“Today,” Mr. Keene told a roomful of conservatives in Hawaii, “guns are cool.” That, of course, was before the massacre at a Connecticut elementary school dramatically revived the once-moribund debate over gun control. With the N.R.A. set to hold its first news conference on the shootings Friday after a weeklong silence, Mr. Keene is facing perhaps the biggest threat in decades to his organization’s gun rights stance. He finds himself in the difficult position of persuading Americans outside the N.R.A. that guns are, if not “cool,” at least not the stark danger that President Obama made them out to be this week. “His instinct is to fight back and make his case as strongly as he can — that’s been his modus operandi for as long as I’ve known him,” said Craig Shirley, a conservative author and former business partner and occasional hunting buddy of Mr. Keene. Indeed, Mr. Keene, 67, a combative and sometimes bombastic political operative who has advised Republican leaders from Ronald Reagan to Mitt Romney, has rarely shied from a fight. In a videotaped confrontation that quickly made the Republican rounds in 2009, he threatened to punch a conservative filmmaker who challenged his leadership of the American Conservative Union and his criticism of “whining” by the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. And when Mr. Keene was a senior adviser to Senator Bob Dole’s losing presidential bid in 1988, his clashes with others in the Dole campaign became so heated that he and another top aide were fired midtrip, with the campaign manager yelling during a stopover at the Jacksonville airport to “Get their baggage off the plane!” That fighter’s instinct puts him squarely in the tradition of past leaders of the N.R.A., a four-million-member group that has one of Washington’s most powerful, well-financed lobbying arms. In the most iconic scene of defiance in the N.R.A.’s 141-year history, its most famous president — the actor Charlton Heston — lifted a colonial musket over his head in 2000
and dared opponents to take it “from my cold, dead hands!” A year earlier, the N.R.A. spurned calls to cancel its convention in Denver less than two weeks after shootings at nearby Columbine High School killed 13 people. As 7,000 people protested, Mr. Heston declared that the N.R.A. “cannot let tragedy lay waste” to gun rights. Even after the Columbine shootings, the N.R.A. was able to block a measure in 2000 to close the so-called gun-show loophole, allowing private gun sales at shows without background checks. The aftermath of the Columbine shootings provides one possible road map for how the N.R.A. may respond now. The group has been uncharacteristically quiet in the week since the Connecticut shootings, and Mr. Keene and other N.R.A. officials did not respond to messages and e-mails seeking comment for this article. The N.R.A. did offer a short statement of condolence four days after the shootings and said, without elaboration, that it “is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.” What it was billing as a “major news conference” Friday will be its first response to growing calls for greater gun restrictions. Mr. Keene, elected president last year, was also scheduled to appear Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS. After past shootings, N.R.A. officials have stressed the need for greater safety training and enforcement of existing gun laws, without offering significant concessions to gun control advocates. Josh Sugarman, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, which supports increased gun control, says he expects a similar approach this time. “I don’t see him as any type of change-agent inside the organization,” Mr. Sugarman said. “What will guide the N.R.A. is to try to delay any action on guns for as long as they possibly can.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 20, 2012
An earlier version of this article misstated the position once held by former Representative Tom DeLay. He was majority leader in the House of Representatives, not the speaker.
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