Category: 2012 Election

For playing a large role in keeping Santorum off the ballot in Indiana. It’s like the ghost of 1994 around this election, between Newt and Rick. It’s highly doubtful Santorum could even carry his own state (Pennsylvania, I mean, because it’s been long believed he actually lived in Virginia, but I’m doubtful he could carry Virginia either). I don’t like Mitt, but given Newt’s penchant for self-destructing, and Santorum’s penchant for wanting the government in everyone’s bedrooms, I’m not seeing too many other alternatives.

And don’t give me the Ron Paul crap. Paul is finished in this race. He never had a chance. I’m just hoping libertarians can find a better standard bearer; someone who can actually win. I’d take Rand Paul, if we really want a Paul. I’d also take Gary Johnson, if anyone knew who he was anymore.

Remember when I gave Rick Perry a little campaign advice about hitting up a gun range while on the campaign trail? Well, someone in Rick Santorum’s campaign definitely has it together. Looking ahead to the March 6 sorta-Super Tuesday, he was looking to hold a campaign rally at a gun shop in Oklahoma City. Unfortunately, it had to be moved when ticket requests went through the roof after his non-binding caucus & primary wins this week. However, he still stopped in to do a little campaigning at the gun range.

During his pre-rally visit at H&H, Santorum said, “I wish we could have had it here, this would have been perfect.”

He added, “I am very impressed. It is easy to see why gun ownership is so strong here, and I stand tall with the Second Amendment.”

Said Miles Hall, founder and president of H&H, “It was a great honor to show a small but important part of the shooting industry to one of our presidential hopefuls.”

The presidential race may soon be a source of entertainment worthy of a bucket of buttery popcorn.

Roseanne Barr said Thursday she’s running for the Green Party’s presidential nomination — and it’s no joke.

Some of the first live political blogging I ever did was when Jello Biafra was trying to get the nomination at the Green Party convention in 2000. That was funny.

This is an excellent post, overall, on advice for those backing their favorite anti-Mitt candidate, but this is the most profound piece of advice in the post:

I hear those among you who say you’ll sit this election out.  ”If the party loses because they didn’t go conservative enough for me, it’ll teach them a lesson”.   That’s not only groaningly solipsistic – it’s not, after all, all about you – it’s also just not the way political parties and organizations work.  I’ve said it a few times in the past few weeks, and I’m going to keep saying it until y’all get it right; Political parties don’t “learn lessons” – they reflect the will of those who show up.  And if conservatives – and all you libertarian Ron Paul supporters – don’t show up, then the “establishment wins.

This is more true than many realize. I am most decidedly not a fan of how the GOP operates in both my county, and also the state, but the fact of the matter is you have to show up if you want to be have your voice heard. That requires, to some degree, knowing when to stick to your principles, and when to be willing to remain a part of a larger coalition. Too many make the mistake of believing that politics is about principles. It’s about no such thing. Politics is a beauty contest for ugly people. Principles provide you with goals; they tell you where you want to try to bring things in four years.

The rest of that game is all playing your cards well. But you have to be in the game if you want to have a possibility of winning. The big problem with libertarians is they make the mistake of believing politics is a philosophical debate, rather than a card game. It’s a lot more the latter than the former. You have to play the cards your dealt, and the only thing that is going to save our asses in this hand is the fact that our opponents have to play a worse one.

Instapundit has a pretty good round-up of the South Carolina primary. I’ve always liked Newt Gingrich the professor, but I’ve never much liked Newt Gingrich the politician. I noted before about Newt that the 1990s called, and they want their candidate back. He is a more viable alternative, in my opinion, to Rick Santorum, but I still worry that he can’t beat Obama.

I think it was probably fine for Mitt to lose South Carolina. What was not fine for Mitt is to get creamed in South Carolina, which is what happened. If Mitt doesn’t take Florida, he’s going to be in serious trouble as the front runner. He will have lost momentum, and money and support will start flowing to his opponents. If he experiences a long enough losing streak, he can start counting on a brain drain for his campaign, as the rats start to jump off the sinking ship.

On the Second Amendment, the decisive advantage to Gingrich is that he will likely pick much more reliable judges on that issue than Mitt will, though I certainly don’t think Gingrich would be a guarantee. There are plenty of conservative judges out there who don’t like the Second Amendment any more than many left-wing judges. But I give the edge to Gingrich on that count. Gingrich’s record legislatively is not bad, as he delivered on getting an Assault Weapons Ban repeal through the House in 1996, only to have it killed by Bob Dole in the Senate. My big concern about Gingrich is that if he’s the nominee, Obama gets another term.

Some seem to be thinking because Bitter wants to clear up some of Mitt’s record on guns that means we’re now backing Mitt. This is not really the case. Many folks are pointing out statements Romney has made in the media that indicates his support for strict gun control. This is the problem with Romney, and why neither of us is planning on backing him in the primary. If either of us do end up voting for him, it’ll be a wrong lizard kind of vote, not one with conviction behind it. Either way, the race is generally decided by the time Pennsylvania’s primary rolls around.

But the statements Mitt has made in the media illustrate the problem with him. His record isn’t all that remarkably bad, but he’ll say whatever he thinks will play well in the media. So GOAL and some of their few allies in the MA legislature, take a massive assault weapons ban expansion, gut it, and put in a few reforms, and guarantee the list of 700 exempted firearms. Then Mitt Romney comes along, and his handlers decide his signing statement should be about the evils of assault weapons, believing, probably correctly for Massachusetts, that will play better in the media.

