Larry Pratt

Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt has been widely credited with helping to bring down the Senate background checks bill last month, thanks in part to his cozy relationship with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and his sway among Cruz’s colleagues.

Pratt is also a radical anti-government conspiracy theorist who routinely compares President Obama to King George III and entertains conspiracy theories about the president provoking a race war and setting the police on Christian conservatives.

In an interview with conspiracy theorist Pete Santilli earlier this month, Pratt went even further than usual, detailing what he sees as a plan by the president to turn the Department of Homeland Security into a private  army “equally as powerful as the military” -- that is, if the president “can’t actually commandeer the military” first.

A lite version of this DHS conspiracy theory, which holds that the agency is hoarding ammunition in order to keep it away from gun owners, has inspired an actual bill in Congress.

Santilli: Now, Mr. Pratt, here’s my most important discussion that I’d like to have with you, and my most important concern just observing the Department of Homeland Security and the amount of ammunition and guns and the way they’re staffing up. Do you think that that DHS is a fighting force built by Barack Obama’s administration to potentially be used by the American people, even in opposition to a military that choose to be constitutional? Is that one of your greatest fears?

Pratt: During his ’08 campaign, the president had talked about setting up some kind of, what do you call it, a national security force, something of that sort that would be equally as powerful as the military. Well, that should have told us what he was up to. If he can’t actually commandeer the military, then he’ll bulk up the Department of Homeland Insecurity and he’ll have them buy a gazillion bullets. At the time they bought 100 million for this year, they already had 250 million, give or take, on hand. What is that all about? And these are anti-personnel rounds. These are not target practice rounds. They’re not semiwadcutters, they’re not even the military ball ammo, they’re anti-personnel.

Santilli: And that would be billions, not millions, right?

Pratt: It’s 100 million a year for the next ten years, well over a billion, which will then be five times, give or take, what they already have on hand. If nothing else, it would seem to be a strategy designed to drive up the price and lower the availability of ammunition in particular, firearms in general, but ammunition in particular.
 

Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America celebrated the defeat of the Manchin-Toomey bill to expand background checks on firearms purchases during an appearance on The Steve Deace Show yesterday. Pratt, who previously attacked gun safety laws as “paganism,” told Deace that prayer stifled the new legislation (before making a Bill Clinton joke).

Pratt: The one thing that the other side will never understand about how a small group like ours was able to do what we did is because we pray. That’s so far outside their box that you could tell them that and they would probably think you were kidding or so what, you know what I mean.

Deace: They would probably think you’re referring to p-r-e-y and wondering why you want to pick on endangered species too, Larry.

Pratt: Either that or we had Bill Clinton loose among us.

He also claimed that Sen. Toomey should be “committed” if he honestly believed that his legislation would not create a national gun registry. “You are functionally so stupid that you can’t operate in the modern world if you believe that,” Pratt said.

Deace: I’ve been around a lot of politicians, particularly because I live in the first in the nation caucus state, so I’ve seen them in their staffs lie with impunity, but Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania’s contention that they were going to do these background checks and collect all the data that they would need for a national gun registry that his bill says they are not allowed to do. So government is going to collect all this data and then restrain itself from actually utilizing it? That one ranks right up there with absolutely some of the dumbest and most incredulous lies I’ve ever heard a politician expect voters to actually buy; I mean that’s just crazy.

Pratt: And if he believes that himself then we really need to get him committed. You are functionally so stupid that you can’t operate in the modern world if you believe that. So I think you’re supposition is closer to what actually was likely going on in his mind. This was just a boldfaced effort to get the gun registry.

Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America spoke to conservative talk show host Steve Deace yesterday to denounce the compromise background check proposal backed by Senators Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV).

He predicted that if the Senate approves their proposal then Speaker John Boehner will push it through the House, saying that “Boehner has effectively become Nancy Pelosi in male drag” and “cries” in the face of Democrats and “RINO Republicans.”

Boehner has effectively become Nancy Pelosi in male drag. He’s doing what she would do as Speaker of the House. He is really the head of the Democrat Party plus a rump of RINO Republicans. It’s just stunning. Only twelve of the House caucus Republicans would vote against him for re-election. Now admittedly that means they get nothing for the next two years except heartache and abuse because the only people Boehner ever gets mad at and will fight are conservative Republicans. For everybody else, he cries.

Pratt and Deace later echoed claims made by Erick Erickson and Tony Perkins that the Obama administration may prohibit Christians and Republicans from owning a gun and turn them into the targets of the police.

