Posted on 10/05/2012 12:13:52 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The National Rifle Association (NRA) endorsed Mitt Romney for president late Thursday.
NRA Executive vice president Wayne LaPierre and NRA Political Victory Fund chairman Chris Cox will formally announce the endorsement at a Romney rally in Virginia later Thursday evening. Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan will also be on hand.
“In this election, there is no debate,” LaPierre said in a statement. “There is only one choice – only one hope – to save our firearms freedom and our way of life.”
The endorsement is not surprising — the NRA has a history of supporting conservative candidates, who traditionally support strong gun rights.
“Today, we live in an America that is getting harder to recognize every day led by a President who mocks our values, belittles our faith, and is threatened by our freedom,” Cox said in a statement.
Gun rights became a campaign issue earlier in the year after a mass shooting at a movie theater in Colorado.
The late-night shooting at a crowded premier for "The Dark Knight Rises" left 12 dead and dozens wounded has rekindled calls by some on the left to push for stricter gun laws.
The semi-automatic rifle, an AR-15, was illegal under federal law until a ban on it was lifted in 2004.
“I still believe that the Second Amendment is the right course to preserve and defend and don't believe that new laws are going to make a difference in this type of tragedy,” Romney said at the time.
Has Romney ever supported 2nd Amendments rights? Doesn’t he refuse to hunt, and thinks hunting is a bad thing?
I guess it's still better than voting for Satan...
A better hope would have been that John the Baptist guy, Gary Johnson. But he doesn't have one of the Big Two Party duopoly gangs in his corner, so I guess we'll just have to see how this turns out.
Er... No. That is not what that idiotic law did. Sheesh.
The NRA, like many of the rest of us, are faced with two choices. Pick a team.
This is the guy that wrote his own assault weapons ban for his state when the federal one expired...
I am going to begrudgingly voting for him, only because of 1979 redux...
But please, stop turning this liberal socialist into the next conservative champion..
it turns my stomach..
So if Romney restricts gun rights< we can say, “yeah, “Obama didn’t do it.”
And no offense but I don't GAF if he chooses to hunt or not, so long as he supports your right and mine to hunt if we choose to. The worst thing he could do would be to saunter into a sporting goods store and do a reprise on John f'n Kerry (who served in Vietnam, btw) and patronize the f out of everybody and say "Can I get me a huntin' licen' here?"
Like the man said, "choose a side".
Thank you.
Obama would attempt to take away gun rights by decree in his 2nd term. I expect Romney to leave guns alone.
Uh, no it was not. But this is the type of journ-O-lism I expect from the Hill.
That’s pretty naive. Obama will have to fight against a Republican Congress. Romney won’t have to worry about it. Democrats are afraid of the gun issues. Romney won’t be afraid to lower the boom.
I never did get one of those “ALL IN” coins.
And I’m a life member!
I doubt it is naive. Will see though.
And what’s the other choice 30 days from now? You know the correct answer. Obama who does not care one lick about the separation of powers or Romney who should play inside the rule of law.
That may actually be correct. An AR-15, strictly speaking is a Colt product, and with all the features, would have been illegal until the ban was lifted. That doesn't mean that all of those variants sold as "AR-15"'s were illegal, as I'm sure the writer meant, but, hey...he had to get something wrong.
I just don’t understand why you want to give the message to Romney that he has free reign to impose leftism on this country. He already change the rules at the GOP convention to limit conservatives. Now, conservatives are acting like the guy is the greatest thing in the world. He’s not even a moderate. Come January 2013, he will not be fighting the left, he will be eviscerating the right. But then, your inviting him to do it, so I guess it’s fair game.
The NRA endorses a man who permanently banned the exact sort of weapons that the British redcoats went to Lexington and Concord to try to confiscate.
Shameful, but not surprising. The NRA has been supporting democrats for years.
The “Assault Weapons Ban” (AWB) passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton took effect on September 13, 1994. It did not ban semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15 currently in civilian hands, nor did it ban future sales of semi-automatic rifles. It created a new (and I would submit, inaccurate) definition of an “assault weapon”. Historically, “assault weapons” were selectable for automatic or “machine-gun” fire, or at least for a multiple-round burst with one trigger pull. After all, if military personnel were engaged in rapid movement when in danger of coming into sudden contact with the enemy (or when military personnel were specifically “assaulting” enemy positions), having automatic fire capability was considered desirable in modern warfare.
The AWB created a new, cosmetic definition of an “assault weapon” as one that had could accept a detachable magazine, and had more than one of the following features: a pistol grip that protruded conspicuously below the receiver, a folding or telescoping stock, a bayonet lug, a flash suppressor, or a grenade launcher.
It is interesting to note that under the 1994 AWB (which expired in 1994), all semi-automatic weapons in civilian possession before the AWB initiation that would have later been banned were not considered “assault weapons” (due to their dates of manufacture and possession). Nor were the millions of semi-automatic weapons manufactured and sold to civilians during the 10 years the ban was in place. Technically, according to Congress’ inaccurate and cosmetic definition, the only “assault weapons” during the ban were weapons meeting the AW definition that were manufactured and/or possessed by civilians during those 10 years. That would include precious few weapons, and shows how absurd the AWB was. Weapons possessed before the ban came into effect that met the 1994 AW definition were grandfathered, and weapons with the same general capability (semi-automatic fire and the ability to accept magazines holding from 11 up to 100 rounds) were legal to manufacture and sell to civilians during the 10 years of the ban.
As for the high-capacity magazine ban that was part of the same 1994 Crime Bill (banning civilian possession of magazines holding more than 10 rounds that were manufactured after the September 13, 1994 initiation of the law), it merely raised prices for such magazines. There were tens of millions of “high-capacity” magazines in civilian hands as of September 1994. If someone was specifically intending to commit criminal assault with a firearm, or to put themselves into a situation in which they would be willing to do so, they would not be stopped by a price increase of $20-50 per magazine (depending on type), nor would many such criminally-minded individuals be chastened by the prospect of additional incarceration due to the AWB or hi-capacity magazine ban laws.
Fortunately, these laws sunsetted on September 13, 1994. As a sidebar, I would point out that the streets have not run “red with blood” due to the expiration of these laws, as the anti-gun forces warned in 2004. In fact, in the 20 years between the height of the crack-exacerbated crime peak of the early 1990s, the American people have taken legal possession of well over 150 million firearms, and violent crime has been nearly cut in half during that time.
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