While answering questions last Tuesday, Mitt Romney apparently tried to pass himself off as a life-long hunter:

“I support the Second Amendment,” he told the man [wearing an NRA hat] who had asked about his views on the constitutional right to bear arms. “I purchased a gun when I was a young man. I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life. I’ve never really shot anything terribly big. I used to hunt rabbits.”

Then things went south as it came out that Romney had only hunted twice in his life: once with his cousins when he was 15, and again last year on a fenced game preserve with GOP donors.

Does that really qualify as “life-long”? Yeah, the press didn’t think so either, so the campaign staff started damage control on Wednesday:

“Gov. 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.

Strange. In a 1994 Senate race he said that he supported the Brady gun control law and a ban on assault rifles:

“That’s not going to make me the hero of the NRA,” he told the Boston Herald at the time. “I don’t line up with a lot of special interest groups.”

Slap! In Massachusetts you don’t need the NRA’s support. As a matter of fact, it’s probably something of a liability.

But the tactic worked so well that he did the same thing in the 2002 Governors race by saying:

We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts. I support them. I won’t chip away at them. I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.

Slap! Take that, NRA!

But now Mitt is running for president and he needs the heartland. Suddenly he’s concerned about the Constitution. Which explains why a “life-long hunter” finally joined the NRA last August. It also explains why he did a couple of marginally gun-friendly things towards the end of his term (just before he started running for president).

And it explains why Mitt spoke to the press today in an attempt to do some damage control to undo the damage done by his campaign spokesman when he was trying to do damage control:

“I’m not a big-game hunter. I’ve made that very clear,” [Romney] said. “I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will. I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times.”

Ooh, “More than two times.” That makes up for the Brady pandering and the bad-mouthing of the NRA and the “assault” weapons ban. Right?

Yeah, I don’t think so either.