On his “Gun Owners News Hour” program in March, Gun Owners of America’s Larry Pratt invited Christian reconstructionist activist Joel McDurmon to discuss is work republishing a book from the 1920s on the role of pastors and “biblical law” in the founding of America.
This led to a discussion of how, in McDurmon’s words, President Obama along with “the entirety of Congress and the Supreme Court justices” are all “lawbreakers” because “they all operate outside the law to different degrees,” just like the English monarchy before the American Revolution.
McDurmon then brought up a colonial sermon citing the example of Charles I, who was executed for treason in 1649, as justification for regicide. This reminded Pratt of a speech by Patrick Henry against King George that made a similar point in justifying the killing of tyrants, which he said would provide a useful lesson to President Obama.
“Well, I like the way Patrick Henry finessed the question of regicide, of tyrannicide,” he said, “and he then pointed, I think it might have been to Charles I, and he was likening the current king and situation to that. And there were cries of, ‘Treason! Treason!’ And he had a pregnant pause, and then he said, ‘And may he learn from his example.’”
“But yes, might he learn!” he continued. “Might Barack Hussein Obama learn. Might they all learn. They live in a world of limits. They are not men without limits, and that’s something that I think astonishes some of our rulers. They really think, because as the president has said, ‘I have a pen and I have a phone,’ they think he can do any bloody thing he wants. Well, we’ll see about that.”
Later in the program, Pratt praised so-called “constitutional sheriffs” — who believe they have the power to arrest federal officials who are enforcing laws they believe violate the Constitution — and legislatures like that of Kansas that have passed laws “nullifying” federal laws they don’t like. These politicians, he said, are carrying on the spirit of the American revolution.
“You’ve got sheriffs who understand constitutional government and understand their role,” he said, “you’ve got the state of Kansas, which has passed legislation warning the feds that if they come in and try to do something unconstitutional to enforce some of their gun laws, the folks that try that will be charged with a crime. Obviously they will be detained and not permitted to continue that kind of illegal and unconstitutional action.”
“That, I’m sure, is greeted with disdain in the proper parts of Washington, D.C., New York City and so forth, but frankly I think the folks in Kansas are serious as a heart attack, I think these constitutional sheriffs would without question make an arrest if they saw something unconstitutional that was oppressing one of the citizens of their county, and that’s the kind of spirit that we saw at the time of this period leading up to the war for American independence. It may not be dead yet in this country, the spirit that brought us from the New England pulpit, it may well be beginning to raise its head again, beginning to articulate itself again.”
