NRA President David Keene weighs in on 2012 election

October 31, 2012

Writer

Will an Obama victory mean a huge spike in gun sales? That's the prediction that Glenn made on radio this morning before he interviewed David Keene, President of the National Rifle Association. Glenn explains his prediction and talks to Keane about Tuesday's election and where Romney and Obama fall in terms of the second amendment.

Transcript of the interview is below:

GLENN: I'm going to make a prediction. If Wednesday Obama has won the election, the biggest day of gun sales in the history of the world will be that day. There will be more ammunition and more guns sold in the United States than any place at any time in the history of the planet next Wednesday. And let me make another prediction: If Obama wins, you are going to be very angry that you didn't buy your gun in advance because they're going to be hard to get, and ammunition will be hard to get. Because there will be a run on ammunition. Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think anybody ‑‑ anybody who is an NRA member has any doubt on how much of a friend President Obama is to guns, and everybody will want to be grandfathered in.

David Keene, he's the president of the NRA. He's with us. How are you, sir?

KEENE: Just fine, Glenn. Glad to be with you.

GLENN: Do you agree with the prediction that I just made?

KEENE: I sure do. You know, right after his election in 2008, because of his history and because of what he said during that campaign and because of what he said right after the election about wanting to reimpose the Clinton gun ban and tax ammunition and the like, gun sales went way up because people were fearful that he was going to go after their guns. And the same thing's going to happen now because even though for the last year and a half like most liberal politicians, he's tried to downplay his position on the Second Amendment, during that town hall debate he got a question, as you remember, and I don't think he expected it. But he came out of the closet. It was if he said, okay, regardless about what I've said about supporting the Second Amendment, I don't. I'd like to reimpose the Clinton gun ban, I'd like to go after sidearms and when I get reelected, I'm going to do it.

GLENN: You know there's ‑‑

KEENE: So gun owners and everybody that believes in the Second Amendment who saw that debate knows that this is the same guy who campaigned against guns last time, who was an anti‑Second Amendment activist back in Chicago, long before he ever thought of running for public office and that if he gets an opportunity, he's going to go after the Second Amendment.

GLENN: Let me ‑‑ let me ask you this: Why is it so close in Colorado with so many gun owners in Colorado? There's no ifs, ands, and buts on the friendliness to guns with Barack Obama, and anybody who says, "Hey, transmit this to Vladimir; I'm going to have a little extra flexibility after the election," that's frightening.

KEENE: You know they did essentially the same thing to Sarah Brady of handgun control. He told her, "Right now, right now I have to operate under the radar, but I'm going to deliver for you." That's essentially the same thing he told the president of Russia: Let me get past this election and then watch my dust.

GLENN: Where's Mitt Romney on guns?

KEENE: He's committed to the Second Amendment. You saw that in the town hall debate. When Barack Obama said I want a whole bunch of new gun control laws, Mitt Romney came back and said we don't need any new laws. We need to prosecute criminals, we need to support the Second Amendment. Not only that but he's got on his ticket Paul Ryan who, you know, I thought about this the other day. I'm a Wisconsin boy and I grew up about 15 miles from Paul and I've known him for a long time and he's probably the most genuine outdoorsman nominated for either office on either ticket since the days of Teddy Roosevelt.

GLENN: Wow.

KEENE: I mean, this is a ticket that will be good on the Second Amendment and I think will be very good in terms of expanding the outdoor opportunities and the hunting opportunities and sporting opportunities for the American people. So I think there's absolutely no choice for anybody who's interested in the shooting sports or anybody who supports the Second Amendment or for anybody who's interested in being active in the outdoors.

GLENN: Yeah, I don't ‑‑ I mean, you know, I know everybody makes the, you know, outdoor and the hunter, you know, claim but that's not why the founders put that in there.

KEENE: No, it is not. It's not the reason.

GLENN: Yeah.

KEENE: It was put in there, as George Washington said at the time, a free people ought to be armed. And, you know, Glenn, whenever I think about it, I think about a banquet that took place in Moscow a few years ago honoring General Kalashnikov who during World War II invented the AK‑47 and it was on the occasion of his 85th birthday. Mr. Putin got up to toast the general. He's one of Russia's few heroes. And when he finished the toast, General Kalashnikov got up, looked him in the eye and said, "Mr. President, my dream is of a country like the United States governed by men and women not afraid of an armed citizenry.

Think about that. Most people in this world can only dream about the kind of country in which we've lived since the founding. And it's that that distinguishes us from the rest of the world.

