Defending Gun Ownership
Defending Gun Ownership
Interview with Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America
by
John F. McManusx
As published in the April issue of the New American
Larry Pratt is executive director of Gun Owners of America (GOA), a no-compromise pro-gun lobbying organization that supports the rights of gun owners guaranteed by the Second Amendment. He also hosts GOA’s weekly radio program Live Fire. The New American questioned him in depth about the Second Amendment, concealed-carry laws, how best to argue for gun rights, and much more. We published a shortened version of the interview in our April 28, 2008 issue, but offer here the complete interview.
The New American:
What’s the main goal of your organization?
Larry Pratt:
Gun Owners of America is organized to lobby Congress to focus on pro-Second Amendment legislation and actually to try and get what’s been put on the books taken off, as the federal government has no authority regulating guns.
The New American:
How do you differ from other groups that are also doing this?
Larry Pratt:
I think we stand apart for perhaps two reasons in particular.
1) We do think that gun control really needs to be taken off the books. We don’t support something that has unhappily rather accepted by gun owners in general and that is the Brady Instant Check. We don’t think it’s constitutional to make somebody prove his innocence before he exercises a right.
It doesn’t comfort us that it’s done within a matter of minutes in most cases. It just means the “trains are running on time,” and that’s not necessarily a good thing if the government is doing it.
2) Beyond that, we think that politics is inherently confrontational. Our founder Senator H.L. Richardson, when he was in the California Senate for over a couple of decades, saw time and again how the forces of freedom, not just on the gun issue, but certainly including the gun issue, would give ground and give ground, thinking this was going to show that they were nice guys and that would stop the assault on their freedom. It doesn’t work that way.
Confrontational politics means you may or may not wish to participate, and it just means you’re going to lose faster if you don’t, and you’d better get organized and learn what it takes to make it happen. Because the other side, the Marxists, the socialists, the Democrats, the liberal Republicans, whatever you want to call them, they’re very good at this. They understand how this works. That’s why they’ve been so successful over the years.
The New American:
You mention H.L. Richardson as the founder of your organization. How did you become the executive director?
Larry Pratt:
Well once the organization had been set up, Senator Richardson came to the East, looked around for a hired gun in the East if you will. I thought this would be a great opportunity to really defend the whole of the Bill of Rights because the Second Amendment issue even back then in the mid- to late-’70s had a built-in constituency who were already somewhat organized and clearly were willing to fight legislatively and politically with their time and their money to make things happen. So, it was a good choice.
The New American:
Basically it comes down to the definition of an individual right vs. a collective right. So, that’s the real argument?
Larry Pratt:
The issue about it being an individual or collective right is now before the Supreme Court. And, for a long time myself included, we kind of assumed that “well, if the Court agrees with the Founders — which would be nice if they ruled constitutionally once in a while — they would have to say it’s an individual right and end of argument, right?” Well, no.
We’ve seen from the Bush administration’s brief in the case before the Courts called D.C. v. Heller that they can agree that it’s an individual right and then right out of George Orwell where peace is war and strength is weakness, and all of that, why an individual right doesn’t stop a court, a federal court, from finding some reasonable basis for banning any or all guns that it wants. And so, they would conclude that the D.C. gun ban which has a virtual long-gun ban as well would be just perfectly fine and it wouldn’t violate the individual right to keep and bear arms.
We are hopeful that this latest entry in 1984 “newspeak” is going to be batted down, but it’s a very serious problem when the Supreme Court has a brief from the administration they unhappily tend to put a lot of weight in what the administration is arguing for the powers, the interests, the rights of government, something which don’t exist, but nevertheless in their minds, bless their heart, they do.
The New American:
The terminology in the Second Amendment mentions the word “people” — “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” There are some that still say it’s a collective right, even though that’s the terminology. But aren’t there other places in the Bill of Rights where the word “people” appears?