Deace: Am I wrong to be paranoid that Pat Toomey’s new compromise federal background check may one day flag Christians as being dangerous and shouldn’t own weapons because they are part of a domestic hate group?

Pratt: That is certainly something that would suit Janet Napolitano, the head of the “department of homeland insecurity,” she has been publishing materials exactly to that effect. She doesn’t publish anything about how Islam is an inherently violent, murderous religion invented by some Arab imperialist long after the supposed death of Mohammad. No no no, it’s people that take the Constitution literally, people that are pro-life, people that are pro-Second Amendment, probably underscore those people because they have guns and guns are bad if they are outside the hands of anybody under her authority. I think that’s the mindset of too many folks in the federal government, certainly “department of homeland insecurity” has made that very clear when they’ve advised police departments: these are the chaps to look for and I’m sure they were saying if you had a Ron Paul bumper sticker, no doubt one time in the past if you had a Pat Toomey bumper sticker but I think he’s on the approved list now.

Gun Owners of America has been enjoying its moment in the media spotlight recently, placing spokespeople  on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, drawing attention for its Capitol Hill lobbying efforts, and even being cited in official Senate Republican talking points about a filibustered judicial nominee.

It’s important to keep noting, then, that Gun Owners for America is an unhinged, conspiracy-theory promoting, extremist fringe group.

Adding to the evidence this week was GOA’s legislative counsel Michael Hammond, who joined VCY America’s Jim Schneider on Crosstalk radio Wednesday in order to share his theories that universal background check legislation might well lead to government-led genocide; that gun control advocates “bear some responsibility” for the Sandy Hook shooting; and that liberals have become “paranoic” and “racist against people who hold traditional American values.”

Schneider kicked things off by reading an email he’d been cc’d on explaining how universal background checks would lead us down a slippery slope to “confiscation” and “tyrannization.” Hammond wholeheartedly agreed, adding that there is a “real danger” that those would in turn lead to “extermination” and “genocide” not unlike in Nazi Germany:

Schneider: Let’s talk about this universal background check. Someone was drafting a letter to the president and they copied me in on the email, and here’s what  they said, and I’d like to get your reaction to it. They said that the consequence of a background check can be reduced to a simple formula: Examination (universal background checks) leads to registration (local, state and federal databases), which leads to investigation (bureaucratic decisions regarding fitness or need to bear arms), and that leads to confiscation, which leads to tyrannization (the oppression and genocide against a subgroup, whether by its ethnicity, religion, political views or status or against the entirety of a state citizen). So they use examination, goes to registration to investigation, confiscation, and tyrannization or…

Hammond: Which leads to extermination. And I was actively involved in rebuilding the Polish Solidarity Trade Union, which ultimately overthrew communism in the Eastern Bloc, and I can say that both when I talked to these people, they said, you know, ‘The Soviets have all these tanks stationed in our country and we have nothing.’ And let me say that 40 years before in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the Nazis, who the first thing they did when they came into power was ban firearms, they exterminated the Jews in Warsaw and they did so because the government was the only one who was armed. And, if you watch documentaries of that period, the people facing mass slaughter and saying, ‘We just, what do we do? We have no firearms.” And so ultimately, registration, confiscation, tyrannization has the real danger of leading to extermination.

Schneider: So you wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that progression that this writer was talking about.

Hammond: No. I think there’s a danger that you go in that direction. There’s certainly been governments in our lifetime that have engaged in genocide on a very significant scale. And I have been on the radio in a lot of them, in places like Holland, in places like Poland, in places like the old Soviet Union, and I say to these people, ‘If, in America, we ever reach the point in which you were during our lifetimes, we would like to think that we would be able to defend ourselves.’

Later, discussing the Sandy Hook school shooting, Hammond said that Connecticut gun control advocates “bear some responsibility for what happened in Newtown” because they prevented teachers from carrying guns:

Hammond: Connecticut, as you probably know, had among the most stiffest gun control in the world prior to the shooting at Newtown, and as a result of politicians like Chris Murphy and Sen. Blumenthal and the other little Democrat politicians in that state. And all the gun control they had didn’t stop Newtown. As a matter of fact, what it said to Adam Lanza is, ‘You can kill all these kids, you can get your fifteen minutes of fame, you don’t have to worry that we’re going to allow any principles, staff or teachers to shoot back at you.’ These people in some respects, I think, horrifically bear some responsibility for what happened in Newtown.

Finally, Hammond reminisced about going to school during the Vietnam War and seeing “fourteen year-old kids walking up and down the hall with semi-automatic rifles.”

