Gov. Andrew Cuomo is making the rounds of national news programs now that he has become the target of a lawsuit by the National Rifle Association.
WBFO Albany Correspondent Karen DeWitt reports.
Cuomo, a gun control advocate, is asking other states to join him in fighting what he said is an “extremist” organization. The NRA said it’s Cuomo who has a political “vendetta” against the group that could lead to its demise.
Cuomo in 2013 convinced the state Legislature, shortly after the Sandy Hook, Connecticut, school shooting, to pass a gun control measure that became known as the SAFE Act. It requires stricter regulation of the sale of firearms and bans assault weapons in New York. The governor spoke about it in his State of the State speech that year.
“No one hunts with an assault rifle,” Cuomo said on Jan. 9, 2013. “No one needs 10 bullets to kill a deer, and too many innocent people have died already.”
Cuomo earned the enmity of some Second Amendment rights advocates, largely from upstate, but the measure has gained support among New Yorkers over the years, with polls showing that the majority of residents support it,[1] even among those who live north of New York City.
In 2018, facing a primary challenge on the left from actor and education advocate Cynthia Nixon for his run for a third term, Cuomo is proudly owning a new dispute that’s developed between the state and the NRA.
The NRA claims recent actions by the Cuomo administration amount to a blacklisting of the organization and could even force it into bankruptcy. The state Department of Financial Services, or
