A reader chides me (and/or a previous reader whose email I approvingly posted) on Rudy getting some traction with Second Amendment enthusiasts:

“Derb—It would appear to me that all of the suggestions regarding how Rudy can suck up………..uh, appeal to………the NRA are examples of what the GOP constantly accuses the Democrats of, being phoney. Rudy is NOT an ally of the NRA in any way at all. He didn’t ‘pack heat’ when he was mayor, and didn’t believe anyone other than the cops had any acceptable reason to. He doesn’t favor a right of people to bear arms, expect a carefully proscribed set of them (no handguns, no automatics, no semi-automatics, etc, etc, I’d guess). I suspect that he’d concede flintlocks and perhaps shotguns, but I’m not sure about that. He sued gun manufacturers for deaths caused by their procuct, for God’s sake. Guns don’t kill people, gun manufacturers do, apparently. Going duck hunting, carrying a sholder holster, or riding on a tank with a helmet, are all bad ideas.”

[Derb] I am well chid. Nobody expects (well, **I** don’t expect) politicians to be paragons of flawless honesty, but there are lines, and I agree that the “packing heat” ploy is over those lines. I don’t agree, though, that there is nothing Rudy could do to … appeal to NRA members. (I, by the way, am an NRA lifetime member, so he can plainly appeal to SOME of us.) A guy can change his mind; and moving from mayoralty of a city to Chief Executive of the nation offers a lot of things to change your mind about.

As to where changing your mind shades into “flip-flopping,” well, that’s a matter of judgment. That there is nothing whatever that Rudy–one of the great law’n’order politicians of our time!–can do to square himself with at least some gun lovers, I do not accept.