Larry Pratt:
The term “people” is something that you find in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 9th and 10th Amendments at least. The Supreme Court reviewed that in 1991 and in a kind of an aside — it wasn’t part of the ruling in the case — they found that whenever the Constitution uses the term “people” in the Bill of Rights, that’s actually a reference to individuals. So the court’s been on record, actually, that it is an individual right, not the right of the state of New York to have it’s own militia let alone National Guard, which didn’t exist for over 100 years after the Bill of Rights had been adopted, after the Second Amendment had been ratified. We’re not talking about something that belongs to a state.
Actually the brief that came up out of the lower court, the D.C. Court of Appeals, handled this issue very well. Judge Lawrence Silberman writing for the majority pointed out that the term militia was something that was used in colonial America and into early Republican America for that matter; the term militia was used to indicate all free men as individuals who had to have a military-style long arm.
They had to have a blunderbuss, a firelock, some kind of rifle — they had to have something suitable for military use. They had to own it. They had to bring it with them to muster. They would take it to any military engagement. They would keep it at home. And the only time they exercised gun control, other than requiring gun ownership, was from time to time they might get suspicious that somebody didn’t actually own the gun he signed an affidavit for at muster, so they would go door to door to make sure the gun was actually in the home — rather different from why we go door to door today, looking for guns the government can snatch.
The other term the judge found was applicable to this whole issue of “no, it’s not a collective right,” is that the term state — the Second Amendment states that a “well regulated militia being necessary to a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” — the term “state,” was not something that was a reference to New York or Virginia, or any of the 13 former colonies. It was a reference to them as individual nation states.
They had fought through the War for Independence without even the Articles of Confederation till the last few months. So they were simply allied states among the states of the world.
And the term actually, while that was one of the meanings, in the 18th century the term more than anything, for the protection of a free state, was the protection of a free government, of a free society. So the militia was there to protect society against New York, against Virginia, in case they ever wanted to do what George III and Parliament had done.
The New American:
People often say that they have their Second Amendment rights, but isn’t that incorrect? Isn’t it a God-given right protected by the Second Amendment?
Larry Pratt:
Yes, and actually [in] what was otherwise not a particularly good decision that came down in the 19th century, Cruikshank observed that the very truth that rights do not originate from the government having established them, but that the rights such as the Second Amendment predated the existence of the American Republic and its Constitution. All the Constitution is doing is observing their reality and endeavoring to protect rights, because that’s the way God made us.
The New American:
The last 20 years or so, you were considered to be a main factor in the spread of militias and there were lots of attacks on the concept of militias. What is your attitude about that and is it the same today?
Larry Pratt:
The militia movement seems to have subsided. I think as much as anything it was a response to the government’s effort to ban semi-automatic firearms, called by gun banners “assault weapons,” even though they are not. When the law passed people variously gave up, and also noticed in the ban itself, there was a provision for a sunset in ten years.
And happily that sunset has come and gone and the law is no longer on the books. I think that was the removal of one of the major concerns that led to people talking about organizing as militias.
A lot of people feared in the late ’80s and early ’90s that the government was intent on disarming the people even as Great Britain had endeavored to disarm our forefathers and they wanted to be as organized as our forefathers had been organized. They wanted to have a well regulated militia, which meant something that would be able to express the sovereign will of the people — even if the government which was supposed to be itself an expression of the sovereign will of the people.
If the government went off track, the people would still be on track.
The New American:
You’ve been trashed somewhat by Rolling Stone magazine…
Larry Pratt:
Good….
The New American:
…that you’re the guy that stands in the way of any meaningful gun control. How do you respond to that?
Larry Pratt:
Well, I hope Rolling Stone is correct. Although we haven’t always won our battles, and so I’m not sure, even if we’re the only ones standing against gun control, we’re actually necessarily keeping it from happening. We try. Not only do we try to keep new gun control laws being added to the books, we try to take existing ones off the books.
The New American:
Is that what separates you from some of these other groups?
Larry Pratt:
I think that’s one of the things that does set Gun Owners of America apart. We really are trying to find politicians who will introduce legislation and then push that legislation to get rid of the bad laws that have been put on the books.
