Ted Strickland Attacks Romney on Gun Rights If you covered up the byline, you might guess the attack on Mitt Romney's gun policies was coming from Governor Rick Perry of Texas, the former presidential candidate who likes to jog while carrying a handgun with a laser sight. Mr. Romney just pretends to support Second Amendment rights, according to an opinion article published in Politico. The presumptive Republican nominee dared to raise gun license fees in Massachusetts, making it harder to carry firearms. He hasn't been true to the National Rifle Association, and pretended to use guns far more often than he really does. "I earned an "A" rating from the N.R.A. by being an actual defender of the Second Amendment," the author writes. Romney tried to sneak in the back door. The author is not one of Mr. Romney's former Republican primary opponents. It's Ted Strickland, the former Democratic governor of Ohio, who proudly identifies himself as co-chairman of President Obama's re-election campaign. The point of the article is that Mr. Romney is a hypocrite on guns, as on so many things. But the Obama campaign's willingness to attack him from the right on the Second Amendment is a fresh illustration of its moral failings on this issue. The president never pursued a restoration of the expired ban on assault weapons, as he once promised to do. He signed a law allowing people to carry loaded weapons in national parks. And though he called for making it more difficult for dangerous people to buy guns after the Tucson shootings, he never made it a legislative priority. Fearing the political consequences, he has not used his position to try to rein in the country's gun culture, which has produced so much bloodshed and loss. It's true that the president has never overtly pandered to the N.R.A., as Mr. Romney did today at the lobby's national convention in St. Louis. "If we are going to safeguard our Second Amendment, it is time to elect a president who will defend the rights President Obama ignores or minimizes," Mr. Romney said. (Huh? Is he talking about the same president who almost never talks about gun control?) And even Mr. Romney hasn't come close to Newt Gingrich's sheer lunacy on the subject. With nothing left to lose, Mr. Gingrich said today that the N.R.A. had actually been "too timid" on gun rights. "A Gingrich presidency will submit to the United Nations a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right for every person on the planet," he said. Will concealed weapons also be allowed in the moon colony he wants to build? Perhaps space suits should come equipped with a secret holster. Mr. Obama's strategists think it's the height of political naïveté to moralize on guns, pointing out how many Midwestern and Western states would be lost if he really spoke out. But it's worth remembering that voters don't always care about guns above all else. In 2010, John Kasich, who was not endorsed by the N.R.A., was elected governor of Ohio. He beat Mr. Strickland, the N.R.A."s candidate.