Posted on 11/17/2014 8:36:22 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In an appearance on Newsmax TV’s America’s Forum Monday, gun rights activist and white supremacist sympathizer Larry Pratt said that the reason President Obama is for gun control is “he clearly doesn’t like the fact that the American people can own guns because we might just want to use them to keep people like him from becoming tyrants.” The executive director of the right-wing gun advocacy group Gun Owners for America was discussing the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. The ATT has long been delayed in the Senate, mostly because Pratt and other conspiracy theorists have convinced a number of conservative lawmakers that passage of the treaty will lead to gun registries and the UN confiscating guns.
Pratt spoke with host JD Hayworth (a former Republican Congressman) and Rick Ungar of Forbes during the segment. When Ungar, who is typically serves as the token liberal on conservative media programs, pushed back on Pratt’s claims that President Obama is coming for everyone’s guns and that Obama is going to use executive orders to push through the ATT, Pratt then retorted with his belief that Obama is worried that people feel he is a tyrant and will use their guns to stop him.
Below is video of the segment, courtesy of Media Matters:
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
While mainstream media outlets have turned to Pratt to give his opinion over the years whenever the topic of gun control comes up, they rarely if ever actually highlight just how radical Pratt’s views are. In a profile piece on Pratt this past July, Rolling Stone writer Alexander Zaitchik revealed that Pratt believes that American gun owners shouldn’t be concerned with owning guns for hunting or self-defense. In Pratt’s mind, guns are needed to both scare elected officials and to carry out God’s will as prophesized.
“The Second Amendment is not for hunting, it’s not even for self-defense,” Pratt explained in his Leadership Institute talk. Rather, it is “for restraining tyrannical tendencies in government. Especially those in the liberal, tyrannical end of the spectrum. There is some restraint, and even if the voters of Brooklyn don’t hold them back, it may be there are other ways that their impulses are somewhat restrained. That’s the whole idea of the Second Amendment.” He reiterated the point this March during an interview with conservative talk show host Bill Cunningham. Speaking of a New York Congresswoman who had expressed fear that one of Pratt’s members wanted to shoot her, Pratt said, “You know, I’m kind of glad that’s in the back of their minds. Hopefully they’ll behave.”
And if they don’t? When speaking before smaller, conservative audiences, Pratt explains that it is necessary to both generate an undercurrent of fear and muster the organization and will to defeat the dictator prophesized in the Book of Samuel. When asked during a 2010 Q&A session, “Do we have the will to stand up to the government when they trample our rights?” Pratt replied, “That is an exceptionally important point to raise. We can have all the guns in the world, and if we don’t have the will to use them [against the government], then they are useless.”
While Pratt is certifiable, he definitely has pull within conservative circles. Republican lawmakers, and even some Democrats, don’t dare cross him or his organization lest they be called weak on guns. Pratt was especially influential in getting a Senate bill on background checks killed in early 2013. Even though the Manchin-Toomey bill was extremely gun friendly and far more conservative than other proposed Senate measures, the Gun Owners of America was able to provide the right amount of loud resistance and scare enough senators that the bill was unable to move forward. While the NRA was also a major factor in the bill’s failure, the New York Times claimed Pratt and his group may have been the prime movers. (Pratt took credit for killing the bill during the Newsmax interview.)
While Newsmax TV is trying to provide a further-to-the-right alternative to Fox News and therefore we should expect to hear wackiness from them on a daily basis, it is still troubling that a man like Pratt is consistently given a platform to spew his crazed views. Even more troubling is that he is hardly ever taken to task for his actual beliefs and why he thinks Americans need to own as many guns as possible. Therefore, we will continue to see him used as a counterpoint in MSM discussions on gun control and right-wing media will trot him out as an ‘expert’ on the Second Amendment.
No links to sources to back up this claim. Things that make you go Hmmmm....
The babbling of a fool.
Not you, but the author of that nonsense.
I like articles like this with no bias of any kind. Just the facts ma’am, just the facts. /S
Thank you Larry for your persistence.
I fail to see the “wackiness”. Perhaps the author should read the Federalist Papers....
I challenge the author to provide one example of gun registration that did not resolve into gun confiscation within 20 years. Progressives previously known as Marxists, are patient when they are not in power. When in power they are aggressive tyrants.
Registration is always the prelude to confiscation. If you do not believe this ask the patriotic German Jews that registered their weapons in Germany prior to WWII when Hitler came to power. Alas you can not ask them. They are dead not from old age but the bullets and poison gas of the Hitler and his Nazi thugs and murdere's.
Gun registration is not good. A good man with a gun is a defender of freedom.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I believe Mr. Pratt is entirely correct.
White supremacist sympathizer? He doesn’t agree with owebama so he is obviously a racist.
Sounds like the author has a little problem with the First as well as the Second Amendment. Nevertheless, just saying that someone or someone's point is "crazy" doesn't make it so.
I disagree with Pratt in that he makes a distinction between self-defense and defense against a tyrannical government, and I do not. It's all the same thing: the security of the individual in his or her person, possessions, and liberty of action, all of which are the targets of control by hostile individuals and hostile governments made up of individuals. The latter do not change into supermen by virtue of governmental office, a thing that it is never out of place to remind them.
It is passing marvelous to hear critics of firearms possession such as the author fall back onto the argument that governmental tyranny could never happen here and so no firearms would ever be required for defense against it. This is contrary to the bloodstained pages of history, and the author's ridicule is no more than nervous laughter. It can happen, it has happened, it is happening now, and it is nearly certain to happen again. We don't want it to happen here. That isn't really very difficult to understand.
“By calling attention to ‘a well regulated militia,’ the ‘security’ of the nation, and the right of each citizen ‘to keep and bear arms,’ our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.”President John F. Kennedy
---------------------------------------------------
“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”
Vice President and Senator Hubert H. Humphrey
They really like to play that racist card without any proof.
Politics USA commentator: “The founding fathers had no idea that the US would have large, professional army and large, professional National Guard forces. Clearly the idea that individuals must have their own weapons to preserve their lives, liberty and property was a product of its time and, in almost all cases, has no relevance in today’s US. Anyone who thinks differently is either extremely ignorant or a gun fanatic (or both!)”
The site’s and it’s commentor’s ignorance of history is appalling. In fighting the British the Americans fought the largest, professional army in the world. They hated the idea of a large, professional, standing army and believed that is was a tool of oppression. They hoped with the 2nd Amendment that Americans would never be cowed by a dictatorial central government and that a large, standing army in America would never be needed. I think that they would advocate that today, given the leviathan size of our governments and military that the 2nd Amendment was more important than ever.
Yup. Here’s a link to confiscation in Buffalo. Apparently, registering there brings police upon your death:
http://www.truthandaction.org/buffalo-police-department-begins-gun-confiscation-deceased/
See THE BATTLE OF ATHENS.
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