20 thoughts on “Romney Talks About F&F, and Calls for Holder Resignation”

  1. He still scare me! Doesn’t own a gun, joined the NRA as life member after signing in on a “Assault Weapons” bill in Mass.?!?
    Maybe he is OK now that we call them Sporting Rifles?

    I truly feel, as I hear many other do, that he is wishy-washy!
    He is a wind walker! He goes which ever way the wind is blowing. Now so as to say something nice, if you ask Harvard professors who one of their smartest students were, his name comes up all the time! (I know, I should never mention I know a few Harvard professors, as to ruin my reputation)

    1. For what it’s worth, the bill he signed in Massachusetts was actually supported by gun owners – and not “Fudds,” either. I hate Romney, but the bill he signed started out as an anti-gun bill, was stripped of everything bad except the name in committee, had pro-gun amendments added to it, and then moved through the legislature like that. I can’t stand the guy, but the actual bill he signed wasn’t bad for the gun owners in the state.

      1. I will admit you are right, I always have to think that it was Massachusetts. But he did support the Brady Bill. What does the NRA say about him so far?
        Also, I am voting for whoever the Republican candidate is as long as we defeat President Obama! I just hope we can turn out the votes!

        1. Well, the NRA was for the NICS part of the Brady Bill and defends it to this day (a debatable point, I’ll admit, given the current state of society, but something we’ll probably never get rid of).

          As for “anyone but Obama”, note for example how many of Romney’s environmentalists ended up in the Obama Administration. Or his continued support for Romneycare. Sure, he’ll probably be better that Obama, but I predict he’ll also speed the destruction or perhaps radical reform of the Republican party if elected. As Lenin said, “The worse, the better”.

          My father and myself are still debating whether we will vote for him if he gets the nomination.

      2. All true according to a friend who hadn’t yet escaped the state, and the bill included some important fixes to the recent very badly drafted state “assault weapons” ban. However Romney went out of his way to attack gun owners when he signed it….

        1. Yes, he did say some very unpleasant and very unexpected things when he signed it. From what I heard, his staff didn’t really know where it came from, and his office did reach out to gun owners to see what they could do to make it up to them. In other words, he can be a problem. I’ve never denied it. Like I said, I’m not a fan at all. But, I also agree with Sebastian that we can be a force to help keep him in line. Romney will go wherever he thinks he needs to go to get ahead. He may not have been concerned enough by gun owners in Massachusetts, but nationwide, it’s a very different story. It’s just a matter of playing the political game with him.

      3. Pro-gun, really? This is what I found…

        Like the federal assault weapons ban, the [Massachusetts] ban, put in place in 1998, was scheduled to expire in September. The new law ensures these deadly weapons, including AK-47s, UZIs and Mac-10 rifles, are permanently prohibited in Massachusetts no matter what happens on the federal level.

        http://www.iberkshires.com/story.php?story_id=14812

        1. And that’s where you’re only reading half the story. What you’re not saying in your comment is that Massachusetts already had an AWB that was actually worse than the federal ban in unique ways. On the surface, it was exactly the same because it was partially tied to language in the federal ban. The state ban that was already on the books didn’t have an expiration date – their way of making sure that no matter what happened to the federal ban, the state ban would stand. In theory, when the federal ban expired, what was already on the books in Massachusetts would have just kept the same limits in effect. However, close reading revealed some big dangers for gun owners.

          The state ban, in addition to no expiration date, didn’t have the list of nearly 700 exempted guns that the federal ban allowed. In other words, lawful gun owner would become illegal assault weapons owner overnight and probably never understand why. If an enterprising prosecutor wanted to build up some gun convictions very quickly without much work, he or she could suddenly go after every owner of an M-1 Carbine, Mini-14, Marlin Model 60, or Ruger 10/22 (or other guns on this list) and have a collection of “assault weapon” criminals locked up.