The New American:
Are there any bad laws currently on the books that you are worried about?
Larry Pratt:
Well, all the gun laws that are on the books are bad laws.
The New American:
Are there any gun laws being considered to add to the books?
Larry Pratt:
Yes, we just lost a battle over substituting a psychiatrist’s diagnosis for due process in a court of law. This has specifically has hammered veterans. And that’s why, even though now it’s law, it applies to more than just veterans.
They are the ones who have a diagnosis that triggers loss of gun rights; they’re the ones whose diagnoses have been put into computers at the Veteran’s Administration and then sent over to the FBI to be added to the Brady Instant Check List of people who can’t buy a gun. Hence we call it the “Veterans’ Disarmament Act.”
There were two major objections to this — even though we thought they were compelling, and the NRA supported this measure and this was one of the things that really separated us from the NRA — we objected to the idea that one person’s unsubstantiated opinion, a psychiatrist no less, who’s hardly an objective person, nor is he practicing anything scientific.
In fact psychiatry is highly political, and, in fact, if we look at the last century in a number of countries, psychiatry is prostituted by the government and used as the handmaiden to dispose of unwanted people including politically incorrect people. We think that it’s important that if somebody is going to lose his right to keep and bear arms — something which the Founders themselves believed in; they didn’t think criminals should have guns — but the idea that you could lose your gun rights because of a diagnosis instead of a trip to court with all the due process, the ability to confront your accuser, the ability to have your attorney protecting your rights throughout that whole process, that’s a very different question and it’s just been given up.
We were aghast the NRA would sign off on that because this is something that has the potential to be broadened to people who have other diagnoses allegedly that would make them possibly — possibly — a danger to self and to others.
The New American:
Let’s talk a little bit about concealed carry. How many states allow it and do you see a potential for the federal government to try and outlaw the right to keep a concealed weapon?
Larry Pratt:
There’s probably some thirty-seven states now that have what we call in the Second Amendment community “shall issue” laws, meaning if you have submitted to the background check, which we don’t think you should have to do, and neither does the state of Vermont or the state of Alaska.
There you just get a gun, put it in your purse or put it in your pocket, and you’re good to go. No questions asked, no permissions from the government.
In the case of these other states, you have systems set up where if you’re not found to have a criminal record, then they must give you a permit. It’s not a question any longer as it was in most of these states prior, whether or not some police officer, some judge, some clerk thinks you might need a gun, and you might have a valid reason for carrying it. The assumption now is if you want to carry a gun for self defense and you happen to work in an office where it doesn’t have, well, it’s not out on the streets in a drug neighborhood or something, so what? It’s not the government’s business. They’ve got to give you the permit and you’ve got to be allowed to carry.
What we’re finding is that, especially in the number of laws that were most recently enacted, governors — one was infamous, and that was governor Taft who himself was a criminal and he was convicted of graft and yet he had the audacity while as governor after those convictions, which didn’t put him in jail, unhappily, so he stayed as governor — he was able to tell the legislature, “nope, I’m going to keep raising the bar and make it more and more difficult for the law to pass for the law to make any difference whether you could carry it anywhere outside maybe in the middle of the street, while you’re out in public.” So the law in Ohio is much more restrictive than some of the other laws that were passed earlier say in the state of Virginia, or that had been on the books even before the modern movement in New Hampshire and places like that.
But all in all, I would say that we’ve seen progress. People have been encouraged to carry guns to protect themselves when the laws were changed to make it easier for them to do so legally. That’s in turn built a political base of people who understand and support pro-Second Amendment legislation.
The New American:
Incidents recently where somebody who had a gun, concealed carry, was able to stop somebody from killing others — would you comment on that?
Larry Pratt:
Just before you and I began this conversation, I read of a man in Houston, a day or two ago, who had been assaulted by three robbers. The man pulled out his own gun, killed one, and the other two are now in captivity. This man could well not only have lost his money but with three assailants against one, there was a good possibility he could have been hurt and killed. This happens fairly frequently.
