Sacramento, Calif. -- Following his triumphal address to and welcome by the California Republican Convention yesterday, Rudy Giuliani addressed two issues on which his position had stirred controversy among some party conservatives: gun control and illegal immigration.

At a packed news conference following his luncheon speech here to GOPers here at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, I asked the former New York mayor and '08 presidential hopeful about the doubts raised regarding his answers to those two issues that were raised at a private meeting he held with state legislators the previous evening.

"I never come away from a meeting with everyone agreeing with me," said Giuliani, quoting Abraham Lincoln as saying no one agrees with any politician 100% of the time.

Regarding gun control, the New Yorker told me "I used it effectively as mayor" with regard to handguns, that gun control was one of several of crime-fighting tools along with "increasing the number of police and the ‘broken windows’ policy [the famous concept of sociologist James Q. Wilson that crime "starts with broken windows" and the careless practice needs to be punished]." As a result of his policy, Giuliani said, "we reduced homicides by 65% while I was mayor."

But, he quickly added, "I understand the Second Amendment" and, regarding owning guns for hunting or collections, Giuliani believes "there is a right to do that."

Turning to illegal immigration, the 62-year-old Giuliani told me, "The emphasis has to be on security” and that terrorism has made the issue "different from what it was in the '80s and '90s. . .It's a national security matter." He endorsed secure borders and, specifically, supports a "highly technological fence "along the U.S.-Mexican border to determine "who's coming in and who isn’t, and know who they are."

To "deal with people here," Giuliani said, the U.S. needs to ‘find out who they are."

"Do I support a measure that would put [illegal immigrants] here legally?” he asked rhetorically, and then answered his own question positively but added that they must "acquire citizenship and read and write English."

Returning to my opening comment that one of the state legislators he met was less than satisfied with him immigration stance, Giuliani said another legislator at the same meeting who was from California's Central Valley agreed completely with him because "he's from the biggest agricultural producing area in the U.S. and he sees the need for people who can be productive."

"Immigration, Assimilation, and Americanization" is how the New Yorker summed up his approach to the issue that a majority of the conventioneers I spoke to say is most critical to them.