Romney’s gun comments were all wrong

10/18/2012 8:00am by 1,817

Ah the gun nuts

Guns don’t kill people.  Single moms kill people.  At least that’s what Mitt Romney told us during Tuesday’s presidential debate.

Romney actually said a lot of dumb things about guns Tuesday night, all of them incorrect.  Let’s first take a look at what Romney said, then what you through the errors, also known as “lies.”  I’ll highlight some of the crazy stuff.

Mitt Romney “misspeaks” about guns, a lot, during the debate

Gun

Gun via Shutterstock

CROWLEY: Governor Romney, the question is about assault weapons, AK-47s.

ROMNEY: Yeah, I’m not in favor of new pieces of legislation on — on guns and taking guns away or making certain guns illegal. We, of course, don’t want to have automatic weapons, and that’s already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons. What I believe is we have to do, as the president mentioned towards the end of his remarks there, which is to make enormous efforts to enforce the gun laws that we have, and to change the culture of violence that we have.

And you ask how — how are we going to do that? And there are a number of things. He mentioned good schools. I totally agree. We were able to drive our schools to be number one in the nation in my state. And I believe if we do a better job in education, we’ll — we’ll give people the — the hope and opportunity they deserve and perhaps less violence from that. But let me mention another thing. And that is parents. We need moms and dads, helping to raise kids. Wherever possible the — the benefit of having two parents in the home, and that’s not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But gosh to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone, that’s a great idea.

Because if there’s a two parent family, the prospect of living in poverty goes down dramatically. The opportunities that the child will — will be able to achieve increase dramatically. So we can make changes in the way our culture works to help bring people away from violence and give them opportunity, and bring them in the American system. The — the greatest failure we’ve had with regards to — to gun violence in some respects is what — what is known as Fast and Furious. Which was a program under this administration, and how it worked exactly I think we don’t know precisely, where thousands of automatic, and AK-47 type weapons were — were given to people that ultimately gave them to — to drug lords.

They used those weapons against — against their own citizens and killed Americans with them. And this was a — this was a program of the government. For what purpose it was put in place, I can’t imagine. But it’s one of the great tragedies related to violence in our society which has occurred during this administration. Which I think the American people would like to understand fully, it’s been investigated to a degree, but — but the administration has carried out executive privilege to prevent all of the information from coming out.

I’d like to understand who it was that did this, what the idea was behind it, why it led to the violence, thousands of guns going to Mexican drug lords.

Where to begin.

1. Automatic weapons are not banned. From CNN:

Automatic weapons, whether semi-automatic or fully automatic, are legal in much of the country. Semi-automatic weapons account for about 15 percent of the more than 250 million privately owned firearms in the United States, according to the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Fully automatic weapons are legal in most states, but require an extensive federal background check and a permit from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the NRA said.

250m guns. Jesus.

2. Single moms are the root cause of gun violence in America?  Seriously, Mitt?  So then why are you against gay marriage?  Or are mass shootings in movie theaters okay so long as the perp is gay?

3. “According to the Children’s Defense Fund, in the 44 years since Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were shot to death, bullets have ended the lives of more than one million people.” – ABC News.  While with Fast and Furious, in terms of quantifiable American deaths, there was one.  And Mitt Romney thinks that that one death, rather than the one million we’ve already had, was “the greatest failure we’ve had with regards to — to gun violence.”

No, I think Mitt Romney’s quote is the greatest failure we’ve had with regards to gun violence in a very long time.

4. Speaking of Fast and Furious, Romney said during the debate: “how it worked exactly I think we don’t know precisely… it’s been investigated to a degree… I’d like to understand who it was that did this, what the idea was behind it, why it led to the violence.”

Well, gosh, Mitt – maybe you should check out the 471 page report issued by the Inspector General’s office of the Department of Justice that pretty much answers all of those questions.

The NRA is vewy vewy scared of President Obama

Oh, and the NRA is wetting its pants over the President’s stated support the assault weapon ban in the debate.  Mind you, Mitt Romney is a total phony on guns (surprised anyone?) and once said “I don’t line up with the National Rifle Association.”  But now Romney is suddenly a gun’s best friend, telling gun nuts that they “will have a friend in the White House.”  No, they’ll have a liar who flips on a dime.

President Obama has been pretty weak on gun control, but at least he’s been consistent – but that hasn’t stopped the NRA from doing all it can to demonize the President in an effort to help Republicans.

“Some gun owners took Obama at his word four years ago, when he said he wouldn’t take their guns away,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director, NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. “So, after years of paying lip service to the Second Amendment, President Obama finally let it slip last night that he supports the most draconian form of gun control – a gun ban.”

The most draconian form of gun control – a gun ban!

Right, because who would want to ban guns when we only have 250 million of them?  Out of my cold dead hands.  It might just take all of us to have cold dead hands before the American people wake up and do something about the ridiculous culture of violence in this country.

I do enjoy the gun nuts’ absurd claim that guns are “only an object,” so why blame them for the one million deaths we’ve had already in this country? But then when you try to regulate that “object,” you’d think someone proposed burning Bibles.  If a stupid piece of metal can provoke this much anger and passion in the gun nuts, then maybe the link between guns and violence isn’t so questionable after well.

As if it ever was.

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@aravosis | Facebook | Google+. Editor of AMERICAblog, joint JD/MSFS from Georgetown, worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, and as a stringer for the Economist. A frequent TV pundit, he has been on The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline & Reliable Sources. Full bio and .

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