The problem with Romney is that on Second Amendment and Firearms issues, the guy has no real convictions. Those who follow issues like abortion know that his lack of conviction is not limited to our issue either. He is not a friend of the Second Amendment, but nor is he an enemy. He’ll probably be willing to work with gun owners, and listen to the NRA. That makes him a much preferred alternative to Obama on our issue.

My main beef with Romney, actually, is outside this issue. I don’t like that he was the architect of Romneycare. I thought that would put a serious damper on his prospects, but the field this primary is just awful.

Let me start this post by injecting a little dose of political reality. The GOP field is what we’ve got to run against Obama, and that’s it. It doesn’t matter who shoulda/woulda/coulda run, the only ones who put themselves on the ballots are the only choices voters have in 2012. As much as I would love for Tim Pawlenty to still be in this race, he opted to drop out. I’ve seen people lament Mitch Daniels not entering the race, and don’t get me started on how many folks would cheer Paul Ryan making a run for the White House. None of that matters. None of those men put themselves on the ballot for president.

If Mitt ends up winning the race because GOP voters choose him in the nation’s primaries, gun owners need to know the truth about Mitt Romney’s record on guns as Governor of Massachusetts. I have said before many, many times that as a gun owner in Massachusetts during his term, I was extremely active in the efforts to fight more gun control. Guess who was on our side for that battle? Mitt.

As the state’s most active gun rights group notes in their write-up on Romney’s record, gun owners were able to make more reforms to the state’s oppressive gun laws under Mitt than they had in more than 20 years.

During the Romney Administration, no anti-Second Amendment or anti-sportsmen legislation made its way to the Governor’s desk.

Governor Romney did sign five pro-Second Amendment/pro-sportsmen bills into law. His administration also worked with Gun Owners’ Action League and the Democratic leadership of the Massachusetts House and Senate to remove any anti-Second Amendment language from the Gang Violence bill passed in 2006.

But what’s this? Didn’t you get the forwarded email from GOA and NAGR that Mitt went around and personally confiscated every firearm he called an “assault weapon” from gun owners in Massachusetts? I kid, but the exaggeration doesn’t seem terribly far off from some of the claims I’ve seen floating around the internet written by people who were not in the Bay State at the time and have no idea what gun laws were like before Mitt took office.

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 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.

Here is GOAL’s full write-up of what the bill did for gun owners in the Bay State:

1) Established the Firearm License Review Board (FLRB). The 1998 law created new criteria for disqualifying citizens for firearms licenses that included any misdemeanor punishable by more than two years even if no jail time was ever served.

For instance, a first conviction of operating a motor vehicle under the influence would result in the loss of your ability to own a handgun for life and long guns for a minimum of five years. This Board is now able to review cases under limited circumstances to restore licenses to individuals who meet certain criteria.

2) Mandated that a minimum of $50,000 of the licensing fees be used for the operation of the FLRB so that the Board would not cease operating under budget cuts.

3) Extended the term of the state’s firearm licenses from 4 years to 6 years.

4) Permanently attached the federal language concerning assault weapon exemptions in 18 USC 922 Appendix A to the Massachusetts assault weapons laws. This is the part that the media misrepresented.

In 1998 the Massachusetts legislature passed its own assault weapons ban (MGL Chapter 140, Section 131M). This ban did not rely on the federal language and contained no sunset clause. Knowing that we did not have the votes in 2004 to get rid of the state law, we did not want to loose all of the federal exemptions that were not in the state law so this new bill was amended to include them.

5) Re-instated a 90 day grace period for citizens who were trying to renew their firearm license. Over the past years, the government agencies in charge had fallen months behind in renewing licenses. At one point it was taking upwards of a year to renew a license. Under Massachusetts law, a citizen cannot have a firearm or ammunition in their home with an expired license.

6) Mandated that law enforcement must issue a receipt for firearms that are confiscated due to an expired license. Prior to this law, no receipts were given for property confiscated which led to accusations of stolen or lost firearms after they were confiscated by police.

7) Gave free license renewal for law enforcement officers who applied through their employing agency.

8) Changed the size and style of a firearm license to that of a driver’s license so that it would fit in a normal wallet. The original license was 3” x 4”.

9) Created stiffer penalties for armed home invaders.

They have a full list of other things Mitt signed and did during his term to improve the situation for the state’s gun owners. Were there setbacks under him? Yes. To his people’s credit, they did work to correct the situation. I only hope he still has those folks who learned their lesson on the issue around him. If you want an idea of many of his missteps, go read the full report from GOAL because they do include them.

I say all of this not because I’m trying to shill for the man. I’m not actually a fan of Mitt Romney’s, and I don’t anticipate voting for him in the Pennsylvania primary. However, if the other Republican voters around the country choose him as the candidate, I believe we are doing our constituency a disservice if we aren’t honest about Mitt’s record on gun rights.

Will Mitt, if elected, appoint fantastic pro-Second Amendment judges and justices? I hope so, but I realize there’s no guarantee. What I do know is that based on what we have seen from Obama’s appointments, we will absolutely get more anti-Second Amendment justices out of a second term. I’d rather take my chances with a president who may be willing to listen to me, along with millions of other gun owners who are concerned about our rights. Whether it’s on the issue of judicial appointments or signing bills, I realize the reality of our chances with Obama in the Oval Office versus a candidate like Mitt Romney.

All of that said, why did TPaw have to bow out so soon? *sob*