The best moment in the “Meet the Press” broadcast with Wayne LaPierre Sunday was when NBC’s David Gregory asked the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association about Mayor Bloomberg. Mr. Gregory* quoted His Honor as mocking the big civil rights organization for allegedly losing clout in Washington. Mr. LaPierre responded that he knows one thing about the American people. “They value their freedom.” When the “reality of the consequences” of what the politicians in Washington “and the media and the elites” want to do with the Second Amendment rights of Americans becomes clear, Mr. LaPierre predicted, the American people will “do what they’ve historically done — they’ll defend the freedom.”

Americans, Mr. LaPierre asserted, “they see people like Mayor Bloomberg, New York City — you know the way it works up there? If you’re rich and you’re famous, you get your permit. If you’re a .300 hitter with the Mets, you get a permit. If you’re a celebrity, you get a permit. If you’re a big developer, you get a permit. If you’re a Wall Street executive, you get a permit. If you’re one of the mayor’s buddies, you get your permit. If you’re the guy in the Bronx out there at the scene of the crime, most in need of the protection, you’re flat out of luck. What the N.R.A.’s about, we’re about the average guy. We’re about the non-celebrity.”

“The average guy in the country values his freedom,” Mr. LaPierre said, and “doesn’t believe the fact he can own a gun is part of the problem, and doesn’t like the media and all these high profile politicians blaming him . . .” It happens that in our long newspaper life we have come to believe that Mr. LaPierre is speaking a profound truth. We understand that New York’s newspapers, which we love beyond measure, have been having a field day making fun of the NRA leader. It’s a grand tradition. Yet what Mr. LaPierre knows is that the basic architecture of America includes restrictions on the government and the reservation of rights to the American people that they view as part of the national bargain.

Mr. LaPierre was followed on Meet the Press by Senator Schumer, who sought to characterize Mr. LaPierre as extreme. He didn’t lay a glove on him. Mr. LaPierre would no doubt suggest that it is Mr. Schumer who is extreme. The fact is that, in sharp contradistinction to the rest of America, New York City has been living way outside that basic architecture of the article of the Bill of Rights that the great constitutional commentators have called the “palladium of our liberty.” What Mr. LaPierre knows is that almost no other jurisdiction in America operates as far afield of the Second Amendment freedom as does New York.

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* Mr. Gregory is, according to the Drudge Report, under investigation by the District of Columbia police for brandishing, from a studio in the Columbia District, a magazine that holds more bullets than permitted under local law. It is the Sun’s position that it would be as inappropriate to prosecute Mr. Gregory for possessing such a magazine as it would to prosecute any other person possessing such a magazine — absent intent to use the magazine for illegal purposes.