When National Rifle Association President David Keene bragged this week that his pro-gun agenda would win because “guns are cool,” he may have rattled the bones of that skeleton lying around in his family closet. As ABC 7 would have it, Keene’s 31-year-old son David Michael Keene was accused in December, 2002 for shooting his handgun at another driver while taking his BMW for a jaunt along the Potomac on the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia. Police officers reported that Keene Jr.’s shot came within inches of the other driver’s head. In January, 2003, the judge sentenced the then-21-year-old to 10 years in prison, which means … Oh my! … He should be getting out right about … Now.





Cindy Morris, then a reporter for the online DC-insider magazine Capitol Blue, wrote on December 18th, 2002 (according to her colleague Doug Thompson in a more recent article), that Keene Jr. had a troubled mental health history since high school, and had been hospitalized for emotional problems during his middle-to-late childhood at least seven times. The NRA says it promotes “responsible gun ownership” — and conjures up images of righteous, vigorous, freedom-loving American citizens bursting with physical, emotional, and mental health. Yet, despite all this, Keene’s dad enabled his emotionally frail son — the third out of five children — to own the gun he nearly used to murder another motorist in a fit of road rage.

When Keene Jr. was arrested, he was working as the American Conservative Union’s director of online communications. Nice gig for a 21-year-old. And what a coinkeydinkey … Dear Old Dad was in charge of the ACU at the time, as reported by Craig Gilbert from the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.

Here’s Thompson’s recounting of Morris’ 2002 piece:

David Michael Keene, the prominent national conservative activist’s son charged in a road rage shooting on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, was institutionalized with “severe emotional problems” seven times between the ages of 8 and 13, his mother said Tuesday. “He’s had a continuing problem with impulse control, and an exaggerated belief that he was in more danger than he was in at times, causing him to respond in a way that was more excessive or out of line with what was going on,” Keene’s mother, Diana Carr, told reporters outside the U.S. District Court in Alexandria. Carr said the gun was registered in Keene’s name and added that her son and his fiance were on their way to “target practice” at the time of the incident. Current federal state and gun laws prohibit sale and registration of firearms to persons who have been hospitalized with mental problems. A law enforcement source said they are investigating to see if Keene withheld information about his mental history when he purchased the firearm.

And, apparently, the propensity towards crime runs as strong in the Keene family as membership in the ACU. In June, 2011, Keene Sr.’s ex-wife, Diana Hubbard Carr, pleaded guilty to embezzling $120,000 to $400,000 from the ACU while she served as its administrative director back in 2011. Gee, nice work if you can get it.