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 BOSTON
- To hear Mitt Romney talk on the campaign trail, you might
think the Republican presidential candidate had a gun rack in
the back of his pickup truck.
"I purchased a gun when I was a young man.
I've been a hunter pretty much all my life," he said this
week in Keene, N.H., to a man sporting a National Rifle Association
cap.
Yet the former Massachusetts governor's hunting
experience is limited to two trips at the bookends of his 60
years: as a 15-year-old, when he hunted rabbits with his cousins
on a ranch in Idaho, and last year, when he shot quail on a
fenced game preserve in Georgia.
Last year's trip was an outing with major donors
to the Republican Governors Association, which Romney headed
at the time.
An aide said Wednesday that Romney was not trying
to mislead anyone, although he confirmed Romney had been hunting
only on those occasions in his life.
"Governor Romney's support for the Second
Amendment doesn't come from the fact he knows how to handle
a firearm; it comes from his appreciation of the Constitution
and the rights enshrined in it, including the right to keep
and bear arms," said campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom.
He went on to cite the pro-gun measures Romney signed into law
while serving as governor from 2003 to this past January. |
