Romney still playing with guns

What a pathetic, pandering, flip-flopping ass this guy is.

Mitt Romney, if you haven’t heard, recorded a truly gag-inducing video for a recent NRA candidate forum.  You can watch the whole thing at the above link.  Here were some highlights:

Let me speak very directly and candidly about where I stand.  I support the Second Amendment as one of the most basic and fundamental rights of every American.

Meaningless pablum alert!  Hey, I “support” the Second Amendment too.  Though I may differ from you as to what it means.

Now as Governor, I worked closely with the NRA and the Gun Owners Action League to advance legislation that expanded the rights of gun owners in my state.  And my door was always open to you.  And that’ll continue to be the case if I’m elected president.  Together we reduced burdensome bureaucratic regulations, we made it easier for people to exercise their constitutional rights. 

Well, that should come as news to the NRA and the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL) (HT Kevin, who originally assembled this list).

In favor of the Brady Bill

Regarding the Brady Bill which required waiting periods to buy a handgun, Romney stated, “I don’t think [the waiting period] will have a massive effect on crime but I think it will have a positive effect.” –Boston Herald, 8/1/1994

Supports federal assault weapons ban

According to his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, Romney “is a supporter of the federal assault weapons ban.”

Signed state assault weapons ban

On July 1, 2004, Romney signed a permanent ban on assault weapons. “Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts,” Romney said, at a bill signing ceremony 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.”

This is also the guy who said, in touting his 1994 support of the Brady Bill, “[t]hat’s not going to make me the hero of the NRA,” and that “I don’t line up with the NRA.”  Not to mention the nonstop hilarity surrounding his August 2006 purchase of a lifetime NRA membership, his touting his hunting record despite never having owned a hunting license and having hunted  mostly (I still love this) “small varmints, if you will,” and his having to admit that the gun with which he shot said “small varmints” in fact belongs to his son.

GOAL, a state organization, actually is not quite as extreme as the NRA (GOAL’s director in 2004 reluctantly decided to back the state assault weapons ban that Romney signed, saying that “his group also opposes both federal and state bans on principle, but realizes that the compromise approved yesterday is the best he can hope for in a state where gun-control measures are especially strong”).  But GOAL recently recalled Romney’s claimed record of “reducing bureaucratic regulations” and “making it easier” for people to own guns in less rosy terms:

Under Romney’s plan for Massachusetts, the cost of registering firearms would have jumped from $25 to $75. He also called for increases in the cost of firearm identification cards, application fees for a license to carry firearms, and gun dealer fees….

“We certainly shouldn’t be paying anything for our Second Amendment right, because it’s a civil right,” said Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owner’s Action League.

Wallace credited Romney for extending a gun permit from four to six years, but said the higher fees have contributed to a dramatic decline in the number of licensed gun owners in Massachusetts.

What a maroon.

UPDATE: In other gun-related news, one of the directors of Springfield-based Smith & Wesson (Barry Monheit) just dumped over 250,000 shares of company stock, worth about $5 million.  Wonder what that’s about.