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Giuliani Hunts For NRA Support

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By MICHAEL FINNEGAN, Los Angeles Times

Published: September 22, 2007

WASHINGTON - Republican Rudy Giuliani distanced himself Friday from anti-gun positions he took when he was a moderate mayor of New York, and asked the National Rifle Association to support his presidential candidacy.

Giuliani's overture to gun owners was a crucial step in his quest to reassure social conservatives, an important Republican constituency, that he shares enough of their values to warrant the party nomination.

Even as he pledged to uphold the right to bear arms, Giuliani's past positions prompted attacks from Republican rivals at the NRA's Celebration of American Values conference in Washington. One of them, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, took Giuliani to task - although not by name - for once branding leaders of the group as extremists.

'My friends, gun owners are not extremists,' McCain said. 'You're the core of modern America.'

One of Giuliani's toughest political challenges is to reconcile his anti-gun stands in New York with the pro-gun views of Republicans in Iowa, South Carolina and other states with early contests in the nomination race. Facing a similar conundrum for supporting abortion rights, Giuliani has said that his personal view is that the procedure is morally wrong.

In Giuliani's clearest break from his mayoral record, he renounced the lawsuit that he ordered the city to file against gun makers in 2000. It was one of dozens of suits filed by state and local governments to recover millions of dollars in damages from gun manufacturers for what the plaintiffs alleged was reckless marketing.

'I think that lawsuit has gone in a direction that I probably don't agree with at this point,' Giuliani told several hundred gun-rights supporters at the conference.

The Sept. 11 attacks cast a new light on Second Amendment rights, he said, and 'maybe it highlights the necessity for them more.'

Giuliani described the suit as part of his aggressive approach to crime.

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