GLENN: Well, we're sitting here now, we're looking at Department of Homeland Security and everything else and we just take it at the airport. We just take it. When they come to our houses, you're like, well, what am I going to do? Because they've lost their fear of the American people. And the more you regulate guns, the more we ‑‑ I mean, the first thing that happened is what's happening now: We disconnect from the Constitution. We don't know our rights, we don't stand up for our rights. We don't even talk about our rights. We talk more about your rights than our responsibilities, and we've lost the founders' understanding of the Constitution. But the only ‑‑ the other thing is carrying a gun, having a gun ‑‑ having a gun makes the government fearful of its citizens as it should be.

KEENE: Well, that's what the battle about the Second Amendment is really about, Glenn. It's not about crime. If it were about crime, then the folks who are anti‑gun would look at the empirical evidence of, for example, the fact that in every jurisdiction that has allowed concealed carry, violent crime has dropped.

GLENN: Well, I mean ‑‑

KEENE: They would realize that in those jurisdictions where guns are restricted, what they've done is they've disarmed victims and allowed predators free reign, Chicago being a great example. But it's not about guns, it's not about crime.

GLENN: Exactly.

KEENE: It's about the values that the Second Amendment and an armed citizenry represent to a government that does not believe people should have the freedom to make their own decisions.

GLENN: We have a ‑‑

KEENE: That's what it's about.

GLENN: We have a real split in America. I mean, it's amazing how half of America's going one way, I'd say even a third of America's going one way and, you know, the remaining part of America's going the other way. Today in Oklahoma, I think it's today, you can now carry it openly. Now it's not concealed carry anymore. You can wear it on your hip in Oklahoma.

KEENE: Well, there are a number of states where that's legal. 49 states allow concealed carry in one form or another. Barack Obama has said in the past that he favors a federal law that would ban concealed carry in all 50 states, including the 49 that now have it. I don't know about the other seven ‑‑

GLENN: Holy cow.

KEENE: ‑‑ that he has in his mind.

GLENN: Wait. So you mean that he's for the holster?

KEENE: No, he's not for the gun.

GLENN: (Laughing.)

KEENE: He doesn't ‑‑

GLENN: Because I'm okay with that, too.

KEENE: This is a guy who has said in the past, Glenn, that he doesn't think any American citizen has the right to privately own a firearm. He supported legislation that would ban the possession, sale, and manufacture of handguns in the United States. This is a guy who has been committed to stripping Americans of their gun rights throughout his entire professional and political career.

GLENN: But he is smart enough to know that he's never going to get around ‑‑ and this is what people say: Oh, he'll never get around the Second Amendment. Yes, he will, by doing things like supporting the 500% increase on the tax on ammunition and gun sales.

KEENE: Yeah, exactly. A lot of people don't realize that all of this is of a piece. If you increase the taxes on ammunition 500%, 1,000%, whatever, you're making it more and more difficult for average Americans to own firearms and use them, to be involved in the shooting sports, defend themselves. You can do the same thing by taxing guns, as his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel wants to do for gun sales now in Chicago and Illinois.

GLENN: And bullets.

KEENE: Do all of those things, or you can eliminate gun dealers. And he's been harassing gun dealers and reduced the number of them since he's president.

GLENN: Big time.

KEENE: Think about this: When the Supreme Court issued the Heller decision which guarantees the right to individually and privately own firearms and said that in the District of Columbia ‑‑ because the original decision was about the district ‑‑ that you have a right to defend yourself by keeping a firearm in your home. The District of Columbia government said, "Okay, we recognize that, but you're going to have to buy it here in the district." The problem was there were no gun dealers that would sell to the general public in the district. And without the gun dealer, that right became an academic rather than a real right. There are all kinds of things. If you ban the manufacture of firearms, then what good does the right if you can't get them. In other words, there are a dozen, more than a dozen ways by bypassing the legislature, through regulatory harassment, through licensing, through executive orders, through a UN treaty that the president of the United States, if he's hostile to the Second Amendment and has a government that follows his orders, can get at the Second Amendment. And this is a guy who, if he can, will do just that.

GLENN: David Keene, president of the NRA. Thanks for being on and thanks for all of your hard work in this election season.

KEENE: Thank you.

GLENN: You bet. The NRA has done an awful lot in trying to get the word out because the Second Amendment is up for grabs. If this guy gets on again, mark my words: You better be at the gun store first thing on Wednesday if you want to be able to get one because they are going to go ‑‑ they are going to fly off the shelves, fly off the shelves. Ammunition. And as he continues his second term with more latitude, you will find things harder and harder to get. If you're smart, you might want to ‑‑ you might want to do it this week.

RADIO

Joe Lieberman calls out Democrats for anti-Semitism

'This is craziness': Why Dems have shunned Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz

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On Monday's radio program, Glenn Beck and Stu Burguiere discussed former Starbucks CEO and progressive Howard Schultz, a lifelong Democrat who has not only been disowned by the Democrat Party but he can no longer set foot inside of a Starbucks store because of his success in business.

