I went to Rudy Giuliani's speech at the NRA's "Celebration of American Values" in Washington today and found his pitch to be pretty shrewd. The heart of Giuliani's case was that he and the NRA faithful share a similar set of, well, values, even if they operationalize them in different ways. Giuliani dwelled on how his work as mayor and U.S. attorney focused mostly on fighting crime and restoring order, which was similar to the rationale a lot of the more orthodox speakers offered up in defense of gun ownership. (Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell argued that Canada, which has much stricter gun laws than we do, suffers much higher rates of armed robberies when its citizens are home--a fact he attributed to lower rates of gun ownership.) Giuliani also argued that his tenure in New York marked the end of an "excessive adherence to left-wing ideology" which blamed everyone but the criminal for violent crime. The major change his administration brought about was that "we said everything else contributes to crime, but what actually causes crime is people." This, of course, sounded a lot like the NRA's refrain that "guns don't kill people, people kill people," which Rudy subsequently alluded to. Giuliani also explained that reading the recent federal circuit decision striking down Washington, D.C.'s gun-ban helped crystallize his thinking on the second amendment, as did--surprise!--September 11. (Both of these things made him more sympathetic to gun rights, naturally.) It's the kind of conversion story that might strain credulity under most circumstances. But when you have another candidate claiming that a discussion of stem-cell science with a Harvard professor clarified his pro-life views, I don't think it's so outlandish. That said, Rudy's sale seemed somewhat less than complete when I surveyed a dozen or so NRA members at lunch time. (Actually, the sale seemed less than complete even during the speech. Rudy received several rounds of polite applause, but nothing remotely approaching rapturous--or even the general warmth Fred Thompson enjoyed during his comparatively glib remarks.) Most of the people I spoke to respected Rudy for showing up, but most also found him a little weaselly. (Though one couple from Indiana did say he put them at ease enough to support him should he become the nominee.) Two things stood out to these people in particular: The first was Giuliani's repeated invocation of strict-constructionism--in Rudy's telling, the idea that it doesn't matter what he or anyone else personally thinks about guns, since the Constitution very explicitly protects the right to own one, and since a strict-constructionst judge--the kind he'd appoint--would affirm that right. Several people told me this sounded like a convenient fig leaf for someone who was distinctly un-passionate about gun-rights, and that they weren't particularly reassured by it. The second stumbling point was the lawsuit Giuliani initiated against gun manufacturers in 2000, which has just now reached a federal appeals court. When asked about this during the Q&A that followed his speech, Rudy said the lawsuit had subsequently moved in a direction he didn't agree with. He then retreated to the safer terrain of the D.C. gun-ban decision and 9/11, stressing again that they'd influenced his thinking since 2000. What he didn't do was concede that the lawsuit had been a mistake. To the contrary, Giuliani defended his initial decision to pursue it, framing it as just another instance of him using every method at his disposal to reduce crime. This, too, stuck in the craw of a lot of the NRA members I talked to. Several told me they wished he'd just admit the lawsuit had been misguided, rather that rationalize it and distance himself from it after the fact. All in all, my sense was that Rudy helped himself a bit--you probably won't see a mass exodus of gun owners from the GOP if he wins the nomination--but he hardly won himself many active supporters today. --Noam Scheiber