One of the things that we should point out is that we hear an argument every time that concealed carry is introduced in a state or is being considered for loosening up the laws to make it easier for people to carry in more places, we’re always warned with alarmist rhetoric that guns and people, guns and students, guns and schools, guns and churches, guns and whatever — fill in the blank — are so dangerous and this is going to lead to road rage, it’s going to lead to turning these places red with blood flowing from irresponsible activity; it never happens.
In fact, what we find out is the people who have concealed carry permit are the ones who commit the fewest crimes of any group in the population, and that includes police or ministers, for that matter. These are the good guys of America — and gals — that have these permits.
We should be encouraging them to be carrying in churches so that they can respond the way the volunteer security detail of the church members in the New Life Church in Colorado Springs were able to respond and stop a killer, literally dead in his tracks, before he was able to kill what, if we judged by the ammunition he was carrying, would have been hundreds of people. People who can defend themselves can do things like that when they are there.
Keeping a law that says “no guns,” well, that’s fine. Peaceful citizens generally obey those laws even when they’re stupid and deadly, but criminals seem too look at them as opportunity zones, where they are going to be safe. We have been working to encourage legislatures to back off of these “no-gun zones” because they are simply “criminal safe zones.”
The New American:
Let’s shift gears a little bit here. Let’s talk about the United Nations. I’m told that if you become a non-governmental organization registered with the United Nations you are required not to oppose the United Nations. I would guess that Gun Owners of America has not asked for or gotten any NGO status. How about commenting on the NRA doing something like that?
Larry Pratt:
Gun Owners of America has not chosen to go the non-governmental organization route to be recognized by the United Nations because the United Nations does require one to subscribe to the goals of the United Nations. The goals of the United Nations are obnoxious. The goals of the United Nations are antithetical to individual freedom; they’re antithetical to the U.S. Constitution.
And I can understand why the NRA would want to go through that process, because they understand that there is a lot of gun control being promoted at the United Nations, treaties, and other foreign-entangling devices. They’ve decided they want to be there to fight that. I think the best way for us to fight it, frankly, is to lobby, which we’ve done, to turn off the money that goes to the UN.
If we turn that money off, again, bureaucrats don’t volunteer. They’re not going to be trying to take our guns away if 25 percent of their budget all of a sudden drops through the floor.
The New American:
You’ve been attacked because you have on more than one occasion spoken to groups who are considered to be white supremacists. Comment on that if you would?
Larry Pratt:
I’ve spoken to crowds where there were white supremacists, I’ve also been to meetings and press conferences with the ACLU, who support all kinds of social issues that I strongly disagree with. Working with other people and seeking their support for your goals, no more means that you end up agreeing with their overall program than it does if you go into a garage that you’ve all of a sudden become a car. I’m simply there to get their support for the very public agenda of the Gun Owners of America.
If they’re willing to work with us on that agenda, their post card is going to count the same as somebody else’s post card that might be an ACLU member, sending in — there is an occasional ACLU pro-gun person, usually in states like Idaho and Wyoming and so forth. Those post cards all count when they come into Congress and that’s what we’re trying to do, is maximize the impact that gun owners have before Congress.
The New American:
Same argument if you were speaking to an English-first group, that you would be looked upon as somebody who is anti-immigration. But that’s not your issue…
Larry Pratt:
I did set up an organization called English First, and one of the reasons I did it is because I speak fluent Spanish. My wife is foreign-born and we speak Spanish at home, and I’ve organized an Hispanic church within our Anglo congregation.
So, if you come into our church on Sunday morning, there will be a Chinese sermon being preached, at 11 o’clock, same hour, there will be a Spanish-language sermon and one in English. I don’t think I’m dressed properly to be the poster boy for racism.
The New American:
What percentage of the Congressmen, 435 in the House and 100 in the Senate, what percentage would you say are on our side, or on your side?