          The original bill was written by an anti-gun senator who planned to expand the federal AWB dramatically. I don’t even remember all the crap he wanted to ban, but it was absurd. However, he introduced it as the federal law was getting ready to expire so he could claim that he was merely making sure the same federal ban remained in place at the state level. Reporters never bothered to check that the state already had their own version with no expiration date (and no list of exempted guns), so they ate up his talking points. Gun owners managed to get enough pressure on lawmakers to strip out all of the expansion provisions, put in a bunch of reforms, and add one little bit of language to the state ban that was already on the books before Romney ever took office. They formally tied the state ban to the federal ban in a way that preserved the list of exempted guns.

          So, what you really should be saying is that legislators (none of whom were Romney, so it’s not about giving him credit) managed to SAVE nearly 700 guns from being suddenly declared unlawful in the state, add in several reforms to licensing that were a problem, and put the stops on an anti-gun bill in a creative way that the media never saw coming.

          If you want to attack Romney on gun issues in Massachusetts, there are plenty of ways to do it. But the content of that bill is not one of them.

          1. So in essence what you are telling me is that the story I linked to is false. That MA already had a permanent AW ban in place.

            Okay, I suppose I can buy the news media getting the key element of a story that wrong since they have done that before. But unless you can point me to some other evidence other than your own word I am going to rely upon the evidence that I have found myself.

            And even if what you say is true, are you also going to claim the story is false where they quote Romney?

            “Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts,” Romney said, at a bill signing ceremony on July 1 with legislators, sportsmen’s groups and gun safety advocates. “These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.”

            Romney was a major douchebag when he played into the whole AW mythology.

            1. My statements are based on the fact that I lived there at the time this was happening and was involved in the legislative fight from the time the bill was an expansion of the AWB to the time it was signed. I studied the law on the books at the time we started the fight, and I watched as we amended the hell out of that bill. Gun owners who lived up there at the time worked very hard to get reforms passed without the media catching wind & attacking all efforts to get even minor changes made to improve our plight.

              If you read my other comments, I’ve made clear that his behavior on the day of the signing was a problem. Hell, after Mitt announced for the last race, I pulled out the documents I could find from my own collection & scanned them for gun owners to see that he’s a let down when he doesn’t feel enough political pressure. I’m not trying to cover up for that. But, like I said, the content of that bill is not one of Mitt’s problems when it comes to his record. There are plenty, but the content of that bill is not one of them.

            2. So in essence what you are telling me is that the story I linked to is false. That MA already had a permanent AW ban in place.

              Okay, I suppose I can buy the news media getting the key element of a story that wrong since they have done that before….

              Let’s put it this way: which is more likely, the media getting a detail wrong (clearly based on a reading of the law and its relationship to the Federal AW ban, which has been covered elsewhere in this discussion) or the Massachusetts state legislature passing a temporary gun control ban in the decade of assault rifle/weapon hysteria?

              I’ll note the original law was very poorly drafted; I heard that it resulted in the musket used at Concord and Lexington on display at the state house having a trigger lock put on it and hunters in the field without trigger locks on their guns being arrested. Not sure how the latter was resolved, but I heard that immediate emergency legislation was required for the display embarrassment and so that veterans in some upcoming holiday march wouldn’t have to have trigger locks on their weapons.

              But that’s all hearsay to me, I saw it coming and left the state before they inevitably passed this law and never looked back. I’d believe the word of an activist there at the time over a random press account any day. If GOAL has their newsletters online I’d check those for confirmation … but I’d also add this is the first I’ve ever heard about the ban not being permanent.

              Sufficiently poorly drafted someone might conclude that, sure … but there’s also no doubt how the state courts would have interpreted any part of it that was vaguely ambiguous … or not. Note how they always did all they could to nullify laws striking down their doctrine that a resident of a dwelling always had a “duty to retreat” instead of using lethal force and the people they put in prison for e.g. not climbing out through high basement apartment windows or for not abandoning young sleeping children (I watched the latter case’s trial as it happened in the Boston Globe).

