Ted Cruz sent a fundraising email on behalf of the radical gun group Gun Owners of America yesterday, boasting that he was “honored to work with GOA” to stop gun legislation after the Sandy Hook massacre and declaring that President Obama’s gun control efforts “have nothing to do with keeping Americans safe, and everything to do with his left-wing hatred of your liberty and your rights under the Constitution.”
Cruz has a close relationship with GOA, boasting of their endorsement at a presidential debate in September, joining a conference call with its members in which he credited the group for his election to the Senate, and appointing the group’s chairman, Tim Macy, to lead the “Second Amendment Coalition” he launched just days after 14 people were shot and killed in San Bernardino, California.
When GOA mobilized to help defeat background check legislation in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, the New York Times identified Cruz as the gun group’s “key ally in the Senate.”
GOA is, in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center, “a more radical alternative to the National Rifle Association,” which through an absolutist stance against any and all gun regulation has helped to push both the NRA and the gun debate to the right and away from any possible compromise.
But what’s most troubling about GOA is the radicalism of its executive director, Larry Pratt, who has ties to white supremacists and the militia movement and whose insurrectionist view of the Second Amendment is bolstered by a steady stream of conspiracy theories, many of them directed at President Obama. Just this weekend, for instance, Pratt speculated that although the president has tried to remove “pro-American” officers from the military, he has not gotten all of them, so if he were to try to commandeer the military as his own private defense force he would likely meet with a violent insurrection.
Pratt’s and GOA’s extremism is evidently no problem for Cruz, however, who signed on to an email raising funds for the group that sounds exactly like any of Pratt’s rants, declaring that President Obama “hates the 2nd Amendment for the same reason he hates most of what is in the Bill of Rights – it limits the power of government and protects the liberty of individuals” and that the president is “angry at the American people for rising up against him in defense of our liberty.” He urges GOA members to sign a petition calling for the defunding of a potential Obama proposal to expand background checks at gun shows and, of course, to give generously to GOA so that the group can continue “exposing the truth behind the anti-gun politicians’ real agenda of mass confiscation.”
Here are some excerpts:
Dear Fellow Patriot,
This is not a fundraising letter for my campaign.
You see, I am writing you today about something more important than any one man or one election: your 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
My father fled an oppressive regime in Cuba where the people were not citizens, they were mere tools of the state.
That is why, during my time as Texas’ Solicitor General and in the U.S. Senate, I have taken all threats to the 2nd Amendment very seriously. The ability of people to arm themselves has been critical to securing liberty from monarchs and tyrants throughout history. And the 2nd Amendment upholds your fundamental right to protect yourself and your family from harm.
But President Obama disagrees. He hates the 2nd Amendment for the same reason he hates most of what is in the Bill of Rights – it limits the power of government and protects the liberty of individuals.
*** And so, just as he did in 2013, the president is trying to exploit a tragic shooting by unhinged lunatics as a reason to weaken the 2nd Amendment and punish law-abiding citizens. ***
However, he is not bothering to try and pass a law in Congress – he is scheming to do an “end run” around Congress and use Executive Orders to impose more intrusive background checks, restrictions on private sellers, and other illegal anti-gun regulations that will weaken your rights while not doing anything to keep Americans safe.
Congress has a chance to stop him, but we must act quickly and we must hear directly from millions of citizens like you.
Specifically, I am urging pro-2nd Amendment colleagues in the House and Senate to use the appropriations process – the “power of the purse” granted Congress by the Constitution – to defund President Obama’s Executive Gun Grab.
If the Obama ATF has no money to enforce his lawless anti-gun regulations, the president will be powerless to enact his grand schemes to shred the Constitution by executive decree.
…
Only with a huge grassroots outpouring from the American people can we stop the president’s desperate push for new gun controls . Why am I so confident this can work?
Because I already saw it work back in 2013. Do you remember how, in the wake of the sickening massacre at Sandy Hook, the president chose to use that tragedy as an excuse to further his long-standing hostility to the 2nd Amendment?
…
Back then, I was honored to work with GOA and lead a massive outpouring of grassroots opposition that shut down the Obama Gun Grab (shocking the media and the D.C. elites), but obviously, the fight is not over.
And, it is clear to me (and I know it is to you) that President Obama’s new plans to impose gun control by Executive Order have nothing to do with keeping Americans safe, and everything to do with his left-wing hatred of your liberty and your rights under the Constitution.
Gun Owners of America – an organization dedicated to no-compromise grassroots lobbying in support of the 2nd Amendment – has developed a massive plan to stop the Obama gun grab dead in its tracks . But there’s not much time to put it into action!
The good news is, we can stop them. But this fight will not be easy – or cheap.
That’s why, in addition to your signed PETITION, I hope you’ll agree to make a generous contribution to help stop the Obama Executive Gun Grab.
Your generous contribution will help pay for GOA’s massive mail, phone, and digital program designed to mobilize upwards of four million Americans to lobby their elected officials. That way, you and I can ensure all my colleagues in the House and Senate really begin to feel the heat.
Your contribution will also help GOA launch a full-scale public relations and advertising campaign nationwide, exposing the truth behind the anti-gun politicians’ real agenda of mass confiscation.
Gun Owners of America has already prepared hard-hitting ads calling on Congressmen and Senators by name to oppose President Obama’s radical, anti-liberty, anti-Constitution agenda.
But GOA needs an urgent – and substantial – influx of dollars from individual citizens to put this nationwide plan into action.
If GOA has the resources to put the full plan into action, we can send a strong message to everyone in Washington that the American people are not going to sit idly by and watch a failed, lame-duck president destroy the 2nd Amendment with his last gasp of power.
If we can send that message loud and clear, I can tell you the last thing any of my fellow senators will want to do in an election year is anger you and the millions of other Americans who take your 2nd Amendment rights seriously .
That’s why I urge you to act TODAY!
We’re staring head-on at one of the most desperate gun-control pushes we’ve ever seen, all brought to us by a president who is angry at the American people for rising up against him in defense of our liberty. President Obama is counting on you to be too distracted by other issues to do anything about his plans to shred the 2nd Amendment with the stroke of a pen in the Oval Office.