Larry Pratt:
When you ask about somebody in the Congress or any legislative body being on our side, I hate to sound like Bill Clinton, but it depends on what you mean by “is” is. People that are on your side who fill out questionnaires and who in conversation tell you “I’m opposed to this,” or “I support that,” that’s comforting, that’s nice to know, and I think typically, particularly in writing, they are probably speaking truthfully, but they get wobbly when they get into a legislative arena.
As one of our guys said recently, in the Senate the rules are very favorable for being able to obstruct bad legislation and keep it from happening, but we don’t really have any senators there that consistently are willing to use those rules. In the House of Representatives we have a number of men and women who are willing to try and obstruct bad legislation but the rules are much less favorable. And so one of the things that would be nice would be to get some people that are willing — we need a coalition of the willing if you will in the United States Senate — so we could try and make some things happen there.
The New American:
But you don’t want to put a percentage on it?
Larry Pratt:
If you define “on our side” as being willing to go to the mat and fight, we don’t have anybody consistently in the Senate. In the House of Representatives we probably have ten or twenty.
The New American:
That’s small.
Larry Pratt:
Well one need not be too concerned about the minority numbers because God certainly has not used majorities throughout history. If you read history you realize that minorities are the ones that make things happen, for good or for ill. And, one senator could tie up the whole body if he were ornery enough to do it, using the rules.
Even in the House it can be done if there are enough there — probably 40 would be a very comfortable number to fight a rearguard action using the rules of the House that would almost have the same effect as a filibuster would in the Senate. That would get the leadership’s attention. “Okay, okay, what is it going to take to get you off our case?” That’s when concessions coming our way can be made.
The New American:
Do you have success in converting anti-gun activists? I’ve seen where people who were anti- the position that I hold, who could be persuaded out of it, were very valuable allies. I’m wondering if you’ve had any success with anti-gun activists becoming strong supporters of your group.
Larry Pratt:
We haven’t seen anti-gun activists converting the way you’ve seen it in say the pro-life arena. We’ve seen people change their view. There’s a saying that a liberal who’s been mugged is now a conservative. That he’s changed his view on guns at least. But that doesn’t mean necessarily that he was an activist.
And I look at the numerous opportunities we have on television and radio to present our views to the American people as not likely to convert my sparring partner who’s usually opposed to me on these debate formats, but I do think it gives us an opportunity to present information to the American people that is otherwise filtered by the media. In that regard, we have seen since 1980 surveys were saying that perhaps as much as 80 percent of the people, if you just ask them — it’s kind of a silly question because they don’t know how much already there is — “Do you think there should be more gun control?”, back in 1980, 80 percent of the people tended to say “Yeah.”
Now, when you ask that same silly question, it’s down to about 51 percent and almost all of the other are opposed to that. Some of that 47- 49 percent would actually like to see rollback. So, I think we are gradually, steadily seeing a change in Americans’ thinking, which the Supreme Court ought to keep in mind because if they rule outrageously which I’m concerned they might, on the D.C. gun ban case.
That could produce a considerable contempt of court because most people are getting just a little fed up with a court that can find rights in the shadow of the penumbra that are obviously not written in the Constitution and yet something as plain and simple as “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” might allude them? I think that would conceivably have quite an impact in the presidential elections, since they are all anti-gun candidates; certainly in the congressional races that could make a difference.
The New American:
Some years ago when John Ashcroft was attorney general, when he compelled the Justice Department to do a thorough analysis of the Second Amendment, the analysis that came back was quite accurate and quite favorable to your position. Comment?
Larry Pratt:
Attorney General Ashcroft’s position in writing, that the Second Amendment protected an individual right, sounded good until you got down to the “yeah, but,” because it also said “subject to regulation.” Well there goes the ball game. We thought we had a good set of rules until we read far enough in what he said, and then we realized he might as well have been looking at the Illinois State Constitution which protects the right to keep and bear arms, “subject to the police power.”
