In the January 2012 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, Keene accused President Barack Obama of “working overtime to gut the Second Amendment,” stating, “This is a president who has signaled to the international anti-gun community that the United Nations should go ahead with its plan to develop a treaty that could severely restrict or eliminate our Second Amendment rights.” He warned, “We are facing the most crucial election of our lifetimes in terms of the Second Amendment … The bottom line is that our rights are truly in danger. We cannot rely exclusively on the courts or even Congress to protect them. We are the final line of defense of the Second Amendment. We all have to be prepared to fight as never before.”

In his address to the NRA’s annual meeting on April 30, 2011, Keene said, “Make no mistake about it. Barack Obama, his minions in the Justice Department, his allies in the Congress, and his friends in the media would take our guns if they could, and they will if they can.”

During an address to NRA members at the organization’s annual meeting in May 2010, Keene said, “I remember those days well. Many of us would take our shotguns to school so that we wouldn’t have to waste time going home for our gear before rushing out after class for a few hours in the field before supper. I can’t for the life of me remember anyone objecting. Firearms and the joy of using them was part of life back then. Oh, I’m sure there were a few spoil sports who couldn’t understand why anyone would want to hunt and a few more who found guns abhorrent for one unexplainable reason or another, but frankly, I’d never heard of PETA. The Humane Society hadn’t been completely taken over by lunatics.”

In an August 3, 2009 op-ed for The Hill, Keene expressed his opposition to federal legislation to ban fetish videos that depicted women crushing small animals. He wrote, “I suspect that the problem, its solution and the language that eventually became part of the federal criminal code were brought to the congressman’s attention by one of the so-called animal rights organizations with a far grander agenda than saving the mice or spiders or whatever other small animals had been crushed by whoever stars in such bizarre videos.”

In a June 1, 2009 op-ed for The Hill entitled “Injustice Against Whites,” Keene claimed that during the 2008 presidential election “three” New Black Panther Party “thugs, dressed in paramilitary garb, were caught on camera wielding nightsticks to intimidate white voters who they suspected might not be prepared to vote for their candidate.” In fact, the video referenced by Keene showed only two members of the New Black Panther Party, and they were not interacting with any voters. One of the men was holding a nightstick and was later removed by police. Police received no complaints from voters at the site.

Keene tried to free up speaking time for Dutch politician Geert Wilders at CPAC in February 2009. Wilders has openly talked about his hatred of Islam, said that a contemporary Muhammad would “be hunted down as a terrorist,” and called the Muslim prophet “the devil.” Wilders also believes that the Koran should be banned in the Netherlands. Contemporaneous with the CPAC controversy, Wilders was barred from entering the United Kingdom because of his inflammatory comments about Islam. Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of a July 2011 terrorist attack in Norway that left 77 dead, cited Wilders as an inspiration in his manifesto.

Keene authored a November 20, 2006 op-ed for The Hill entitled “Iraq is Dems Tar-Baby.” The phrase “tar baby” is considered by some to have a negative racial connotation and its use by Mitt Romney in July 2006 received widespread media scrutiny.

In May 2005, Keene spoke at an ACU dinner celebrating and defending then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who was embroiled in a number of ethics scandals (DeLay has since been convicted of money laundering). NRA Board Member Cleta Mitchell served as M.C. for the event. Attendees at the event included DeLay himself, then-House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R – MO), then-RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, NRA Board Members Grover Norquist and Governor Jim Gilmore (R – VA), and approximately 30 members of Congress. The NRA purchased a table at the dinner for $2,000. In an interview with NPR a day after the event, Keene announced that “conservatives will protect their own” and called ethics investigations against DeLay “an attack on the conservative agenda” and “each and every” one of the 800 attendees of the dinner.