Buy me a gun, Rudy by Bruce Walker

Buy me a gun, Rudy

By Bruce Walker

April 17, 2007

I was once an enthusiastic supporter of Rudy Giuliani and I am still an admirer of the magnificent job that he did as Mayor of New York. Rudy was also an absolutely fearless federal prosecutor who genuinely put his life on the line to break the back of organized crime. He has also been a loyal Republican, campaigning and helping Republicans - including those whose policies he may have disagreed with - when Republicans needed all the help they could get. There is a lot of good in Rudy. He would make a much better president than any Democrat. But, as his presidential bid begins to wilt, it is obvious that there are a lot of problems with Rudy.

Surely the most disappointing is his position on funding abortions. Although, to some extent, he has been misquoted, the gist of what Rudy said is just what most people believe: Giuliani supports tax dollars being used for abortion because he believes it is a constitutional right. And that is wrong on so very many levels.

Roe v. Wade is horrific constitutional law. It is, indeed, unconstitutional law. Before that odious ruling, abortion was legal or illegal depending upon what the people of the several states, through their elected officials, decided it should be. Abortion was treating just like murder or self-defense, both of which are still governed by state law (not federal judicial ukase.) What Roe v. Wade did - and Rudy knows this! - is to take what had been legal in some states, like his own state of New York, because the legislature of that state wanted it legal, and instead require that abortion be legal in every state. The dangers of this ought to be apparent to someone as bright as Rudy: a Supreme Court could reverse Roe v. Wade and declare that abortion was always murder. It was not a "pro-choice" ruling. It was simply the theft by the Supreme Court of constitutional powers clearly granted to the states.

But that is not the only flaw in Rudy's position on funded abortions. It betrays a notion that government programs solve problems. Even if one believes that abortion should be legal, should the costs of abortions not be paid by the person wanting it? Or, if that person is poor, should not charitable organizations or families pay for the abortions? Requiring taxpayers, who have no choice about paying their taxes, to fund something morally repugnant to them is, itself, morally repugnant.

Even worse, Rudy has attempted to "clarify" his position by saying that because there is a right to an abortion in the Constitution, then there is a duty for government to help those who cannot "exercise" that constitutional right. What??? Since when did government become responsible for paying for citizens exercising their constitutional rights? If it was not abundantly clear that Rudy is not dumb like, say, John Kerry or Howard Dean or Al Gore, then I would say this sort of reasoning is downright dumb. But Rudy Giuliani is not dumb at all.

The Second Amendment guarantees the right to own guns. This is not a constitutional right that is in the shadows, as the ridiculous reasoning of Roe v. Wade finds, somewhere around the Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The right to bear arms is right there in the Second Amendment. It is spelled out. Moreover, the right to bear arms is predicated on the right of self-defense: the right to defend oneself and one's family from danger. This is exactly the sort of right which Roe v. Wade purports to assert: a woman has the right to protect her reproductive processes.

So if government has a "duty" to pay for women who want to have recreational abortions, then, Rudy, does government have a duty to pay for my firearms? Conservatives are a bit antsy when you have said that gun control in New York is way different than gun control in Flyover Country, because New York had such a serious crime problem, etc. We could, however, buy that if you bought the argument that abortion, too, is an issue that each state should decide for itself. New York, again, had legal abortion at the time of Roe v. Wade. The decision was an attempt to cram the moral thinking of New York down the throats of us yahoos in Flyover Country. But if you believe that the law, as passed by that legislative body we call the Supreme Court, provides rights, then surely those rights should be the same everywhere. And if constitutional rights should be funded by taxpayers, then I have a request: Rudy, buy me a gun.