In this clip, Stu explained how at one time Starbucks only sold coffee in bags until Schultz, an employee at the time, convinced the company to open a Starbucks cafe.

Click here to watch the full episode.

At one point, the owners came close to closing down the cafe, but Schultz eventually managed to purchase the company and transform it into the empire that it is today.

Stu continued, describing how Schultz, a lifelong Democrat, went on to implement liberal corporate policies that earned the company a reputation for being a "beacon" of liberalism across the country.

"And now he (Schultz) can't even get into the Democrat Party," Stu said."That is craziness," Glenn replied.

Citing a "60 Minutes" interview, Glenn highlighted the journey that Schultz traveled, which started in the New York City projects and evolved, later becoming the CEO of a coffee empire.

"This guy is so American, so everything in business that we want to be, he has taken his beliefs and made it into who he is which is very liberal," Glenn explained.

Catch more of the conversation in the video below.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

CLOSER LOOK: Who is Rep. Rashida Tlaib?

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This weekend, March 17, Rep. Rashida Tlaib will be speaking at (Council on American Islamic Relations) CAIR-Michigan's 19th annual "Faith-Led, Justice Driven" banquet.

Who knows what to expect. But here are some excerpts from a speech she gave last month, at CAIR-Chicago's 15th annual banquet.

You know the speech is going to be good when it begins like this:

CAIR-Chicago 15th Annual Banquet: Rashida Tlaib youtu.be

It's important to remember CAIR's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Think of CAIR as a spinoff of HAMAS, who its two founders originally worked for via a Hamas offshoot organization (the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP)).

A 2009 article in Politico says feds "designated CAIR a co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation, a group that was eventually convicted for financing terrorism."

The United Arab Emirates has designated CAIR a terrorist organization.

In 1993, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.

In 1998, CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad said:

Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran … should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.

Notice the slight underhanded jab at Israel. It's just one of many in her speech, and is indicative of the growing anti-Semitism among Democrats, especially Tlaib and Omar.

Most of the speech, as you might expect, is a long rant about the evil Donald Trump.

I wonder if she realizes that the Birth of Jesus pre-dates her religion, and her "country." The earliest founding of Palestine is 1988, so maybe she's a little confused.

Then there's this heartwarming story about advice she received from Congressman John Dingell:

When I was a state legislator, I came in to serve on a panel with him on immigration rights, and Congressman Dingell was sitting there and he had his cane, if you knew him, he always had this cane and he held it in front of him. And I was so tired, I had driven an hour and a half to the panel discussion at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus. And I sit down, my hair is all messed up, and I said, 'Oh, my God, I'm so tired of this. I don't know how you've been doing it so long Congressman. They all lie.' And he looks at me and he goes. (She nods yes.) I said, 'You know who I'm talking about, these lobbyists, these special interest [groups], they're all lying to me.' … And he looks at me, and he goes, 'Young lady, there's a saying in India that if you stand still enough on a riverbank, you will watch your enemies float by dead.'

What the hell does that mean? That she wants to see her enemies dead? Who are her enemies? And how does that relate to her opening statement? How does it relate to the "oppression" her family faced at the hand of Israel?

Amid accusations of anti-Semitism, Omar and Tlaib to speak at fundraisers for terror-linked organization

Glenn Beck on Wednesday called out Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) for their blatantly anti-Semitic rhetoric, which has largely been excused by Democratic leadership. He noted the sharp contrast between the progressive principles the freshmen congresswomen claim to uphold and the anti-LGBTQ, anti-feminist, anti-Israel groups they align themselves with.

Later this month, both congresswomen are scheduled to speak at fundraisers for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a pro-Palestinian organization with ties to Islamic terror groups including Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State.

Rep. Tlaib will be speaking at CAIR-Michigan's 19th Annual Banquet on March 17 in Livonia, Michigan, alongside keynote speaker Omar Suleiman, a self-described student of Malcolm X with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Suleiman has regularly espoused notably "un-progressive" ideas, such as "honor killings" for allegedly promiscuous women, mandatory Hijabs for women, death as a punishment for homosexuality, and men having the right to "sex slaves," Glenn explained.

Rep. Omar is the keynote speaker at a CAIR event on March 23 in Los Angeles and will be joined by Hassan Shibly, who claims Hezbollah and Hamas are not terrorist organizations, and Hussam Ayloush, who is known for referring to U.S. armed forces as radical terrorists.

Watch the clip below for more:

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

The roots of AOC

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It wasn't too long ago that Blanca thought it was all over.

