In tonight’s debate, the President was asked point-blank if he’d support a ban on “assault weapons.” His answer was an unequivocable yes. It’s a bit ironic, since he acknowledged that most of the violence in his hometown was carried out with “cheap handguns” rather than AK-47’s.
This places him on shaky rhetorical ground when he claims to support the 2nd Amendment, but the shocking thing is that Governor Romney implied that he’d support it if it “provided opportunities for both [sides] that both wanted.” Just like they did in 1993.
Flaunting that NRA endorsement a bit, aren’t we Mitt?
I’m not worried about such a thing happening, as the votes aren’t there in Congress. Even if the idea had support, everybody remembers the political fallout from 1994. What gets me is that both men were either so overconfident or so utterly…I don’t know, what’s the opposite of smart?
ETA: It’s interesting that Romney brought up the Fast & Furious debacle, which both Crowley and the President conveniently sidestepped discussing. Mittens also thinks machine guns are illegal, when in fact they’re simply taxed and regulated by the NFA.
The actual quotes follow.
President Obama: (…) I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets. And so what I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced, but part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence, because frankly, in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s, they’re using cheap handguns.
Candy Crowley: Governor, Governor, if I could, the question was about these assault weapons that once were banned and are no longer banned. I know that you signed an assault weapons ban when you were in Massachusetts. Obviously with this question, you no longer do support that. Why is that? Given the kind of violence that we see sometimes with these mass killings, why is it that you’ve changed your mind?
Gov. Romney: Well, Candy, actually, in my state, the pro-gun folks and the anti-gun folks came together and put together a piece of legislation, and it’s referred to as a — as an assault weapon ban, but it had at the signing of the bill both the pro-gun and the anti- gun people came together, because it provided opportunities for both that both wanted. There were hunting opportunities, for instance, that hadn’t previously been available and so forth. So it was a mutually agreed upon piece of legislation.
That’s what we need more of, Candy. What we have right now in Washington is a place that’s — that’s gridlocked. We haven’t had — we haven’t — we haven’t — we haven’t had the leadership in Washington to work on a bipartisan basis.
Candy Crowley: So if I could, if you could get people to agree to it, you’d be for it.
Gov. Romney: I was able to do that in my state and bring these two together.
3 thoughts on “Yep, He Went There”
Mitt also said at the outset of that lead-in that he does not support any further restrictions on gun ownership (or something to that effect). He wanted to use the gun laws we do have more effectively (my translation) to reduce the violence and misuse.
True, but it’s the follow-up comments that worry me. “I don’t support another Assault Weapons Ban” would have been the correct answer, instead of blathering about bipartisanship. I’ve got a long memory on this stuff, and it wasn’t too long ago that Romney was hardly considered a friend of the 2nd Amendment.
Do I think he’ll hurt us? Not yet. However, 2016 isn’t too far off. Romney has to hit the ground running, and if the public doesn’t see tangible results from the guy on the economy in his first 18 months, the balance of Congress could change in the next round of midterms. At that point, he might decide to consider “common sense” legislation that “both sides” want.
The guy’s a real blank slate in some ways, and we really don’t know how he’ll act on many issues.
I do believe he did say that directly at the outset, “No more gun laws, and aoply what we have now.”… and so did Ryan. At least that is my memory of it when I was not railing about the differences in fully automatic and semiautomatic weapons and their legality….. Someone really needs to tell these two that “machine guns” are really legal!