In 2002, Keene’s son David Michael Keene was driving on the George Washington Memorial Parkway when, in a road-rage incident, he fired a handgun at another motorist. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for “using, brandishing, and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence.” I asked Keene if this private tragedy had left him uncertain about what the N.R.A. had wrought. He said no: “You break the law, you pay the price.”Keene used to run the American Conservative Union (which organizes CPAC), where his 21-year-old son worked as the online communications director at the time of the shooting. Keene was featured in another news story two years ago when $400,000 was embezzled from the ACU. The culprit? His ex-wife, Diana Hubbard Carr. She pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 2011.
It seems the people closest to David Keene lack a certain self control.
Did David Keene commit these crimes? No. Is he guilty by association? No. But fathers have to wonder if they bear some responsibility for their sons' actions. Was Keene a bad parent, as many think Nancy Lanza was? Might he have imparted to his son a self-entitled attitude about not taking crap from anyone, backed up by a belligerent arrogance that comes from packing heat?
The NRA president is a Daily Show punchline. If there had been no gun in the younger Keene's BMW his life would not have been ruined. Keene's own son was sent to jail for exactly the kind of senseless crime gun control advocates say easy access to guns promotes. The NRA's president's son is Exhibit A against everything they stand for.
What's astounding is that Keene can experience this and so utterly miss the point. It's not just his kid who would have paid the price had his aim been truer: the guy he almost shot would have paid a much higher price.
Twenty-six victims paid the ultimate price for Adam Lanza's crimes, and hundreds of parents, relatives and friends who paid a price in grief that David Keene seems incapable of feeling.
1 comment:
Is he guilty by association?
Of course he must be, otherwise you would have no real reason to bring him up, would you?
Contrast this to the much more common situation in which a criminal doesn't even know who his father is (or at best, knows him from a distance). You won't talk about that though - because it comes from a failure of the welfare state.
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