NRA's Keene: Obama's 'Public Tantrum' on Guns Was Beneath the Office

National Rifle Association President David Keene Thursday derided what he called President Barack Obama’s “public tantrum” during his Rose Garden press conference following the defeat in the Senate of the universal gun background check amendment.

Keene told the Washington Examiner that Obama doesn’t understand public sentiment when it comes to gun control.

“They just can’t gauge the public reaction to what they do because they don’t have any sense that the public has feelings different than they do,” Keene said.

Obama was surrounded at his news conference Wednesday by former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head by a gunman two years ago, and by the families of school children and educators who were killed in the gun massacre last December in Newtown, Conn.

“He thought and his folks thought that Newtown changed everything. Newtown was a tragedy but that doesn’t change people’s basic values and feelings,” Keen explained. “What he learned is that he bit off a lot more than he can chew and that you can’t just talk your way to a victory. You have to have something that makes some sense and what he was proposing just didn’t make much sense.”

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Obama angrily accused the NRA and other gun rights activists of lying about what was in the bill, saying that claims it would create a national registry of gun owners was absolutely false.

Keene thought his reaction to the bill's defeat was beneath the office of president.

“It was the biggest legislative defeat he suffered but that does not justify the unseemly picture of a president of the United States throwing a public tantrum,” the NRA president said.