NRA President David Keene weighs in on 2012 election

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.

Is Trump's prosecution NORMAL?  This COMPLETE list of ALL Western leaders who served jail time proves otherwise.

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Mainstream media is on a crusade to normalize Donald Trump's indictments as if it's on par with the electoral course. Glenn asked his team to research every instance of a Western leader who was jailed during their political career over the past 200 years—except extreme political turmoil like the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Irish Revolution, etc.—and what we discovered was quite the opposite.

Imprisoning a leader or major political opponent is not normal, neither in the U.S. nor in the Western world. Within the last 200 years, there are only a handful of examples of leaders in the West serving jail time, and these men were not imprisoned under normal conditions. All of these men were jailed under extreme circumstances during times of great peril such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.

What does this mean for America? Are Trump's indictments evidence that we are re-entering times of great peril? Below is a list of Western leaders who were imprisoned within the last 200 years. Take a look and decide for yourself:

Late 1800s

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Jefferson Davis: The nearest occurrence to a U.S. President to serve jail time was in the case of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson was captured in Georgia by Northern Soldiers in 1865 and locked up in Fort Monroe, Virginia for two years. He was offered a presidential pardon but refused out of his loyalty to the confederacy.

Early 1900s

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Eugene V. Debs: Debbs, a Midwestern socialist leader, became the first person to run for president in prison. He was locked up at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta having been convicted under the federal Sedition Act for giving an antiwar speech a few months before Armistice Day, the end of World War I. Many of his supporters believed his imprisonment to be unjust. Debs received 897,704 votes and was a distant third-part candidate behind Warren G. Harding, the Republican winner, and James M. Cox, the second-place Democrat. Harding ordered Debs’s release from prison toward the end of 1921.

Nazi sympathizers and collaborators: After the end of World War II in 1945, several European leaders who had "led" their countries during the Nazi occupation faced trial and imprisonment for treason. This list included Chief of the French State Philippe Pétain, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, and Minister-President of Norway Vidkun Quisling. The latter two were also executed after their imprisonment. President of Finland Risto Ryti and Prime Minister of Finland Johan Wilhelm Rangell were also tried and jailed for collaborating with the Nazis against the Allied Powers.

Late 1900s

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The end of the Cold War: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the pivotal moments that brought the Cold War to a close and marked the end of Communist East Germany. With the fall of the wall and the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the former leaders were brought to trial to answer for the crimes committed by the GDR. General Secretary Erich Honecker and General Secretary Egon Krenz were both put on trial for abuse of power and the deaths of those who were shot trying to flee into West Germany. Honecker was charged with jail time but was released from custody due to severe illness and lived out the rest of his life as an exile in Chile. Krenz served 4 years in jail before his release in 2001. He is one of the last surviving leaders of the Eastern Bloc.

Lyndon LaRouche: Larouche was a Trotsky evangelist, public antisemite, and founder of a nationwide Marxist political movement, became the second person in U.S. history to run for President in a prison cell. Granted, he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a long-shot third-party candidate. When he tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, he received 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. Even though in 2000 he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in a few states, the Democratic National Committee refused to seat his delegates and barred LaRouche from attending the Democratic National Convention.

TOP 5 issues that have gotten WORSE since the last State of the Union

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If you saw Biden's State of the Union last week, or Glenn's firey reaction to it, you know that Biden hardly spoke a word that wasn't a flat-out lie.

If you spent the last 12 months in a fallout shelter and Biden's speech was the only media interaction you had since the last State of the Union, you might be tempted to believe that the country has improved in some way over the past year. But the rest of us, who have been living above ground, going to the grocery store, and paying some attention to current events, had only to look around to see that Biden's speech was nothing but hot air.

Here are the TOP 5 issues that have gotten worse since the last State of the Union.

Economy

Biden spent a significant amount of time during the State of the Union boasting about the strength of his economy, but anyone who has checked their bank account lately was left wondering if he was holding his speech upside down. It's not just the cobwebs in your wallet; the numbers show the devastation wrought by "Bidenomics" too. In 2022, American grocery bills increased by 11.4 percent and restaurant bills by 7.7 percent. In 2023 prices only continued to rise, with an additional 1.2 percent increase in food-at-home prices and a 5.1 percent increase in away-from-home prices.

Debt crisis and inflation

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The national debt continues to grow, and Biden managed to add almost 3 trillion dollars in just one year. As of December 2022, the national debt was $31.42 trillion. As of January 2024, the national debt has risen to $34.19 trillion.

Inflation didn't fare much better. While the 2023 annual inflation rate did drop from the horror of 2022, from 6.5 to 3.4 percent, that is still significantly higher than anything we saw before 2021. You also have to remember that it CARRIES year to year, as Glenn explained in his response to Biden's State of the Union: "Yes, it's not as bad as it was, but it's still what it was PLUS what it is now."

