He merely tried to act like he was because he wanted the conservative gun owner vote.
Romneys Flip-Flops on Gun Control Over the Years
by Jesse Singal Jul 25, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
As he has on so many other issues, Mitt Romney has executed a major flip-flop on gun rightsand told some mistruths along the way. Jesse Singal takes us through Romneys gun past.
As governor of Massachusetts, Romney had been able to tack a mostly pro-gun-control course. Not entirelythe NRA had still given him a "B" during his gubernatorial run in 2002, and he did support a few modest NRA-approved initiatives. But overall, Massachusetts voters were rather predictable on guns, and in 2004 Romney signed what the AP would later call one of the toughest assault weapons laws in the country. The Bay State had long had sturdy gun-control laws, and its residents liked them.
But in Live Free or Die New Hampshire, in the early days of his presidential campaign, Romney was facing his electoral future. If he really wanted to be a viable presidential candidatelet alone a viable presidential candidate for a party blissfully wed to unfettered gun rightshe needed to start singing a different tune. The guy in the NRA cap was just one man, but there were millions more gun owners in Romneys immediate future, in Iowa and Ohio and Florida and everywhere else. For a candidate whose opponents on the right were hell-bent on hanging the RINO label on him, it was a problem.
***snip***
As he has on abortion, health-care reform, and a host of other issues, Romney has constantly calibrated his views on guns and gun control to reflect not an internally coherent ideology, but rather what a given questioner wants to hear at a given point. Its the only way to explain the very casual, easily disproved moments of dishonesty. After all, you dont just forget that youre not a lifelong hunter, or that you dont own a gun.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/25/romney-s-flip-flops-on-gun-control-over-the-years.htm
In reality Romney might have pushed for far stronger gun control than Obama will. Time will tell how Obama will act but Obama was friendly to gun owners during his first term and he doen't change his views as often or as easily as Romney has.