Dear Betty, the 2nd amendment is ANY threat, foreign OR domestic, to include government gone despotic.
from: http://www.issues2000.org/2012/Mitt_Romney_Gun_Control.htm
Find common ground with pro-gun & anti-gun groups
Q: You signed the nation’s first ban on assault weapons in Massachusetts and steeply increased fees on gun owners by 400%. How can you convince gun owners that you will be an advocate for them?
ROMNEY: We had a piece of legislation that was crafted both by the pro-gun lobby and the anti-gun lobby. The pro-gun lobby said “this legislation allows us to cross roads with weapons when we’re hunting that had not been previously allowed.” And the day when we announced our signing, we had both the pro-gun owners and anti-gun folks all together on the stage because it worked. We worked together. We found common ground. My view is that we have the second amendment right to bear arms and my view is also that we should not add new legislation. I know that there are people that think we need new laws. I disagree with that. I believe we have in place all the laws we need. We should enforce those laws. I do not believe in new laws restricting gun ownership and gun use.
Source: Fox News debate on MLK Day in Myrtle Beach, SC , Jan 16, 2012
2002: I will not chip away at MA’s tough gun laws
In 1994 Romney had supported firearms-control measures opposed by the National Rifle Association: the so-called Brady Bill, which restricted the sale of handguns, and the assault weapons ban. During the 1994 senatorial campaign he had taunted: “That’s not going to make me the hero of the NRA.” He reinforced his support for these measures when he ran for governor in 2002, when he promised not to chip away at the Commonwealth’s tough gun laws. Now as a presidential candidate, Romney presented himself disingenuously as a lifetime member of the NRA and a hunter of “varmints,” which prompted the acerbic Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi to write: “Leave it to Mitt Romney to shoot himself in the foot with a gun he doesn’t own.”
Source: An Inside Look, by R.B.Scott, p.144-145 , Nov 22, 2011
To "chip away" at "tough Massachusetts gun laws" would have been an exercise in futility. Since anything Romney could propose along those lines as governor of the state hadn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting past the Massachusetts General Court (i.e., our legislature) plus Senate.
These "laws" are still on the books in my state. And they are draconian: You can go to prison for years on grounds of insufficiently "safe" gun storage (as the "law" defines "safe," not to mention "storage") in a private home....
Romney knew he couldn't get anywhere thataway: Marxists detest the idea of firearms in private hands as a matter of principle. And he was sane enough to recognize that you don't easily disabuse Marxists of their favorite hobby horses....
What he did on this matter in the state was done by gubernatorial executive order — i.e., no more police chief decisions, but the "shall issue" precept.
Romney is a natural-born tax cutter. The most deplorable tax, to his way of thinking, is the income tax, which falls on all alike — even though the 16th Amendment proclaims it is a "voluntary tax." He is especially alive to the devastation that the income tax does to entrepreneurial activity, that is to say to the formation and sustainability of private business enterprises — the folks who create jobs and give hard-working Americans a chance to realize their own American dreams, unmolested by the federal government....
Equally I feel sure, he detests the individual income tax: The idea here being the revolting proposition that the federal government "owns" all the productivity of its citizens, and thus the essential problem for it is: How much of the fruits of American ingenuity, creativity, and sheer labor do we allow the people, who created all these social benefits, to keep for themselves and their families?
Romney dealt with this problem by shifting away from income taxes — which fall on all alike — by increasing fees for particular users of benefits, which are optional. I.e., increasing fees for such things as hunting and fishing licenses, firearms licenses, et al. One can always "opt out" of such fees in a way that an income-tax payer cannot by simply refraining from engaging in a "taxable activity." If you breathe, you pay income taxes. If you don't engage in hunting, fishing, etc., you don't have to pay a thing.
Dear brother in Christ, politics has been exceptionally well-defined as "the art of the possible," not the art of a perfect world — which will not come before the Second Coming of Christ anyway.
I applaud Mitt Romney for having made the RKBA accessible in Massachusetts. The fact that this act was not "made perfect" by the repeal of unreasonable gun laws is not a blame to charge at his doorstep.
I gather the "shall issue" precept was delivered by gubernatorial Executive Order, not by any act of the Massachusetts legislature.
If we had to depend on the latter, probably my last firearms license renewal would have been highly "problematic." Not that anything about me had changed; but that absent his intervention, that "progressives" would have extinguished my RKBA by now....
What Romney did as governor was to take the firearms licensure decision out of the hands of private men (i.e., local police chiefs), and put it into the form of just and equal laws.
I applaud him for that — to me, this reveals that his political instincts are right on the (constitutional) money....
I'm scratching my head over this one. Formerly I paid $50 to renew my license for a four-year term. The last time I renewed, it was $100 for a six-year term. That's Romney's fee increase — from $12.50 per year to $16.67 per year.
That is not a 400% fee increase on gun owners.
What is objectionable about this statement?:
We found common ground. My view is that we have the second amendment right to bear arms and my view is also that we should not add new legislation. I know that there are people that think we need new laws. I disagree with that. I believe we have in place all the laws we need. We should enforce those laws. I do not believe in new laws restricting gun ownership and gun use.