Mitt Romney Unfamiliar With Details of Colorado Shooting, Falsely Claims Shooter Got Weapons Illegally
I am amazed at the brazenness of the Romney campaign in criticizing Obama on foreign policy and just about everything else, yet they are prone to so many gaffes and have a problem with the facts. Romney had the nerve imply to Brian Williams, according to the transcript of his exclusive NBC interview, that he is unfamiliar with the details of the Colorado shooting that left 12 dead and 58 injured by saying gunman James Holmes obtained the weapons illegally. Earth to Mitt Romney — James Holmes purchased the firearms, 6,000 rounds of ammunition and tactical gear legally through various national gun chains and on the Internet.
Gee, Mitt Romney couldn’t take time out of his “busy” schedule to follow the events surrounding a tragedy of such magnitude. It shows how disconnected he is with the majority of Americans. He claims he has walked the “real streets of America.” Really? This also plays into Mitt Romney being fuzzy on the details of his offshore bank accounts, his departure date at Bain Capital, his blind trust, his tax returns and the list goes on and on. I can hear George W. Bush asking, miss me yet?
ROMNEY: Well this person shouldn’t have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them. And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won’t. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what’s essential, to improve the lots of the American people. Source: Think Progress
Mitt Romney unfamiliarity with the details of the Colorado shooting rampage that impacted so many is an insult to the victims, their families, law enforcement and the state of Colorado. I expect this type of ignorance from someone like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin, but not from the man who claims he knows how to fix what ails this country.
This was cross-posted from The Hinterland Gazette.
Editor’s Note added July 26, 2012: Just as a nota bene: It appears that Mitt Romney said “…it was illegal to have many of those things already.” The operative phrase many think, appears to be ‘many of those things.’ Not, ‘all’ things. He had just listed “weapons and, bombs, and “other devices” and then said …”it was illegal to have many of those things already.” Here in Colorado it is illegal to have, as James Holmes is alleged to have had in his apartment in a reseidential apartment building of families and children, incendiary fluids and bombs wired to explode. Whether Holmes purchased all materials, firearms, ammo, combustible materials ‘legally’ remains to be seen, once all facts are in, especially including where FBI and State law officers are focussing now: whether Holmes used government grant money given to him for research at Anschutz Medical, for buying whichever or all of these devices, firearms and fluids. If so, the issue of legality rises in another or additional direction. Thanks.
Dr. E/ managing editor, TMV
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None of the Plutocracy was involved – nothing to see here.
Just incredible!!
Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re being remarkably unfair. Look, fund raising is hard, hard work. You can’t expect our politicians to keep up with all this trivia on top of that…
Of course Romney doesn’t understand the details of the shooting…. he was too busy with planning his trip to Great Britain, raising millions of dollars from people who are “VIPs” for his own campaign… The middle-class shooting victims of Colorado aren’t worth his time.
Romney and the Republicans really have no hope but to base their entire campaign on lies. The truth doesn’t serve them very well. They claim that their economic policies didn’t have anything to do with the second largest collapse of the economy in one hundred years, but that following those policies will solve our economic problems now. They are claiming that Obama has increased government spending to the point of bankrupting us when he has actually decreased the deficit over what the Republicans left him. Additionally Romney is proposing to increase the deficit in order to give himself and the wealthy yet another tax cut if he is elected. They say that Obama is not one of us, not a real American while they are running a multimillionaire who made his money by loading up companies with debt and looting their pension fund, approximately the same thing that he is proposing for the country if he is elected.
Romney seems to have cut Commenting 101. When you don’t know the details of an event, say I don’t know all the details of this tragedy, but I do know that……………… (platitudes). Don’t fake it, you don’t have to know everything. BTW: you are running a terrible campaign and where did you get your advisers from, you can afford better and then listen to them. You are coming across as an ill informed and planless.
ROMNEY DIDN’T CLAIM THE SHOOTER GOT THE WEAPONS ILLEGALLY.
READ HIS REMARKS AND TO CLAIM THAT HE SAID THAT IS A COMPLETE DISTROTION.
READ HIS REMARKS AND THEN IF YOU HAVE ANY FAIRNESS YOU WILL CHANGE YOUR HEADLINE WHICH IS A COMPLETE FABRICATION OF HIS REMARKS.
MSMHACKS: Here’s the exact quote from MSNBC–
ROMNEY: “Well this person shouldn’t have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them. And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won’t. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what’s essential, to improve the lots of the American people.”
In fairness, the media is not reporting the “bombs/grenades” angle fully.
Excepting the teargas, the grenades & bombs in his apartment were homemade. And they are illegal, even in Colorado (even in Arizona!!).
The headlines kept saying “grenades”. IMO that’s a bit misleading, it’s insinuating he had military-grade explosives. This is homemade stuff.
I would like an explanation of the teargas, however.
I wonder if Gov. Rick Perry has endorsed Romney? They are sounding similar these days…
The “many of those things” Romney is referring to is the “bombs and other devices”, which is true. How are we managing to ignore the context that is in the same sentence?
The argument he is making is that since he had those things, and they were illegal, he would have had the guns also even if they were illegal. It’s a bad argument, though, since he’s unlikely to have been able to make a semi-automatic rifle from scratch. He would have had to get it from somewhere, and it would have been harder if it was illegal to buy *and sell*.
So, it’s a foolish and politically-motivated argument. Hardly a first for a politician. It does not indicate that he isn’t familiar with the details of the shooting, since he did *not* say that the guns were illegal. In fact, he was making a (bad) argument for why it wouldn’t be helpful to make them illegal, an argument which would make even less sense if he thought they were already illegal.
Nice to see you take think progress’s headline at face value.
Get used to it if you’re going to stick around for long.
msm may have a point. It sounds like Romney was lumping all the stuff, legal guns, HC magazines and ammo, and the illegal teargas, etc.
So, I give him a gentleman’s C on that subject.
We shouldn’t hang him out to dry on this one.
The real problem is that Romney was not familiar with the details. He’s running for president so he should have been. It just shows how detached he is from the “real Americans” the Republicans are always talking about. This is another Marie Antoinette moment for Mitt.
Ron, the real problem is the press wants a sound bite from anyone running for office, so the candidate gives them a generalized answer and then the liberal proess runs off making it sound like Romney doesn’t know what he is talking about.
I agree with MSMhacks and the follwoing commenters when they said read his comment.
His lack of leadership is apparent if you watch the interview on NBC. Romney was rambling on about some vague plan to track down unstable violent individuals with weapons.
But Holmes was in constant contact with the faculty in his small program and none of them had any inkling of what he was planning. He also had sent a notebook with descriptive passages about killing to the school — but it was never opened until it was too late.
The fact that Romney is relatively clueless and/or out of touch on a host of important events and issues won’t prevent almost half of the electorate from voting for him. Yes, our country has become this stupid.
Z, “a host”, please give detail list.
I’m actually with Romney on the meat of what he was saying there. Namely, if we think we can change the laws on owning dangerous items that things like this won’t happen. Something more fundamental has to change for tragedies like this to stop. This is a big and touchy topic, and candidates are pressed 24/7 by reporters for a 15 second sound bite to explain it all, which results in comments that are often easily taken out of context to make the candidate appear like an idiot. I’m not going to bag on Romney for this one.
I have plenty of other legit things to bag on Romney for.
Slam said: “I have plenty of other legit things to bag on Romney for”
I agree, and his team as well.
Dd, rather than compose a “detail list” of Romney’s liablities I’ll leave you with one simple and sufficient reason:
Supreme Court appointments.
Z, ditto for Obama. I wonder if this is the smartest way to appoint judges to the SCOTUS.