Consider this: The Swiss to this day have a saying “An armed man is a free man.” And the idea is that the sovereign has the means of carrying out and of enforcing his will, and when you take firearms away from the sovereign citizen and concentrate them in the government, it’s been a coup d’etat. In Washington D.C., there’s been a coup d’etat. The people have been disarmed and the people have become servant and subject to their creature, their government — completely upside down. And yet I think it’s helpful to think of it in these terms: that the sovereign being disarmed is a coup d’etat.
The New American:
A lot of criminals kill other criminals. I guess that removes some of the criminals from the potential of going out and harming innocent people.
But large numbers of criminals are killed each year by gun-wielding intended crime victims and so forth. Why is there such a huge amount of people with the misconception that having a gun for self-defense is a bad idea?
Larry Pratt:
The biggest single reason for people failing to understanding the effectiveness of individual gun ownership and individuals carrying guns in reducing crime stems from the media, which filters out successful defensive gun uses. I debated a man one time on television who said, “what you’re talking about and what John Lott talks about with all the studies he’s done, that more guns mean less crime, why we just we’ve never seen anything like that in the media, so it can’t be true.” He actually said that.
Well, let me give you an example of how the filter works. It stems, I think, from a world view that’s imbued in people as they go through the government school systems and through our higher education system.
At the Appalachian School of Law several years ago a fellow decided that he was failing in school and that was the fault of the teachers and he was going to kill some. He killed two of them, a dean and another professor.
Two of the law students — it was a small campus which made this scenario possible — ran off campus to their vehicles, got their handguns, and came back on the campus. As this failing student was preparing to reload his gun, they drew down on him with their guns and said “drop it,” and he did, and then a number of students tackled the assailant at that time.
Only two local papers pointed out that the situation had been resolved by defensive gun use. A number of papers, and I believe also the Associated Press account, which is what most people saw around the world, that talked about the students having tackled the assailant, with no reference that he had dropped the gun, and he was under the control of two gun-bearing students.
Subsequently there was an interview in the Kansas City Star with the editor who had been over and actually had put out the reporter’s story; he put it out over the AP wire. He was asked, “So, why did you not put anything in there?”, because it was ascertained that he did know that defensive gun use had been involved. “Why didn’t you mention that?” He said, “awhh, when I saw that these students had gone and introduced guns into an already dangerous situation, I knew that we couldn’t encourage that by running anything like that.”
That’s why we don’t see anything in the media, typically, about defensive gun use.
The New American:
It would have been nice if there had been one of those students at Virginia Tech?
Larry Pratt:
It would have been very nice had there been some of those students at Virginia Tech. But Virginia Tech is huge, so to have run off the campus and then to come back on, would have meant it would have been all over by the time they got back. This was only possible at a little law school up in the mountains, where the campus literally was not that big. And the only thing going on there was a few hundred law students being educated.
The contrast in the media when they deal with a mass murder in a gun-free zone is to ignore the fact that it was a gun-free zone and focus on the bleeding bodies. To put it crudely, they roll out the hearse. They are grieving because of the carnage that has been visited upon the school or mall, wherever it was a gun-free zone. The contrast couldn’t be greater with the Appalachian School of Law.
There was a school dance in Edinburgh, Pennsylvania, where a catering manager got a gun and stopped a killer. In Pearl, Mississippi, the assistant principal went, very much like the Appalachian School of Law students, he went off the campus, got his gun out of his vehicle, came back and stopped the killer.
Those get, at most, one day of attention in a limited run of media, and then disappear. There are no follow-up scenes about how devastating it might or might not have been for the assistant principal, or the students to have faced this dangerous situation, and how are they coping with it, and what are the victims that weren’t victims say about the foresight and courage and clear-headed action of these people.
When the most dramatic saving use of defensive guns occurred at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs late last year, or early in 2008, the media dropped that like a hot rock. And yet, here you had a volunteer, turned out to be part of a detail of some 20 members of the church who were carrying, regularly, because they had agreed to be part of a security detail. When trouble came they were ready. They stopped the killer.