“Exactly what has happened to our country that we have become so paranoic, that we have become so gun-hating, in cases of the liberal media, and that the liberal media has become so almost racist against people who hold traditional American values?” he asked.

Hammond: When I was a kid, and there are very few advantages in life to being very, very, very old, but one, it means you have a little perspective. When I was kid during the Vietnam War, in high school, fourteen to seventeen year-old kids ended up walking back and forth across the campus, across the playground, up and down the halls, up and down the sidewalks of my ghetto school – it wasn’t a rural or suburban school, it was a ghetto school – with M1 semi-automatic firearms, fully functional, except they didn’t have a firing pin but you couldn’t tell that to look at them. Fourteen year-old kids walking up and down the hall with semi-automatic rifles, no one, no one thought that we were going to shoot up the school.

I graduated in 1967. 1968 they passed the first big gun control law, the Gun Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 [sic]. Now look, we’ve gone 40 years and we’ve reached the point in which holding up a Pop-Tart is considered threatening. Exactly what has happened to our country that we have become so paranoic, that we have become so gun-hating, in cases of the liberal media, and that the liberal media has become so almost racist against people who hold traditional American values?

Gun Owners of America, a fringe group that hovers to the right of the National Rifle Association, is wading into the debate over Caitlin Halligan, one of President Obama's nominees to the hugely influential DC Circuit Court of Appeals. GOA's beef with Halligan is that when she was solicitor general of New York, she represented the state in its suit against gun manufacturers – a position she took for a client rather than one she espoused herself.

In an action alert today, GOA asks its members to call on their senators to oppose Halligan, calling her the “most anti-Second Amendment nominee in recent history,” a “zealot” and a “radical leftist.”

Among those who might disagree with GOA’s assessment of Halligan are former Bush judicial nominee Miguel Estrada, Reagan administration attorney Carter Phillips, and numerous law enforcement groups, all of whom have endorsed her nomination.

But the GOA’s extreme language should come as no surprise. After all, this is the same group that speculated that the Aurora movie theater shooting was an inside job, said that armed citizens could have stopped the Holocaust, claimed that the Affordable Care Act would “take away your guns,” and warned President Obama that he should “remember King George III’s experience.” Recently, GOA president Larry Pratt has gone even further, agreeing with theories that President Obama is raising a black army to massacre white Americans and that the president intends to pit “Christian, heterosexual white haves” against “black Muslim and/or atheist…have-nots.”

Last week, we reported that Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America joined conservative talk show host Stan Solomon to warn about President Obama’s alleged plans to incite violence and bring about a race war against white Americans.

We found another interview between Pratt and Solomon from January, in which they went into even more detail about the looming race war and denounced new legislative efforts to prevent gun violence.

Pratt claimed that “some kind of social implosion” is inevitable during Obama’s second term, and that “it would be a wonderful surprise if it did not happen.”

Solomon specifically claimed that under President Obama we will witness attacks “on Christian, heterosexual white haves by black, Muslim and/or atheist — not that there’s much difference — black have-nots.”

He warned that “if you are a white person in this country, and this holds for all quality people of any color, but I’m saying specifically if you are a white, heterosexual, Christian, working, married person” and don’t own a gun, then “there is at least a substantial chance that you and/or some member of your family will be hurt and/or killed.”

Pratt agreed with Solomon’s dire prediction, saying the host wasn’t “stretching to say that.” He added that the “Alinskyites” who control the Obama administration think “this is the time” to “bring violence about.”

Watch:

Pratt: We’re up against people who know exactly what they want to do and how they want to do it. We had four years to watch them when they were somewhat guarded but now, certainly for Obama, he doesn’t care and you can tell already he’s making his moves and it’s not going to be pretty. I’m getting the sense; I have never heard so many people talk about the fact that they think that there is inevitably going to be some kind of social implosion, some kind of neighbor-against-neighbor; that these folks in power are seeking that kind of a confrontation and that it would be a wonderful surprise if it did not happen.

Solomon: I’ve said on this show on a couple of occasions that I believe that in the year 2013 we’re going to see an explosion of attacks on halves by have-nots. But more specifically on white halves by black have-nots; more specifically on Christian, heterosexual white haves by black, Muslim and/or atheist — not that there’s much difference — black have-nots. It’s just what I see. I believe if you are a white person in this country, and this holds for all quality people of any color, but I’m saying specifically if you are a white, heterosexual, Christian, working, married person, if you don’t have a gun on you, know how to use it and make sure that everyone in your family who is of age has a weapon and knows how to use it, there is at least a substantial chance that you and/or some member of your family will be hurt and/or killed.

