Rick Perry advocates gun rights in Iowa

{mosads}Perry, speaking at an Iowa meet-and-greet in Manchester, Iowa, during his two-week bus tour in the early-voting state, responded to a question on gun rights and the Second Amendment.

“This administration in particular I happen to think is in a war on a number of values in this country,” Perry said, also a reference back to an ad running on TV in Iowa where he accused Obama of having a “war on religion.”

Perry’s campaign, struggling to regain a share of the polls, has turned up the heat in Iowa, running a series of TV ads and launching the bus tour that has Perry demonstrating one of his strengths: retail politics. It’s too early to say whether it’s working; a new Insider Advantage poll on Monday had Perry at 16 percent among likely Iowa caucus-goers, while a new Public Policy Poll released the same day had him at 4 percent.

Gun rights have not floated to the top of the campaign topics this cycle, although Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa) sought to hit Mitt Romney on his stance on the topic in an op-ed for a paper in southwestern Iowa last week.