      4. Really? The bill was stripped of everything bad? Then why would the anti-gun liberals of Massachusetts ever have passed the bill? They got nothing? Then why did anti-gun groups applaud the bills signing?

        I fully see that many crap pieces of gun regulation in Massachusetts were moderated by passage of that bill, but I still believe the AW ban was made permanent too by that law. And that ban was a big win for the anti-gun forces.

        I also wonder whether the magazine ban was due to sunset as well, but didn’t thanks to Romney. Now because of Romney, a peaceful gun owner like Clint Cornelius is going to jail.

        http://freeclint.com/

        1. The state ban that was already on the books never had an expiration date, so it was never going to expire. I read it myself repeatedly when someone argued the point to me. They were right. The state ban was going to stand. The anti-gun groups didn’t want the bill stripped. From the eye witnesses in the room at the bill signing, Jarrett Barrios was visibly unhappy over what his bill had been turned into. He was not celebrating that day.

          The only people who applauded passage were gun owners and the anti-gunners who didn’t pay attention to what the bill actually said by the time it was moving through the legislature.

  2. He’ll always be “Mitt the shit” to me. He’s only calling for Holder’s resignation as cheap political theater. If he had set, he’d be calling for the prosecution of AG Holder as well as himself.

  3. We need to differentiate between people who we force into positions that support us, and people who actually start out with a pair. Being forced into taking a political position is exactly the opposite of “growing a pair,” even if it’s a position that we support.

    Sad to say the RKBA has far more “advocates” supporting that position than people who actually believe in it. Or, people who give it lip service only because it provides a needed front for the issues that are really important to them.

    1. Agreed with you and Link P. To do this now is not exactly a profile in courage, more like recognition that he’s likely to have a hard fight with Newt for the nomination, who actually does have a pair (hey, when he entered the Congress in 1979 (a really bad time) he was already scheming how to wrest the Congress from the Democrats, which he did an amazing job of)).

      See my above comment on how he was singing a different tune when it would have cost him nothing to be verbally nice to gun owners.

      1. It’s certainly not a bad sign. Of what, though….

        Here’s an interesting thesis about Romney’s 2008 and up to now 2012 strategies. In a nutshell, he ran (in his own mind, at least) as a conservative in 2008, eventually “the credible conservative alternative” to McCain, only to have the latter beat him in the primaries. So this time he

        seems to have concluded that since being the conservative candidate didn’t work then, he would try being the moderate now. Hey, that’s who won last time around, right?

        [No, he] didn’t lose in 2008 because he ran too far to the right. He lost because he wasn’t next in line (McCain was, after losing to Bush in 2000) [and stuff about not getting endorsed by Crist]. He can’t fix the former, except by being next in line now (which he is, and he’s factored that into his current campaign) [and he has no worthwhile endorsements now, and overall he’s failing.]

        So I think he misdiagnosed why he lost last time, came up with the wrong fix, and is now stuck with it — and he’s started to realize that, as a succession of candidates has come and gone and now Newt Gingrich is really starting to threaten him….”

        So one way to address this, and most especially the problem that I’ve read that he just can’t get above 25% in polling (e.g. the base has an “anyone but Romney” attitude, I think) is throw some red meat at the base, to get out in front of Newt on some issues. What’s not to love about denouncing Fast and Furious? A scheme that could never work for it’s ostensible reason, stealth gun control, subverting an important ally/neighbor, weapons used to kill 2 law enforcement Americans and a lot of Mexicans, the cover up … well, everything but the fact that it doesn’t directly attack Obama except for his choice of and continued support for Holder.

        Not sure this is going to work against someone like Newt, who I gather is going hammer and tongs against Obama. In an election like this one, that works for both getting the nomination and winning the election.

        Those of us who’ve taken our measure of Romney don’t believe for a second that he cares at all about the RKBA, but, yeah, he might care about this big of a murderous screwup/scandal.

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