He's trying to appeal to the kook liberal base of the Democrat party which hates guns and who are the mostly likely to turn out and vote in the primary.

Screw him. He just lost my support. He was whack on the war in Iraq, anyway.

He's simply a politician looking for votes. When the votes were from gun supporters, he was a gun supporter. Now that he needs votes in the Dem primaries in the "Eeeek, a gun" states, he's sliding in their direction.

If you read the transcript, it's obvious that he really doesn't know much about the issue, especially from a Constitutional viewpoint. He lets Russert get away with a line about "Uzi machine guns" and defining the whole gun control issue as about hunting.

He's just parroting what his pollsters have told him is the maximum vote getting line.