Lock & Load time for Romney @ NRA

[Dave Workman]

It’s ‘lock and load’ time for Romney at NRA

ST. LOUIS — Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney is in town today to assure members of the National Rifle Association that he is one of them (he’s a member) and that if they help put him in the White House, he will not betray that trust.

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[RVTECH]

he will not betray that trust.

He already has as far as I am concerned.

 

[Wildcat]

It would really be nice if 'We the people' had reasonable choices and 'We the people' got to choose.

 

[Jamie6.5]

Hey, let's face it, any remarks Romney makes are bound to be better than the remarks obama has made to the NRA.


*crickets*

 

[pokerace]

It’s ‘lock and load’ time for Romney at NRA

ST. LOUIS — Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney is in town today to assure members of the National Rifle Association that he is one of them (he’s a member) and that if they help put him in the White House, he will not betray that trust.

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Ithink I want that in writing in binding contract.

 

[nwwoodsman]

Ithink I want that in writing in binding contract.

Even a binding contract is sometimes worthless. I remember this one time, a few Januarys ago, when this black guy with big ears swore to uphold the constitution. Well you can see how that's working out.

 

[Dave Workman]

Rosen’s verbal bullet cannot be called back

… Rosen’s apology notwithstanding, the remark has slammed Democrats like the recoil of a .458 Winchester Magnum.


<broken link removed>

 

[Bam]

All one has to do is look at Massachusetts's gun laws and see how full of CRAP Romney is.

He is NOT a friend of the Second Amendment nor is he a true friend of the NRA other than to get their endorsement.

"he will not betray that trust" he ALREADY has. Massachusetts ranks 3rd on the Brandy Campaign's anti gun states, do I really need to say more?

 

[BSG 75]

It's &#8216;lock and load' time for Romney at NRA

ST. LOUIS &#8212; Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney is in town today to assure members of the National Rifle Association that he is one of them (he's a member)

So is Michael Moore. In fact, Michael Moore has been a NRA member longer than Romney.

Romney became a member of the NRA all the way back in 2006, 2 years after signing the Massachusetts assault weapon ban, and around the time he realized that joining the NRA might be a good idea if he wanted to become the Republican nominee. Even though he paid the fee to become a NRA member he isn't a gun owner and he borrows guns from his son when he needs props to use.

WASHINGTON -- Two hours before then-Gov. Mitt Romney was to sign a bill outlawing assault weapons and small handguns in Massachusetts, John Rosenthal, a leading gun control advocate, received an unexpected phone call.

Rosenthal had worked with statehouse leaders on the legislation, which would replace the expiring federal assault weapons ban. Through all that time, he had never had a conversation with the governor. He wasn't even sure if Romney would sign the bill into law. Now, without warning, Rosenthal had the governor's spokesman Eric Ferhnstrom on the phone asking if he'd attend the signing ceremony.

Rosenthal scrambled. He arrived at the statehouse 30 minutes before the ceremony, met with Ferhnstrom -- who remains Romney's top communications hand -- and was notified that he would be standing behind the governor on the podium and allowed to speak. What happened next remains a subject of contention for those in attendance.

Minutes before the bill signing, Romney's staff tore down a sign listing the name of Jim Wallace, an official with the National Rifle Association-affiliated Gun Owners' Action League and the top gun rights advocate in the state. In its place, they installed a Rosenthal placard.

"The National Rifle Association and Jim Wallace were completely dissed," Rosenthal told The Huffington Post." Romney "shook my hand, thanked me for being there and for my leadership, and he listened to my remarks in which, frankly, I applauded him for signing the bill."

The moment would mark a high point in the relationship between Romney and gun control advocates. Within a year, Romney would designate May 7 "Rights To Bear Arms" day in Massachusetts. A year after that, he became a lifetime member of the NRA. Around that time, he began plotting a presidential campaign that required him to bolster his support among Second Amendment enthusiasts. From there, the schism grew wider.

On Friday, Romney will appear as the de-facto Republican presidential nominee before the NRA annual convention in St. Louis, delivering what's expected to be a full-throated endorsement for the organization's objectives. He will get a strong reception. The NRA has no alternative candidate to back.

Still, the speech will not be without underlying tension. More than any other constituency, save the anti-abortion crowd, gun owners have proved difficult for Romney to court.

The trajectory of that courtship provides as clear an example as any into Romney's own evolution -- from a professed moderate to a self-described "severely" conservative lawmaker. It also underscores the difficulties that the Massachusetts Republican continues to face among key portions of the GOP political base. After all, the ideological distance Romney traveled was fairly vast.