Border

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Biden's mismanagement of the southern border has inflamed the border crisis to all-time highs. In 2022 there were a staggering 2.2 million illegal border crossings, but that wasn't enough for Biden apparently, as an additional 2.5 million illegally crossed in 2023. An estimated 10 million illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border since Biden took office, and the effects are being felt. There has been a surge in crime across the country that is impacting millions of Americans, including the tragic murder of Laken Riley.

Fentanyl

The fentanyl crisis has only continued to worsen as more and more synthetic opioids flood our streets. Between the fiscal year 2021 and 2022, there was a shocking 54 percent increase in fentanyl trafficking offenses as more and more of the narcotic is smuggled across the southern border. We also saw an increase in fentanyl overdose deaths. In 2022 there were approximately 73,654 deaths, which is a significant increase from 70,601 in 2021.

Education and mental health

While the pandemic is long over, the lingering effects of the lockdowns are still being felt. Unsurprisingly, missing years of school has a major impact on the educational development of children. Kids across America are STILL struggling from pandemic-related setbacks, reading scores are still falling, and parents are reporting that their kids are struggling in their studies. The mental health crisis, another symptom of the COVID lockdowns, has also continued to worsen. Tragically, suicides increased by 2.6 percent between 2021 and 2022, marking the continued decline of mental health in America.

TOP FIVE takeaways from Super Tuesday

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The 2024 Presidential Election is taking shape.

Yesterday was Super Tuesday, the single biggest day in the presidential primary season. More than one-third of all delegates needed for a candidate to become the Presidential nominee of their party was up for grabs along with a plethora of state and local elections. In short, yesterday's results will shape the rest of the election season. It was a big deal.

Here are the top 5 takeaways from yesterday's elections:

Haley drops out

Nikki Haley drops out of the 2024 Presidential election.

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After the mass exodus of Republican candidates in January, most commentators agreed that it was only a matter of time before Haley stepped out as well. Haley put up a valiant effort and held out almost two months longer than the other Republican candidates, but after a disappointing turnout on Super Tuesday, she made the call to step back from the race. There was a small victory for Haley fans, however, in that she won Vermont, her first state primary victory following her win in Washington, D.C.

Trump sweeps the board

Trump wins over 1,000 delegates during Super Tuesday.

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While Haley had a disappointing day yesterday, Trump and his team celebrated a huge win. Aside from Vermont, Trump won every state that had a primary. At the time this was written, Trump had picked up a whopping 731 delegates, bringing his total to 1,004, out of the required 1,215 to win the presidential nomination.

Democrats are not committed to Biden

Biden wins big on Super Tuesday, but he is struggling to maintain his Democrat base.

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On paper, Biden had an excellent Super Tuesday, winning every state primary except American Samoa. However, a closer look reveals cracks in his supporter base. Yesterday, a shocking 19 percent of Minnesota Democrats voted for "uncommitted" instead of Biden. While that wasn't enough to change the outcome of the primary, it shows that Biden is walking on shaky ground, even among Democrats.

This phenomenon wasn't limited to Minnesota either. Eight percent of Colorado and Tennessee Democrats voted "uncommitted," and 10 percent of Massachusetts Democrats and 10 percent of North Carolina Democrats voted "no preference." Is this more evidence of a third-quarter bait-and-switch that Glenn has hypothesized?

The search to replace Feinstein continues

Adam Schiff and Steve Harvey compete for Diane Feinstein's Senate seat.

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California is having two Senate elections to replace the late Senator Dianne Feinstein. There is a special election to fill out the remainder of her term and a regular election to fill her seat for the next six years. The results of the Tuesday primaries put Republican and former Los Angeles Dodgers player Steve Garvey and Democrat Adam Schiff as the front runners, and the two of them will be going head-to-head in November. Surprisingly, even in deep blue California, Garvey won more votes than Schiff in the special primary. Does Garvey have a chance?

Ted Cruz is back up for election in Texas

Ted Cruz is up for re-election in 2024

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The Texas senate primaries were also on Tuesday, and Ted Cruz is back up for election in November. Cruz comfortably won the Republican Primaries with 88 percent of Texas Republicans backing him. Rep. Colin Allred, a Dallas-area congressman won the Democratic primary with a narrower margin of 58 percent. While it's easy for Texans to take their state's red status for granted, it is vital Texans stay vigilant and cast their vote this November.

This is YOUR CHANCE to make a difference!

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, arguably the most consequential election day leading up to the 2024 election. However, every election leading up to November is critical for determining the trajectory of our country. This may be the most important election season in recent memory, so it is imperative that we do our part and head to the polls, even for smaller elections.

Listeners of Glenn's show are already aware of the multitudes of serious problems that face our nation. From the crisis on the southern border that's letting criminals flood our streets to the never-ending flow of American tax dollars funding a proxy war in Ukraine, it's clear that the people currently in charge are not cutout for the job.

We need to put responsible people back in office and we cannot let any more left-wing activists take power. YOU need to go out and vote and make your voice heard. Check out our COMPLETE list of all the upcoming elections in the 2024 election season. Mark your calendars, plan ahead, and STAND UP!

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