You would think this would be: “where’s the follow-up questions?” After Columbine there were all kinds of follow-up questions about, “how many guns should we be banning now?” “We need more gun control, don’t we, Mister Politician?”, or for that matter they said the same to us.
That’s why we got so upset with the way the media was handling it that we put out a news release saying the problem with Columbine was there weren’t enough guns at the school. That’s when I got on Katie Couric’s Today show and the New York Times did a big profile, “who could say such a thing that we need more…?”
Apparently more guns at New Life Church meant more lives saved. And that connection wasn’t focused on; that was dropped like a rock. No politician was confronted saying — because there are states where you can carry a concealed firearm but the law prohibits you from carrying it on church property — “Mr. State Legislator, in view of what happened over in Colorado, are you going to get rid of the law here in Mississippi or in Arkansas, or wherever, that prohibits people from being able to protect themselves like they did at the New Life Church?” No — no politician was put on the spot whatsoever.
The New American:
Would you recommend that when youngsters go to college that they carry a weapon?
Larry Pratt:
Students should be able to carry a concealed carry firearm if they can qualify; that means in most states they have to be 21. We should encourage that group of the population that commits the lowest amount of crime to be armed on the campus.
Because it’s obvious that the police can’t be there on time to make anything happen favorably. They get there to bring the body bags and the notepads. That’s no knock on the police. That’s simply a fact of life. They’re not there when trouble happens.
The New American:
In the wake of disasters, terrorist attacks, etc., are you fearful of how the authorities will react, of how they will treat us in that instance?
Larry Pratt:
Disasters and emergencies are historically opportunities for government to aggrandize and grab power, usurp power, get power illegitimately. After Katrina, the Internet made a big difference in what followed.
There were two, at least two news clips, that were put out on video over the Internet and Gun Owners of America was able to capture them. And they are still on our website.
You can see guns being confiscated from peaceful citizens in the aftermath of Katrina, after the rain, after the water was even subsiding. What the people were doing was guarding their properties so they wouldn’t be subject to looters coming through vacant homes. This was so outrageous, to look at it was to put you on the edge of your chair to say the least.
In Louisiana, a gentleman who I hope is going to be coming to Congress this year, State Senator (then Representative) Steve Scalise, put in a bill making it illegal for law enforcement to grab people’s guns, unless like any other circumstance they were committing some kind of crime that you would arrest them and take their gun. But if they are walking down the street with their gun, or sitting on their front porch with their gun, leave them alone.
When Scalise introduced the bill, the anti-gunners began to grumble, “this is putting police officers in danger” and “they’ve got to have this discretion.” He showed our two video clips on his laptop in a committee meeting and all the wind went out of the sails of the anti-gunners. It was just too graphic.
An even better law passed, thanks to Louisiana Senator David Vitter and Representative, now Governor, Bobby Jindal, it’s now federal law says that any federal law enforcement who grabs somebody’s gun during one of these circumstances from a peaceful citizen, it’s illegal. But, we’re not going to worry about them being prosecuted because we know that’s not likely to happen, but they will be open to being sued personally. They will have to defend themselves personally, and if they lose they will have to pay personally. We think that is an effective way of controlling out-of-control police.
The New American:
Is this a Louisiana law or a federal law?
Larry Pratt:
This is a U.S. federal law, so that FBI, BATFE agents, well there’s probably 25 agencies that have SWAT teams and gun toters, any of them that confiscate a gun from a peaceful citizen is opening himself up to a devastating lawsuit that could take everything he owns. It gets real personal.
The New American:
Could you comment about the looting that went on after the Rodney King aftermath — there were some Korean shop owners that protected their property?
Larry Pratt:
Yes, the Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King episode provide a very quick answer to “why would anybody need one of those assault weapons?” which they are not; they are actually semi-automatic firearms that function just like many people’s hunting guns.
