Romney joined NRA in August
Was advocate of gun control
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney was a former advocate of gun control.
By David Abel, Globe Staff | February 19, 2007
Mitt Romney, who has touted his support of gun owners since launching his presidential campaign, yesterday acknowledged he did not become a member of the National Rifle Association until last August, campaign officials said.
A former advocate of gun control, Romney during his 1994 run for the US Senate backed measures the gun-rights group opposed, such as a five-day waiting period on gun sales and a ban on certain assault weapons.
The former Massachusetts governor has been criticized for changing his positions to appeal to social conservatives voting in Republican primaries. In a nationally broadcast interview yesterday, he also had to explain his switch to a conservative stance on abortion and why he once voted for Democrats in Massachusetts primaries.
Spokesman Kevin Madden said Romney did not join the NRA just to court gun owners, who are considered a force in Republican primary politics.
“He joined the NRA because, like millions of Americans, he supports the group’s advocacy of the Second Amendment and its commitment to education programs promoting the safe use of firearms by law-abiding gun owners,” Madden said.
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Asked why Romney joined only a few months before declaring his candidacy, Madden said: “I would argue not many Americans care when you join, but why you join, and I think I’ve made that clear.”
It's interesting that a man who has close ties to John McCain is funding a PAC, called, Trust Huckabee, which ran the push polls for Huckabee in Florida.
In case you don't know who Charles Lindner is, maybe this will remind you(now he's into carbon trading, as in McCain/Lieberman):
The Keating One,' and Carl Lindner From 1981—the year before John McCain ran for U.S. Congress—until the early 1990s, the former Navy pilot was totally beholden to junk bond swindler Charles Keating for his political fortunes. When the S&L scandal exploded and Federal prosecutors were breathing down Keating's neck, it was McCain who tried to bully Federal regulators into backing off. While the affair became known as the "Keating Five" scandal, none of the other members of the Senate and House implicated in the ethics violations, were as closely tied to Keating as John McCain.
And Charles Keating was no "loan assassin." He was but one player in a larger organized crime apparatus that ran the $200 billion-plus rip-off, in what may have been the biggest actual RICO (racketeering) scheme ever.
Between 1959 and the late 1980s, Charles Keating was the business partner of Carl Lindner, the Cincinnati, Ohio-based financier who would be one of the central figures in the $200 billion S&L rip-off. In 1959, Lindner and Keating co-founded American Financial Corporation (AFC). Keating served as the mortgage and insurance company's general counsel, and later as vice president.
Between 1974 and 1976, Lindner and Keating engineered a series of stock purchases and mergers with some of the leading figures in the Lansky crime syndicate—who had followed the Bronfman family recipe, and gone from "rags, to rackets, to riches, to respectability
Since peace is not an option, I think you would make a fine marine. Go enlist.