Pratt: I don’t think there’s anything stretching to say that. I think there are people who really want to bring violence about because they see that as the engine of social change. That’s exactly the target for the Alinskyites. I think they must figure that they have got their guy in power, they will then have some of the agencies of the police powers of the state at their back and this is the time to go for it.

Later, Solomon mused that “the best thing that can happen to a liberal is to be mugged,” and wondered why Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) still supports gun control after she was mugged in 1995, to which Pratt replied: “Well, maybe she liked it.”

Watch:

Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America once again compared President Obama to King George III during an interview with the UK’s Channel 4 News. He told reporter Matt Frei that Americans don’t accept the “statistical argument” that a lack of gun control is linked to higher levels of gun violence, arguing that the Second Amendment is meant to “keep the government at bay.” 

“When the colonists said you’ve become a tyrant, stop it, and when he wouldn’t stop, we shot, and we got rid of your King,” Pratt said, who went on to liken Obama to King George III.

Pratt said that President Obama “should remember King George III’s experience” as he “seems to forget that he was democratically elected.”

Watch:

Later in the interview, Pratt said that people are “already being encouraged by the President’s actions and his words to go and buy firearms” because Obama is “doing all he can to destroy” the Second Amendment.

He added that he is “not calling the President a tyrant yet, but the President certainly has indicated he has a low regard for the law and a low regard for the Constitution.”

Previously, Pratt has demanded Obama’s impeachment, saying that he uses “the talk of a dictator.” He also told VCY America in an earlier interview that Obama is just like King George III.

They would be going door-to-door to see if you’ve registered your guns. That would be, I think, a very dangerous thing for them to do. I think they had better consider how it worked out for George III.

…

They don’t want to be told that they’ve crossed the line and become rebels against the Constitution. They have crossed the same line that George III did and they should consider how that ended for him. Actually, he ended up in a nut house, it was pretty stressful for him and he couldn’t handle it. That’s where I see this administration; they are just completely detached from the Constitution and from the law.

Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt went back on VCY America’s Crosstalk, where he last month insisted that the health care reform law was meant to “take away your guns,” to talk to host Jim Schneider about the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Pratt agreed with a caller who said that drugs such as Prozac were leading people to kill and another caller wondered if drugs are “raising a bunch of Manchurian candidates.” A man purporting to be Lanza’s uncle had claimed that he was using an antipsychotic drug, Fanapt, but the “uncle” turned out to be an imposter.

Just as many other right-wing commentators blamed the Newtown massacre on the public school system, even though Lanza was homeschooled, Pratt suggested that corporal punishment, along with the arming of teachers, would ensure that schools aren’t “death traps for kids.”

Caller: These kids are on psychotropic drugs, mainly Prozac, which makes them homicidal or suicidal and a lot of the teachers who can’t handle these kids are recommending that they go in for psychiatric treatment and next thing you know they are on these drugs.

Pratt: The teachers aren’t allowed to spank them anymore, which didn’t have any long lasting effects other than, ‘I don’t want that to happen again so I’ll behave in the future.’ But the drugs, as you were getting to I think change their minds.

…

Caller: I also wanted to know on the coattails of the gentleman that mentioned Prozac: are we raising a bunch of Manchurian candidates?

Pratt: That’s a valid question. I guess there could be long-term damage done by these drugs that may not manifest themselves until sometime in the future because of who knows what stimulus that occurs. But it’s just a very dangerous thing to be playing with the makeup of people’s minds. It’s so avoidable, all we have do is admit that children need discipline, they respond well to it and then things are much more under control. We’ve lost control of our schools in so many places in the United States and it really could be addressed effectively and we refuse to. It’s almost equivalent to the refusal to talk about using drugs in self-defense and making it so teachers, principals and janitors could be armed at schools. ‘Everybody knows that guns and children don’t mix,’ well no, actually everybody doesn’t know that, and in fact that notion, as I have said before today, that notion is unhappily the big reason why schools are such death traps for kids.

After warning against government “confiscation” of firearms, Pratt floated debunked conspiracy theories about the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security purchasing ammunition for nefarious reasons and maintained that all policing on the federal level is unconstitutional.

Pratt: I think the more people invest in protecting themselves in this fashion, paying all this money for firearms to defend themselves, any call for confiscation such as came from the Governor of New York and I gather other politicians as well is going to be met with, shall we say, no respect.

