Editorial: 2012 Election - Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea

I unabashedly tell you the Second Amendment is my Litmus test for any political candidate. I have opinions on other issues, some garner fairly strong opinions, but the bottom line for me is whether or not a candidate can be trusted to defend my right to own a firearm.

Every time I hear the statement, "I love my country but I fear my government" it resonates with me and more so now than ever in my adult life. So it is as we go into the 2012 presidential election.

The liberal canards roll off me like water off a duck's back. It is irrelevant that this president has said little about the Second Amendment; I know his track record in Illinois and the U.S. Senate. As a lame duck he will implement disastrous anti-Second Amendment policies, further his socialist agenda, continue to appoint Czars who have no accountability to the voters, and do his best to end run around Congress and the U.S. Supreme court every chance he gets.

It is also irrelevant that Romney's choice for vice president is pro-Second Amendment and a hunter. This country's number two has, for the most part, been little more than a political ploy to make a presidential candidate more acceptable or to secure votes from a region or demographic that the presidential candidate couldn't buy regardless of how deep a pocket he has.

So where does Millard Mitt Romney stand on the Second Amendment? In 2007, in a taped message to the NRA's Celebration of American Values, Romney said, "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. It's essential to our functioning as a free society, as are all the liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights..." How does that compare with his track record?

In 1994 when Romney ran for the Senate, he went on record as supporting the ban on assault rifles and the Brady Bill's five-day waiting period for gun purchases, saying those positions wouldn't make him "the hero of the NRA."

He was elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and made that state the first to permanently ban assault weapons. While governor, on a trip to New Hampshire, he was asked his view on the Second Amendment and responded that he had been a hunter "pretty much all my life." Eventually it was discovered that he'd never been issued a hunting license in his life causing him to acknowledged that his "lifetime of hunting" was having shot at some birds during a Republican governors meeting during a fund-raising event and shooting at "small varmints" when he was seventeen.

Since then he has declared he has reversed his position. "I believe we need to focus on enforcing our current laws rather than creating new laws that burden lawful gun owners. I believe in safe and responsible gun ownership and that anyone who exercises the right to keep and bear arms must do so lawfully and properly. I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all federal approach to gun ownership because people keep and use firearms for different reasons. Law-abiding citizens have a right to protect their homes and their families and as President, I will vigorously defend that right," his is quoted as saying in a January 7, 2008 piece in The Washington Post.

He continues to maintain he is a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment and the right of law abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. Hopefully Romney really has changed his position on gun control but only time will tell. In the meantime, going into the 2012 election, and given the circumstances, I'll take the capitalist over the socialist any day. What I won't do is stay home and not vote which is a de facto vote for the one candidate you can be sure will do everything in his power to make the U.S. a gun free zone.

NSSF Files Motion to Dismiss Traditional Ammunition Lawsuit

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has filed a motion to dismiss a second lawsuit brought by the radical anti-hunting Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and six other groups demanding the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ban commonly used traditional ammunition containing lead components, representing 95 percent of the ammunition sold in the United States today. The suit is before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The EPA already has twice denied attempts by CBD to have the agency ban traditional ammunition, noting correctly that it does not have the authority to regulate traditional ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act. The Court has already dismissed an earlier case brought by CBD seeking the same relief. The CBD's transparent goal in petitioning the EPA and repeatedly filing lawsuits is to end hunting in America by banning the ammunition millions of hunters and shooters choose to use safely and responsibly. "There is quite simply no sound science that shows the use of traditional ammunition has harmed wildlife populations or that it presents a health risk to humans who consume game taken with such ammunition," said Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for NSSF. [Source: National Shooting Sports Foundation]