During his failed Senate campaign in 1994, Romney came out in favor of the Brady Bill, a Clinton-era touchstone for gun-control advocates, and a ban on specific assault weapons. To the chagrin of gun owners, he bluntly declared, "I don't line up with the NRA."

In his second run for office, the framing was similar. On his 2002, gubernatorial campaign website, Romney declared his support for "the strict enforcement of gun laws" as well as "the federal assault weapons ban." The website covered all bases, noting that "Mitt also believes in the rights of those who hunt to responsibly own and use firearms." But the campaign left the impression that Romney appreciated Massachusetts' famously tight gun laws.

"I won't chip away at them," he said. "I believe they protect us and provide for our safety."

The candidate who exhibited no fear in standing up to the gun lobby quickly showed those same traits in office. In his 2003 budget, Romney proposed tripling fees for gun owners to obtain ID cards for firearms and to obtain a license to carry a firearm. The legislature went further, quadrupling them. That same budget proposed eliminating "minor funds" in the state accounting system, including the Inland Fisheries and Game fund, a near-and-dear agency for hunters and fishermen.

It wouldn't take long for Romney and the gun rights lobby to clash. Gun owners quickly formed a group to protect the Fisheries and Game fund and ultimately won its reinstatement. They also complained loudly about the increased fees.

"It's not a service," Jim Wallace told the Boston Globe in February 2003. "It's a tax on your rights. We're not getting anything."

The frictions continued. With the federal assault weapons ban set to expire in 2004, members of the legislature pushed a copy of the ban in Massachusetts. No other state had enacted its own ban. And while Romney, according to Rosenthal, wasn't active in shepherding it through the statehouse, he was perfectly comfortable cheering its passage.

"I believe the people should have the right to bear arms, but I don't believe that we have to have assault weapons as part of our personal arsenal," Romney told Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes during an August 2004 taping of their Fox News show.

The law included provisions designed to appeal to Massachusetts gun owners. But it received a tough reception nationally and, to this day, the signing ceremony snafu with Wallace remains a sore spot for those involved. A spokesman for the Gun Owners' Action League refused to answer questions about the law, referring The Huffington Post to the group's website. That site, included a defense of the bill -- insisting that it was "completely wrong" to call it an extension of the assault weapons ban -- along with an oddly-phrased excuse for Romney's past statements.

"Unfortunately for the governor, someone had also wrongly briefed him about the bill," the Gun Owners' Action League site reads. "As a result the Lt. Governor and the Governor made statements at the bill signing ceremony that angered GOAL members."

As Romney embarked on his first run in the GOP presidential primary, it became clear just how enraged those advocates were. Romney struggled to sell himself either as a born-again Second Amendment champion or an authentic gun-rights advocate. But it wasn't for lack of trying. Romney declined to stand by his support for the Brady Bill. He joined the NRA in 2006 and began talking about his own hunting exploits, often awkwardly. In 2007, he appeared at the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show with Wayne LaPierre, the NRA leader. Around that time, Romney bought two shotguns, his campaign said in February.

During a January 2008 debate at Florida Atlantic University, Romney declared there was no need for new legislation "of an assault weapon-ban nature" or dealing with "semiautomatic weapons." He's continued his courtship of gun owners since then. In 2011, he delivered a video address to the NRA's annual conference.

This year, the NRA address will be in person.

"It is no more complicated than the fact that he is untrustworthy," Rosenthal said of Romney, who he praised in 2004. "His positions on any issue are going to change according to his audience. That's his history."

Ferhnstrom did not return a request for comment on that 2004 bill-signing. But in a statement to the Associated Press, Romney spokesman Ryan Williams declared that Romney has "always supported the Second Amendment and as president would continue to support the Second Amendment."

In the end, the most effective move Romney made to dispense with the skepticism was locking up the Republican presidential nomination. Few figures in politics engender as much paranoia from the gun rights lobby as President Barack Obama, whose administration has made minimal attempts to tinker with gun laws, even after gun-related violence that includes the maiming of former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in a mass killing. Faced with a choice, even those chaffed by Romney during his time as governor are willing to let bygones be just that.

"I'm willing to give him a chance on these issues because I think his heart is much closer to being in the right place then the other guy," Henry Dane, president of the Concord Rod & Gun Club in Massachusetts, said with respect to a Romney vs. Obama match-up.