Born in Puerto Rico, Blanca lived in New York most of her life. Recently, a reporter from the Daily Mail sent a reporter to interview Blanca. When the reporter arrived, Blanca was calmly sculpting wood in the front yard of her modest, 860-square-foot home down the street from a cemetery. Occasionally, a drug deal takes place out front, and the house is crumbling in parts, but Blanca has been fixing it up since she moved in a couple years ago, and this is home.

Reading the article, you can feel the writer's surprise, you can feel an unsuspecting writer being wrapped in Blanca's story.

By day, Blanca works for the Lake County School District as a clerical assistant.

This is a story about mothers.

Blanca is a woman who makes lasagna for visiting relatives and watches over her 78-year-old mother, "who suffers from pulmonary fibrosis and often breathes oxygen from a concentrator, and a loud rescue mutt named Tammy."

This is a story about daughters.

Because Blanca always believed in her daughter. Believed her daughter would be important. And, regardless of your opinion on her daughter—and, believe me, you have an opinion about her daughter, because everybody has an opinion about her daughter—there's no denying the wholesomeness of this story, so hear me out.

"Her dad and I were preparing for Alexandria's birth and still picking names," Blanca told the reporter. "And he came up with 'Alexandria.' I thought about it for a while and I said: 'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That sounds very powerful. That'll be her name.'"

Yes, that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the infamous millennial Democratic Socialist who represents New York's 14th district (covering the Bronx and Queens) in the House of Representatives.

And her mother is Blanca Ocasio-Cortez.

Blanca married Sergio Ocasio in Puerto Rico, then moved to New York. She knew very little English, but she learned. She worked the jobs nobody else wanted. She mopped floors at night, she drove school buses, she answered phones, took orders.

In 1989, she gave birth to her first child, a girl, in The Bronx, New York City. Two years later, she gave birth to a boy.

Until Alexandria was five, the family lived in a one-bedroom condo in the Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx.

Theirs was an American struggle.

Theirs was an American struggle. Sergio worked hard until he had his own business, and the small family pooled together their resources and took out a mortgage, and moved into "a small single-family house with a yard in nearby Yorktown Heights."

"We had a great life there," Blanca said. "Alexandria was very social, so she always had a bunch of girls over. She took over the shed in the backyard. She cleaned it up, put up curtains and photos and made it look nice, and that was like a clubhouse for her and her friends."

Blanca talks about her daughter the way any good mother does, recalling that her daughter was always talkative.

"When I took her to her pre-K interview, she didn't let me talk much. She was going on and on about knowing the alphabet and being able to count."

In 2008, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a sophomore at Boston University, her father, Blanca's husband, died of lung cancer.

Overnight, Blanca had to become the breadwinner.

I was cleaning houses in the morning and working as a secretary at a hospital in the afternoon... it was still difficult making ends meet. At one point, I was skipping mortgage payments and we almost lost the house.

This is a story about a single mother who raised her family after her husband died of lung cancer.

As the Daily Mail notes:

Sergio's death put the family into a tailspin. He had no life insurance, two years of health care bills due and the money his business brought in dried out. Blanca recalls she faced foreclosure not just once, but twice.

"It was scary," Blanca told the reporter. "I had to take medicine I was so scared. I had to stop paying for the mortgage for almost a year. I was expecting someone knocking on the door to kick me out at any time. There were even real estate people coming around to take photos of the house for when it was going to be auctioned. The worst is that I only had $50,000 left to pay on the loan."

Funny enough, it was the bank, not the welfare office or the local church that helped her.

Blanca worked from 6am until 11pm.

And I prayed and prayed, and things worked out. After the children graduated from college, I figured it was time for me to move to Florida.

These days, Blanca lives in Eustis, Florida, a lakefront community of about 16,000 people near Orlando. She moved here just before Christmas in 2016. She'd been paying $10,000 a year in real estate taxes in New York. Now, she pays $600 a year.

When she first got here, the world, her world was much different. Her daughter was a bartender in New York and hadn't filed paperwork to become a Representative.

Really, though, this is a story about what it means to live in America.

"I love privacy and calm," Blanca said. "I don't like the limelight for myself and my family. But it seems that God played quite a joke on me with this politics stuff."

The Daily Mail sent reporter Jose Lambiet, presumably to do a hatchet job. The story is tempting: taxes are so severe in New York that even the mother of the wild-eyed Democratic Socialist representing that area can't even afford to live there. Really, though, this is a story about what it means to live in America.

And while liberal media has paraded the story around with that smug look on their faces, so have conservative outlets, and in both cases they've missed the real story. The human story. The story of all of us. Because Blanca is an American, same as you and me.

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