The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association, has announced the formation of the new “Protect Liberty PAC” ahead of the 2024 election cycle. In a wide-ranging interview published on Friday, the NSSF’s general counsel and senior vice president, Larry Keane, who will also serve as the PAC’s treasurer, discussed the PAC’s goal of protecting “the American way of life.”
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According to Keane, the super PAC will bolster candidates who can stop “the rise of socialism, the rise of this ‘woke’ culture, the suppressing [of] our Second Amendment freedoms, what we see the Biden administration doing, what we see going on, you know, suppressing people’s ability to speak their mind, you know, at school board meetings, in classrooms, on college campuses, and certainly, the effort to suppress the exercise of Second Amendment rights while we have out-of-control crime and George-Soros-funded prosecutors not prosecuting.”1Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, “Firearms Industry Aims to Protect Liberty in 2024 Election Cycle,” YouTube, October 5, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwtniLEp9Sg, at 3:16.
Keane continued, “So, NSSF, in response to these challenges, has launched a super PAC called ‘Protect Liberty PAC’ to raise resources in order to help elect people to Congress, to the Senate, to the White House, who will stand for our liberties, who will protect our freedoms, including the Second Amendment.”2Ibid, at 3:52. The super PAC, which can accept unlimited contributions, will mostly focus on federal elections.3Ibid, at 6:29. Keane did not provide any details about how much the super PAC hoped to spend on elections or its potential contributors.
In the interview, Keane veered toward various culture war issues having nothing to do with firearms, for instance, saying, “Our way of life in America is under attack. Our freedoms, our liberties, things you and I…took for granted growing up, that you had a First Amendment right to say what you thought, and people didn’t have to agree with you, but you had the right to speak your mind. And that’s just not the case anymore on college campuses. You know, this craziness where men can compete in women’s sports and win medals and trophies.”4Ibid, at 4:26.
Later in the interview, Keane railed against “this woke culture where dudes are allowed to compete in women’s sports. And how dare you say anything, you’re, you know, you’re ant-LGBQ [sic], you’re anti-transgender. You know, if you insist that pronouns are a rule of grammar, there’s something wrong with you. You know, if you disagree with the conduct of Black Lives Matter, you’re racist. I mean, people are not allowed to speak their minds freely. If you show up at a school board meeting, the FBI is going to investigate you as a domestic terrorist. This is frightening. Our American way of life is under attack in this country from the extreme left.”5Ibid, at 14:16.
Keane’s charged comments reflect the NSSF’s increasing willingness to dive into a variety of culture war issues — unusual for a trade association tasked with driving business for its members.