NRA President: Don't 'Overreact' to Newtown Shooting [View all]

[DonViejo]

by Lloyd Grove Dec 22, 2012 7:30 PM EST

NRA president David Keene reminisces about the days when kids brought shotguns to school and tells Lloyd Grove that Friday's widely panned press conference 'went pretty well.'

Reviews of the National Rifle Association’s post–Sandy Hook press conference are still rolling in, but much of the initial reaction has amounted to the sort of brutal pan that would have closed a Broadway show on opening night.

“Insane paranoia” was how Gawker summed up NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre’s Friday morning performance at Washington’s Willard Hotel. The New York Daily News editorialized that LaPierre “will forever now be known as America’s maddest gunman.” USA Today, quoting residents of Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six adults were massacred by a deranged young man wielding a semiautomatic Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, headlined its story: “Completely off the mark.” Even conservative pundit Erick Erickson, of the influential RedState blog, tweeted: “I’m not sure this presser was good in style a week after Newtown.”

An unmitigated PR disaster, right?

“I think it went pretty well,” NRA President David Keene told me.

It was nine hours after his fellow gun lobbyist variously blamed the carnage on Hollywood, the news media, pop music, “gun-free school zones,” and a generalized culture of violence—but not guns—while advocating armed security guards at every school in the nation.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/22/interview-with-nra-president-david-keene.html