Larry Pratt

Larry Pratt Demands Impeachment of Obama over 'Pagan' Gun Safety Laws

Larry Pratt has been making the rounds criticizing any new laws aimed at addressing gun violence and today appeared on Crosstalk with Vic Eliason to argue that President Obama should be impeached if he signs any executive order regarding gun policy. But Pratt, the head of Gun Owners for America, didn’t say what an executive order would entail, and executive orders have been used by Presidents Bush (41) and Clinton in the past to prohibit the import of certain assault weapons. He told one caller that any executive order would be unconstitutional and merit impeachment. 

Caller: If Obama’s going to be signing an executive order to take away our guns isn’t there something we can do to arrest this man? It’s a treasonous act. He’s swore an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States.

Pratt: Yeah, it’s called impeachment and that would be, along with defunding, the kinds of messages that need to go to Capitol Hill: When are you going to impeach this guy? When are you going to defund his illegal activities? Republicans can’t continue, at least I hope they cannot, continue to be spectators while the country is being torn apart.

Pratt’s gun group has a decidedly Religious Right bent, and so it came as no surprise that he said any laws on gun safety actually represent “the most pagan of paganism” because it “view[s] inanimate objects” like guns “as possessing their own will.”

Pratt: Frankly, it almost would seem that animism won’t go away. The left, which is largely made up of people who don’t believe in Jesus Christ’s blood as being necessary for our salvation, view inanimate objects as possessing their own will. That’s animism, that’s a return to the most pagan of paganism and look at what nutty political views it ends up supporting.

Eliason and Pratt then went on to discuss discredited conspiracy theories about government purchases of firearms and ammunition, which Pratt said proves that “the administration seems to view the American people as the enemy.”

Eliason: We talk about the humongous amounts of cartridges and bullets that are being sent or I guess assigned to some of the federal agencies that you wonder, why in the world are they getting bullets? You know what I’m talking about. Pratt: I sure do and I think that is another indication that the administration seems to view the American people as the enemy. They are buying anti-personnel rounds from what we can tell; they are not buying practice rounds. Eliason: No, they’re hollow-point.

According to Pratt, Obama is a “dictator” and implied that any new gun laws will face violent resistance. He argued that law enforcement agencies shouldn’t “obey such an outrageous executive order,” warning that those who carry them out may end up like war criminal Lt. William Calley or the Germans executed “for following orders after World War II.”

Pratt: It’s the talk of a dictator, ‘I will do what I want, whatever seems right in my own eyes I’m going to do,’ and the idea that there’s any restraints imposed by the Constitution is simply not acceptable to the ruling crowd in Washington and they’re getting bolder because now they don’t have to stand for re-election. I believe, first of all, they understand they probably don’t have the votes in the Congress so why make their Democrat buddies go walk the plank and vote against the Second Amendment, they remember what happened in ’94 when that happened and I don’t think they want a repeat of that.

But what they may not understand is that people are watching. If there is an executive order issued in lieu of congressional action, which would be unconstitutional either way, then I’m hearing such resentment and anger and opposition that their simply going to lose any credibility the federal government might have had. It’s going to be a byword, it’s going to be a joke and people are not going to obey such an outrageous executive order.

Eliason: People would be marching in the streets.

Pratt: That would be the nicest thing that would happen.

Eliason: The frightening thing is this: if the President makes such an executive order and seeks to enforce it, is the military or who is there to enforce it if the order goes through?

Pratt: Then he has to ask how many of those police officers and soldiers would actually carry out such an obviously outrageous order. We had consequences rightly come to Lt. Calley for the slaughter of the people of the little village of My Lai and we hung Germans for following orders after World War II.
Brian Tashman's blog

Larry Pratt's Remedy for School Shootings: More Spanking

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.
Brian Tashman's blog

Gun Advocates Now Worried They'll Be Victims of Hate Crimes?

We have to admit that things are getting very confusing when right-wing gun advocates are now worrying that criticism of their agenda is putting them at risk of becoming victims of hate crimes:

Statements made by broadcasters including CNN’s Piers Morgan and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, as well as comments on social media have contributed to an environment of hate directed against law-abiding Americans who are being demonized for a crime they did not commit, said Joseph P. Tartaro, the president of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Second Amendment Foundation.

Morgan called one national gun rights leader Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America: “an unbelievably stupid man,” he said.

Matthews suggested gun owners are, “..people on the far-right (who) never lose their passion…Normal people have other interests like their spouses, their lives, their children, and even their generalized politics isn’t driven by one issue,” he said

...

“This kind of rhetoric does not contribute to any rational discussion,” [Alan M. Gottlieb, SAF executive vice president] said.

“Vitriol like this only promotes hate, but apparently it’s okay to perpetuate bigotry so long as you are an anti-gunner, and a liberal. If anyone is harmed as a result of this hate campaign, we expect them to be prosecuted under the hate crimes laws,” he said.

“If this hate speech leads to hate crimes,” Gottlieb concluded, “people like Piers Morgan and Chris Matthews will be partly responsible.”

Of course, actual hate crimes legislation only applies to crimes commited on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or disability; gun ownership does not qualify.

Kyle Mantyla's blog

Larry Pratt: Obamacare Will 'Take Away Your Guns'

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.’’
Brian Tashman's blog

Gun Owners of America Director Suggests Armed Citizens Could Have Stopped Holocaust, Warns of Post-Colorado Shooting Gun Control

Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt, who earlier this week floated the theory that the Colorado theater shooting was an inside job aimed at promoting gun control, was back on the press circuit today. In an interview with Iowa radio host Steve Deace, Pratt urged listeners to compare the dozen deaths in the Aurora movie theater with the millions of deaths in Nazi concentration camps – deaths which he claims occurred because the Nazi government had taken away the guns of the German populace, preventing them from “shooting back”:

Well, we tragically lost 12 people. How many people a day were lost in concentration camps that were populated by...well, two things had happened: ‘Jews are bad, Jews are bad, Jews are bad, Jews are bad, all the evil in the world is Jews, Jews, Jews,’ and disarmament of the German population. They started coming for the Jews, and they came for other people as well. Nobody shoots back!

When they started to, when George III thought he could muscle us around with his Redcoat troops, we taught him a thing or two that actually, Mr. George, you need to learn a lesson yourself and that is you violated all of the charters that protect the rights of Englishmen.

Pratt drew not-so-subtle parallels between King George and President Obama, warning that the president, if reelected, will act immediately to close down gun shops. “The guy is clearly the imperial president,” Pratt said:

Here’s what I think might happen after the election. If the president, God forbid, is reelected, I can see him telling gun stores through the Justice Department, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, you’re no longer gonna be able to sell caliber handguns above 380, and if you do we’ll pull your license and you’ll be out of business that day. And you’ll no longer be able to sell semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that are capable of firing more than a fixed magazine load of three to five rounds, in other words one that can accept a large magazine. You just won’t be able to be in business if you want to sell those kinds of firearms. That I can see the president doing. Unconstutional, illegal. But then his position on forcing churches to dispense abortifacants, his position on undoing the amnesty laws, his positions on so many things. A court order telling him to allow drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, ‘No way, Jose,’ was basically his response, although I don’t think he speaks that much Spanish.

So the guy is clearly the imperial president. He thinks he, ‘Well, I was elected, I won the election,’ he told the Republicans once in a rare meeting with Republicans. He doesn’t accept criticism kindly, he gets angry quite quickly, he’s very thin-skinned.

Miranda Blue's blog
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