Schneider: Perhaps on that issue there have been a number of stories that have come out recently that the US government is just buying up massive rounds of ammunition. One story indicated the Department of Homeland Security has purchased over a billion rounds of hollow point ammunition for domestic purposes, not for military purposes. Some stories have indicated that even the Social Security Administration has purchased 174,000 rounds of ammo. Is there any truth for this or is this some kind of hype that’s out of control?

Pratt: The reports continue and they are in the mainline press. When you read about the Social Security buying large quantities of ammunition, whatever for? Did somebody lose their check and they’re going to go shoot them up? What exactly is it that Social Security Administration needs a police force at all let alone buying that many rounds? Target practice I don’t think consumes that many and frankly they shouldn’t be having target practices, they shouldn’t have police forces at the federal level, those are not constitutional.

The leader of the Religious Right gun group Gun Owners of America is warning that the government, through the health care reform law and a new service program, is going after everyday Americans. Larry Pratt, the organization’s executive director who has ties to white supremacists, appeared on VCY America’s Crosstalk to float a number of conspiracies. Pratt alleged that the left is to blame for the Benghazi attack because of its “profound dislike of self-defense” and refusal to “believe in self-defense either personally or as a matter of national self-defense.”

Later, he also spoke to a caller about the latest right-wing conspiracy that FEMA Corps, a program dedicated to training “young volunteers to physically and psychologically handle the demands of working in hazardous areas,” is actually an armed brigade that may be used to persecute political opponents.

Caller: They have this website, “FEMA Corps First Graduating Class,” somebody found it on ItMakesSenseBlog.com and it was like 231 kids and they’ve got 2,500 armored fighting vehicles ready to go, I was just wondering if you have spotted any of that information yet.

Pratt: Now that is very interesting that FEMA would have armored personnel carriers, that is what it sounds like you are describing, is that helpful in fighting the aftermath of a Hurricane? That’s really amazing. It shows the total disconnect of the federal government from the Constitution.

But Pratt wasn’t done yet, as he went on to say that Obamacare will help the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to “take away your guns.”

There’s a big one that doesn’t get much attention as a gun measure but it is, and that’s Obamacare. Obamacare among its many unconstitutional aspects, I’m sorry Supreme Court, has made privacy something that only applies between consenting adults but not certainly our relationship with the government. It says that all of our medical records are available to be pawed through by bureaucrats somewhere in Washington, looking for a reason to disenfranchise gun owners, to say ‘oh you have a medical diagnosis that means you might be a danger to yourself or others so we’re going to come and knock on the door for the BATF to take away your guns.’

Of course, the law that screens out people such as mentally ill individuals through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to prevent them from purchasing guns was signed by President Bush, and the health care reform law [PDF] explicitly does not allow for a gigantic gun owner database or discrimination against people who own guns:

‘‘(c) PROTECTION OF SECOND AMENDMENT GUN RIGHTS.—

‘‘(1) WELLNESS AND PREVENTION PROGRAMS.— A wellness and health promotion activity implemented under subsection (a)(1)(D) may not require the disclosure or collection of any information relating to—

‘‘(A) the presence or storage of a lawfully possessed firearm or ammunition in the residence or on the property of an individual; or

‘‘(B) the lawful use, possession, or storage of a firearm or ammunition by an individual.

‘‘(2) LIMITATION ON DATA COLLECTION.—None of the authorities provided to the Secretary under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or an amendment made by that Act shall be construed to authorize or may be used for the collection of any information relating to— ‘‘(A) the lawful ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition;

‘‘(B) the lawful use of a firearm or ammunition; or

‘‘(C) the lawful storage of a firearm or ammunition.

‘‘(3) LIMITATION ON DATABASES OR DATABANKS.—None of the authorities provided to the Secretary under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or an amendment made by that Act shall be construed to authorize or may be used to maintain records of individual ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition.

‘‘(4) LIMITATION ON DETERMINATION OF PREMIUM RATES OR ELIGIBILITY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE.— A premium rate may not be increased, health insurance coverage may not be denied, and a discount, rebate, or reward offered for participation in a wellness program may not be reduced or withheld under any health benefit plan issued pursuant to or in accordance with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or an amendment made by that Act on the basis of, or on reliance upon—

‘‘(A) the lawful ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition; or

‘‘(B) the lawful use or storage of a firearm or ammunition.

‘‘(5) LIMITATION ON DATA COLLECTION REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS.— No individual shall be required to disclose any information under any data collection activity authorized under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or an amendment made by that Act relating to—

‘‘(A) the lawful ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition; or

‘‘(B) the lawful use, possession, or storage of a firearm or ammunition.’’