Back in March, Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, gave a radio interview in which he told the story of one of his group’s members threatening a member of Congress, which Pratt thought was just fine because the fear of being shot is “probably a healthy fear” for elected officials to have. A few months later, the exchange made it into a Rolling Stone profile of Pratt and caught the eye of Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who it turns out was the threatened congresswoman in question, and who immediately notified the Capitol Police.
Pratt’s group reacted to this news by calling Rep. Maloney “foolish” and claiming that she just didn’t understand “key historical documents.” And since then, Pratt has repeatedly doubled down on his comments, saying that elected officials should live “in constant trepidation” of citizens turning to the “cartridge box,” arguing that politicians fearing for their lives “ is what the Second Amendment is all about,” and hoping for an increase in politicians “dispatched” while trying to avoid “metal jackets.”
Pratt, in fact, was so delighted by the story of threats to Rep. Maloney that he told it last month to a gathering of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association in Washington, a group that believes states and counties should ignore federal gun laws.
Rep. Maloney, Pratt said, “went off on a hissy fit” after hearing his comments. The Capitol Police, he added, “came back with a conclusion that there was no articulable threat, which I think was a nice way of saying, ‘You’re nuts, lady, shut up.’”
