s reluctance to crack down on illegal immigration while he was mayor of New York.
The dust-up with Mr. Thompson was a reminder of the potency of the gun lobby in presidential politics, particularly in the Republican primary.
Mr. Giuliani was a strong proponent of gun control in his days as a federal prosecutor and later as mayor of New York. As mayor he called for a national system of gun licensing, and broke with many Republicans to back a ban on assault rifles.
But such views could put him at odds with some of the conservative voters who wield influence in a Republican primary — a tension that Mr. Thompson may have been trying to call attention to with his Web posting.
Mr. Giuliani’s campaign Web site calls him a strong supporter of the Second Amendment.
“When he was mayor of a city suffering an average of almost 2,000 murders a year, he protected people by getting illegal handguns out of the hands of criminals,” the site says. “As a result, shootings fell by 72 percent and the murder rate was cut by two-thirds. But Rudy understands that what works in New York doesn’t necessarily work in Mississippi or Montana.”
The Web site contains a video of Mr. Giuliani discussing the issue. “My position is that whatever my personal view is, the Constitution of the United States decides this,” he said in the video. “The Constitution of the United States says that you have a personal right to carry arms, to have arms.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company |
