The Trail

But he just felt a little naked walking around town without all his rights.

"Anybody who knows me knows I've always cared deeply about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms," Thompson wrote Tuesday in an e-mail to supporters. "So I've always felt sort of relieved when I flew back home to where that particular civil liberty gets as much respect as the rest of the Bill of Rights."

It doesn't take special insight to see the reference to former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose views on gun control have the potential to turn off a big chunk of Republican primary voters. Giuliani has tried to soften his opposition to gun use, forged during his service as a federal prosecutor and carried on in his years as a tough-on-crime mayor. "I used gun control as mayor," he said at a news conference in February. But "I understand the Second Amendment. I understand the right to bear arms."

Thompson's e-mail makes a special effort to mention 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. Last week, he created a bizarre justification to allow New York City to sue out-of-state gun stores that sold guns that somehow ended up in criminal hands in the Big Apple."

Thompson said New York's lawsuit reinforced for him the "need to protect states from other states that interfered in free commerce beyond their borders -- as New York is doing today. In this case, we need Federalism to protect states from a big bully in New York City."

But some New Yorkers liked the mayor's version of law and order more than Thompson did, at least according to Giuliani's communications director, Katie Levinson.

"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," she wrote. "No amount of political theater will change that."

-- Matthew Mosk

ONCE AGAIN

Me, President? Get Real, Says Citizen Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg is trying to say it as clearly as possible. Despite leaving the Republican Party to become an independent and having a Web site, MikeBloomberg.com, that promotes his achievements and includes links to articles speculating about a White House run, he is not running for president.

In an interview with former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who now hosts a show on the cable channel HDNet, Bloomberg offered a more believable denial.

"Nobody's going to elect me president of the United States," he told Rather. "What I'd like to do is to be able to influence the dialogue. I'm a citizen."

What would-be candidate would say this?

But with his billions of dollars, Bloomberg could bombard the airwaves with enough ads next summer to make Americans forget he ever said he wasn't running or couldn't win.

-- Perry Bacon Jr.