Do you trust him? That's what HuffPost asked Donald Christie, a firearms instructor in West Springfield, Mass.

"I trust him a lot more than Obama," Christie replied. "From what I've gathered ... I think he's going to go with the flow -- with what's popular. He's going to go where the votes are."

Mitt Romney And The NRA: A 'Diss' Before Courtship

 

[kkil004]

"he borrows guns from his son"

So his family's not all bad...

 

[Kevatc]

"he borrows guns from his son"

So his family's not all bad...

Really???? Holy poop on a cracker. You best vote for that guy.

 

[Jamie6.5]

All one has to do is look at Massachusetts's gun laws and see how full of CRAP Romney is.

He is NOT a friend of the Second Amendment nor is he a true friend of the NRA other than to get their endorsement.

"he will not betray that trust" he ALREADY has. Massachusetts ranks 3rd on the Brandy Campaign's anti gun states, do I really need to say more?

What you "really need to say" if you are going to be intellectually honest, is that you (fail to?) understand the Bill of Rights, and the 10th Amendment.
Particularly the part about "States Rights."

Mr Romney signed a bill that passed the democrat controlled MA STATE legislature by an overwhelming majority.
I don't like that law, so I wouldn't live in Massachusetts. On the federal level, I didn't care for ted kennedy and I can't stand john kerry, so that's just another reason for me to stay away from MA.
But at least it was done through a constitutionally approved process, (Much like the AWB was in 1994, when Clinton signed it) and as such, can be repealed or overturned by any MA STATE legislature that chooses to do so.

Now I don't know if MA has a "2ndA like" clause in their state constitution like OR does, so that may have some bearing on whether Massachusens can challenge it in court.

Since I started voting in 1974, I have seen 2 "referendums" on Congress and/or a state legislature over a single bill passed into law. The first was the AWB in 1994, When the dems lost control altogether, and the second was "obamacare" in 2010, when the dems lost the House, and their supermajority in the Senate.
My point being, that if the residents of Massachusetts really haven't liked that law, it should/would have been overturned by representatives voted in for that purpose.
Since they haven't yet, it's probably pretty safe to say that if you like semi-autos with hi-cap mags, you should stay away from MA, because the people of that state believe it works for them.

But along the way, please bear in mind that:
Mitt wasn't peddling guns to straw buyers in his attempt to drum up support for the law.
Mitt didn't sign or promise to sign, executive orders hamstringing gun rights even if he couldn't get legislative approval.
AFAIK, Mitt didn't use his "bully pulpit" to push for their AWB.

There are MANY lefties here that love to bring up the policies of Geo. W. Bush. Lefties that HATE his policies, like the post I quoted above.
But Bush isn't running. Mitt ain't Bush.

Yet when the topic of Clinton comes up, he's your shining star. Despite your hypocritical rantings about gun rights.
Clinton did the same thing Mitt did, by signing a constitutionally constructed/passed bill into law.
Only "slick willie" Clinton DID use his "bully pulpit" to push the AWB through congress.
It was as much his idea as anyone's.
His wife still loves it, and would have voted to make it permanent in '04.
So according to the Huff-Po article quoted above, Romney has learned from his mistakes, but Hillary hasn't.

Yet Clinton is still you lefty's fav guy!?! Why is that?
Why/how would/could Mitt be worse than Clinton, or obama on gun rights??

Make your case, in light of what we KNOW president Clinton did. And what we KNOW Obama has done, and has promised to do, the FACT that he consistently supports illegal gun laws in his home state, and who he has in charge at the DOJ.
Then there's obama and biden's promise to "take action when Congress fails to act" that should SCARE THE CRAP out of you!

And while we're comparing backgrounds on legislative issues, care to compare the gun laws in Illinois and Chicago to the gun laws in Massachusetts?!?

 

[Gunner3456]

What you "really need to say" if you are going to be intellectually honest, is that you (fail to?) understand the Bill of Rights, and the 10th Amendment.
Particularly the part about "States Rights."

Mr Romney signed a bill that passed the democrat controlled MA STATE legislature by an overwhelming majority.
I don't like that law, so I wouldn't live in Massachusetts. On the federal level, I didn't care for ted kennedy and I can't stand john kerry, so that's just another reason for me to stay away from MA.
But at least it was done through a constitutionally approved process, (Much like the AWB was in 1994, when Clinton signed it) and as such, can be repealed or overturned by any MA STATE legislature that chooses to do so.

