National Rifle Association (NRA) President David Keene joined me on our statewide radio talk show Voices of Montana on Monday morning. In addition to serving as NRA President, Keene owns a ranch back here in Montana.
You can click here to catch the full audio on my podcast page as Keene discussed gun control efforts in the US Senate.
I kicked off the show by getting his reaction to a new report from Politico detailing Obama Campaign Manager Jim Messina’s efforts to lead the new campaign to enact sweeping gun laws in the country. (Messina is also a former top aide to Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), and a Univ. of Montana alum)
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Here’s a transcript of a portion of Keene’s remarks, when asked about Jim Messina and the president’s new campaign:
KEENE: All of these new groups that are formed are funded by Michael Bloomberg. Messina’s operation has now got the tank filled because Bloomberg’s filling it up and letting him do it. The president had turned his campaign operation over to the anti-gun movement as soon as he was elected and was ready for this.
We’ve been predicting of course, and I think I did on your program, that if Barack Obama were re-elected, that he would go after 2nd Amendment rights, and he is now using the tragedy in Connecticut to be the pivot point from which he does that.
Even before that, within 2 hours of his victory speech in Chicago, the State Department notified the UN that they wanted the arms trade treaty, which the president had asked them to delay indefinitely because it would have come to his desk in mid-summer. They said, “We want it on the president’s desk for signing just as soon as possible.” So as soon as the votes were counted and Barack Obama knew that he had another shot he was going to take on the 2nd Amendment and what Newtown did was give him the excuse to do that.