Given his record, Rudy Giuliani's pitch to the National Rifle Association is a tough one. He's referred to the group's members as "extremists"; he's fought the group on the assault-weapons ban; and he filed a federal lawsuit as mayor against the nation's gun manufacturers for violent crimes involving firearms. Indeed, he's blasted the gun industry as one that "profits from the suffering of innocent people."

With that in mind, Giuliani spoke to a skeptical audience yesterday at the NRA's national convention. Would he Sister Souljah the nation's largest gun group? Of course not. Would he flip-flop his way into their good graces? Well, sort of.

Yesterday, Giuliani backed away from the lawsuit, saying he might not uphold it if he were a judge.

"That lawsuit has taken several turns and several twists that I don't agree with," he said, without going into specifics. "I also think that there are some major intervening events -- September 11, which cast somewhat of a different light on the Second Amendment, doesn't change it fundamentally but perhaps highlights the necessity of it."

By any reasonable measure, this is a fairly silly thing to say. Giuliani couldn't even chalk it up to flubbing a question, since he was reading from a prepared text.* In other words, he meant to say that 9/11 helped change his mind on gun control.

Asked to explain the shift, a campaign spokesperson said Giuliani was "making a point that personal rights such as the 2nd Amendment are even more critical in a post-September 11th world."

It's hard to believe a serious presidential campaign could offer such a foolish rationale for obvious nonsense, and yet, here we are.

I'm generally not in the habit of offering advice to Republican presidential hopefuls, but I have an idea for the Giuliani campaign. As a way to save time at future appearances, perhaps one of his aides could give Giuliani a placard with the word "terrorism" on one side, and "9/11″ on the other. That way, whenever he's confronted with a challenge on any subject, he can simply point to the sign, instead of having to go to the trouble of coming up with an excuse to end up at the same point anyway.

* Update: An alert reader noted that Giuliani's answer was in response to a question from the audience, not the prepared text. My mistake.