When did states get the power to pass laws which violate the US constitution? How long of a list of such laws do you want me to post which were overturned by the US Supreme Court? No state can violate the US Constitution, but that constitution limits the power of the Federal Government and leaves all powers not specifically granted in the Constitution to the states and the people.

We cling to 2A because it is our protection, even if our state doesn't have such a clause.

I don't really trust Romney on guns either, and it's been one of my main concerns about him.

That said, for all those bashing Romney's speech to the NRA, are you then going to vote for Obama?

 

[Dave Workman]

Romney warns about ‘O’ second term; Today’s NRA bash

ST. LOUIS — Warning that a second Obama term in the White House could be a disaster for Second Amendment rights, Republican Mitt Romney told abut 6,000 National Rifle Association members that their hope for real change is to vote the president out of office in November.

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[Jamie6.5]

When did states get the power to pass laws which violate the US constitution?

AFAIK, they haven't, except of course in Illinois, and the City of Chicago .
But I don't think MA's AWB's constitutionality has been challenged.
But that is also my point. Obama has supported the unconstitutional laws that were overturned in Illinois, and supports the people that write/implement them.

As opposed to Romney's signing of the MA AWB, that was apparently legal, as no legal advocates seem to want to challenge it.

That said, for all those bashing Romney's speech to the NRA, are you then going to vote for Obama?

Good question.

Personally, I'd like to see/hear obama address the NRA. Just to see what he has to say.
If he truly believe in the RTKBA, he should have no problem with supporting those gun owning constituents that support him.

 

[BSG 75]

That said, for all those bashing Romney's speech to the NRA, are you then going to vote for Obama?

Our votes are irrelevant. Obama is going to win Oregon's and Washington's (and California's, and Hawaii's) electoral votes no matter how you vote. Even if you could vote 100 times it wouldn't make a difference, Obama is going to win your state's electoral votes, which are the only votes that count. The election won't be decided by Oregon or Washington voters, it will be decided by the voters in swing/battleground states 2012 Presidential Election Interactive Map and History of the Electoral College

 

[Gunner3456]

AFAIK, they haven't, except of course in Illinois, and the City of Chicago .
But I don't think MA's AWB's constitutionality has been challenged.
But that is also my point. Obama has supported the unconstitutional laws that were overturned in Illinois, and supports the people that write/implement them.

As opposed to Romney's signing of the MA AWB, that was apparently legal, as no legal advocates seem to want to challenge it.


Good question.

Personally, I'd like to see/hear obama address the NRA. Just to see what he has to say.
If he truly believe in the RTKBA, he should have no problem with supporting those gun owning constituents that support him.

Well, just be aware that the SC rulings upholding gun rights in DC and Illinois and so on were decided by narrow 5/4 majorities. John Paul Stevens, Steven Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor were in the minority. They would have banned the guns. ONE MORE VOTE on their side...

We can't have Obama appoint another SC justice.

 

[Gunner3456]

Our votes are irrelevant. Obama is going to win Oregon's and Washington's (and California's, and Hawaii's) electoral votes no matter how you vote. Even if you could vote 100 times it wouldn't make a difference, Obama is going to win your state's electoral votes, which are the only votes that count. The election won't be decided by Oregon or Washington voters, it will be decided by the voters in swing/battleground states 2012 Presidential Election Interactive Map and History of the Electoral College

Oh thanks. I'll never bother to vote again. I and all other pro-gun people should just stay home and make no statement at all, and then it will look as if Oregon is 100% pro-Obama and pro-anti gun SC.

What's your point?

 

[BSG 75]

Oh thanks. I'll never bother to vote again. I and all other pro-gun people should just stay home and make no statement at all, and then it will look as if Oregon is 100% pro-Obama and pro-anti gun SC.

What's your point?

Vote for the other offices besides President if you want, vote for Romney if you want, that's your right. My point is just don't kid yourself that voting for Romney in Oregon is going to make a "statement", or any difference at all. If you want to protect your gun rights try to influence what happens in Salem.

A President Romney is no guarantee you won't get an anti-gun Supreme Court justice. David Souter, who voted with the minority in DC v Heller, was appointed by George H.W. Bush - another northeastern "moderate" Republican like Romney - who also like Romney got a ban on "assault weapons" (imported ones) Import Ban on Assault Rifles Becomes Permanent - NYTimes.com

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

 

[Gunner3456]

If no pro-gun people at all vote against Obama, that's a terrible statement. It may not affect an election, but it would affect perception.