“Hundreds” of death threats have been made against the president of the National Rifle Association just since the first of this year. And those threats reflect President Obama’s political tactics. That’s what NRA President David Keene told talk show host Ernest Istook on Thursday.

NRA President: Death Threats Against Org Reflect Obama's Tactics

 

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“Hundreds” of death threats have been made against the president of the National Rifle Association just since the first of this year. And those threats reflect President Obama’s political tactics. That’s what NRA President David Keene told talk show host Ernest Istook on Thursday.

Keene says those threats reflect attempts by the Left and by President Obama “to demonize and blame those who disagree with him for everything he doesn’t like.”
Keene also is literally targeted by a video game that invites people to shoot him, which he calls the “Kill David Keene” game. The good news, according to Keene, is that those who play the game are unlikely to be gun owners. “So I’m probably safe,” he says.
Meantime, much of America’s media show little concern for Keene’s safety. Instead, they attack the NRA for its video ad that asserts other schoolchildren deserve the same safety as President Obama’s daughters enjoy at school.
Keene told Istook, “The national media is basically at this point a cheering section for the President, particularly on guns because the elite media has always been a part of the effort to gut the Second Amendment. “
The interview aired on “Istook Live!” Excerpts are available online at www.istook.com.
Prosecutions for using guns to commit crimes are down 35% under Obama, Keene says: “They don’t prosecute criminals for using guns. They don’t blame the criminal; they blame the gun.”
About Obama, the NRA leader said, “He positioned himself as the only reasonable man in America. His solution, to whatever the problem is, is the common sense solution. And everyone would follow that but for some evil special interest.”
What about the effort to renew an assault weapons ban? “We passed an assault weapons ban in 1994 under Bill Clinton. It included a ban on high-capacity magazines. It was ineffective for ten years. It was allowed to lapse by the Congress in large part because various studies, including the FBI, showed that it had no impact on violent crime at all. And in fact during the assault weapons ban the average number of people killed by long-arms was 600 and some, after it was 200 hundred and some.”Regarding Obama’s injecting Ronald Reagan’s name as a supporter of the earlier effort, Keene says, “It was under very different circumstances.”
Keene and Istook also focused on a usually-overlooked aspect of limiting the size of ammo clips:

Istook:  The shooters in Aurora, Colorado, and in Sandy Hook--they planned things in advance so they brought with them multiple magazines. Whether you’re talking about one [clip] that holds 30 bullets, or carrying 3 [clips] that each hold ten, how long does it take to pull out one and put in the other?
Keene: About a second and a half.
Istook:  Exactly. That is the point and they never mention that. Are they saying that it’s going to save lives because these premeditated, these pre-planned killers are going to pause a second and a half in their murder spree?
Keene: They have little to do with stopping violent crimes. Certainly nothing to do with stopping the kind of mass homicides that we’ve had in recent years. Every one of these shooters that are involved in this are legitimately crazy.

The NRA president repeated his call to improve the database used for background checks to make sure it red-flags those “who’ve been adjudicated to be potentially violently and mentally ill.”
Keene added a concern whether expanded tracking of purchases could create a federal database of firearms owners: “Registration … has historically always been the first footstep toward confiscation. Within the last few weeks … the Governor of New York and Senator Feinstein have both suggested registration followed by what they call “forced buy-backs.” In other words, if they know that you own a shotgun, you will be required to turn it in. That’s confiscation.” He also described how such lists of guns and owners could be used or hacked by criminals to target victims.
Former Congressman Ernest Istook hosts "Istook Live!" every Monday thru Friday, 9 am to noon (Eastern). You can listen from anywhere via www.istook.com.