“He’s sued gun manufacturers. He was supportive of Brady. He was supportive of things like assault weapon bans.”
A correct account of past Giuliani positions
The full quote from Mike Huckabee’s interview:
“One thing I have to admire about Rudy, and he was I think courageous to go to the NRA, because his past positions — he’s sued gun manufacturers. He was supportive of Brady. He was supportive of things like assault weapon bans, which really is a misnomer, because it’s really ridiculous to call a semiautomatic weapon an assault weapon.”
We find Huckabee’s claims are accurate.
In 2000, during Giuliani’s term as mayor, he announced that New York City was filing a lawsuit against two dozen gun manufacturers. The city alleged practices such as deliberately producing more guns than could be legally bought and ignoring illegal sales by gun distributors.
Giuliani has since distanced himself from the lawsuit, recently saying that it “has taken several turns and several twists that [he does not] agree with,” but this does not detract from Huckabee’s assertion that Giuliani sued gun makers.
The Brady Bill, which created a waiting period for handgun purchases and background checks, became law in 1993. The Assault Weapons Ban, which prohibited the sale of some semi-automatic weapons, expired in 2004 after 10 years on the books. In a February, 2007 interview Giuliani was asked about them both and said: “I was in favor of it because I thought that it was necessary both to get the crime bill passed and also necessary with the 2,000 murders or so that we were looking at,” annually in New York City at the time.
Currently, Giuliani’s stance on gun control is “that we need to enforce laws that exist, as opposed to passing new laws that infringe on individual rights.”
Huckabee’s claims, however, deal with Giuliani’s past positions rather than his current ones, and as such are accurate.
