THE NATION - Giuliani tries to bury NRA hatchet - As New York's mayor he opposed guns, but 9/11 perhaps 'highlights the necessity' for rights, he tells the group.
washington -- Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani renounced anti-gun positions he took when he was a moderate mayor of New York, and asked the National Rifle Assn. on Friday to support his presidential candidacy.
Giuliani's overture to gun owners is considered 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.
But 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 suggesting leaders of the group were 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 Republican voters 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 that state and local governments filed seeking millions in damages from gun manufacturers for what the plaintiffs said 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 terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, cast a new light on 2nd 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.
"Some people call it excessive," Giuliani said. "I thought it was intense. But the reality is I was trying to achieve a result, which is to reduce crime in New York. That is not necessarily what is needed now. It certainly isn't the interpretation that I think is the correct interpretation of the 2nd Amendment."
As mayor from 1994 to 2001, Giuliani supported a federal ban on assault weapons. Congress passed such a ban, but it has since expired. Giuliani does not support any new federal legislation restricting gun ownership, he said Friday.
