Gun Lobbyist Ties Charleston Shooting To Transgender Rights

In a radio interview on Monday, Gun Owners of America official Erich Pratt tied the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston to the transgender rights movement, saying both are products of a school system that teaches that “there is no absolute right or wrong.”

“Sadly, I think for a lot of the education that takes place in our country, the kids are being taught, ‘You decide, you decide your own morality.’” he said. “We’re being told that you decide everything from your gender to your own morality.”

This, he said, was the root of the thinking of the Charleston shooter and of Hitler: “Well, if you are in that position where you are autonomous and you decide what’s right and wrong, in this guy’s mind, as sick as it is, he might have thought he was actually doing society a favor. Certainly Hitler did, with his mass murders, he really thought he was doing society a favor. And that’s the problem, if there is no absolute right or wrong. And as we know, that’s not being taught.”

Just one day after the attack in Charleston, Pratt, publicly condemned the church’s slain pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, for his “anti-gun” activism as a state senator. Erich’s father, GOA Executive Director Larry Pratt also blamed Pinckney for leaving his congregation “defenseless” against an attacker.