There was a picture of Korean merchants, standing guard on their properties, and meanwhile in the next block everything has been burned down. But where they were, no fire, no looting, everything was under control. Whole mobs, to look at those magazines in those Uzi-type firearms that they were using and decided, “wrong block.”
It’s the same message that’s been given to members of Gun Owners of America who were subject to attempted car jacking and usually when they produce their gun, the victim produced his gun, the assailant just ran off. In one case, the assailant had a gun on our member, and he was able to produce his gun right away, and obviously the element of surprise was now reversed and it was a level playing field and the only thing — this guy actually said something, the assailant said, “oops, wrong car!” — indeed it was.
The New American:
What’s the greatest threat on the horizon?
Larry Pratt:
Well, the greatest threat may well be what’s about to happen in June at the Supreme Court. But even if we were to say that’s not on the table, let’s look at other factors….
Democrats learned in 1994 that going after firearms is politically very risky. And Bill Clinton himself, said more than once, I made a mistake in pushing for the gun ban. That’s what cost my party control of the Congress. So the Democrats very quickly began to tone it down, not to say how guns needed to be regulated and banned. They learned a new vocabulary.
Republicans seem to be suffering from the Stockholm syndrome. They had been held so long captive by the media that even when the Democrats changed their rhetoric and the media began to cooperate — no more crusades against guns — the Republicans still thought they were being held hostage to a hostile media.
As a result, they never pushed to get rid of gun control. They never forced the Democrats to vote on rolling back gun control, which I think enough of the Democrats would have, that these measures would have passed the Congress and the others that didn’t would have been suitably targeted politically for removal. The Republicans lost an historic opportunity because they were behaving as if they were still being held captive by their captors.
The New American:
Is there any legislation before Congress now that you favor?
Larry Pratt:
There have been measures recently put in. One is to prohibit the U.S. Park Service from banning people from carrying guns in those facilities where the state law would not otherwise be in conflict.
For instance, there were a couple of scientists doing research in a park on the southern border with Mexico and they had to abandoned their research because it was so dangerous on the border with the “coyotes” and the drug types coming across the border armed and dangerous.
When they asked for the ability to protect themselves they were told, “No you can’t. You can’t take a gun into that park.” So they just gave up and left their research.
So, we want to tell the Park Service, “Bad idea, you can’t do it any more.” We’re hoping that very shortly there will be legislation introduced to repeal the Veterans Disarmament Act and that, I think, might have some chance.
Once it’s been introduced as a repeal measure, first of all we’ll get a little accountability by seeing who signs on as a co-sponsor. There were never any votes at all when the ban went through, when the Veterans Disarmament Act was put through the Congress. It passed by unanimous consent every time in every body. This way, we would get those willing to co-sponsor the legislation and even in the House, there is at least one opportunity for a recorded vote.
And I think if we get it to that point, and the sponsors were willing to push it for a recorded vote, it would pass. I don’t think even many Democrats who’ve said they’re against the war but for the troops, they are not about to say, “I don’t think any soldier should have a gun when he gets back home.”
The New American:
Do you have any numbers for the military that are being affected by this?
Larry Pratt:
At present, 140,000 veterans have been disarmed and it’s increasing at the rate of 1,000 per month. The debate, as the former deputy assistant secretary for policy of the Veterans Administration Mike McClendon told us, the debate in the Veterans Administration is whether or not all veterans should be classified as PTSD. So this is potentially huge.
The New American:
Do you think the over antagonism from the media has mellowed some?
Larry Pratt:
The media may be somewhat mellower in dealing with gun ownership but primarily it simply tries to ignore the issue altogether. It hardly had anything to report on the Veterans Disarmament Act because you had the NRA agreeing with it and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence agreeing with it; where’s the controversy?
The media likes to either report some crime scene where if it bleeds it leads, or some controversy, some scandal, and the passage of this legislation other than our opposition, was really rather boring, so it got no coverage. And, they were perfectly happy to let it go through the Congress that way. It was in their interests because it was advancing an agenda they agreed with.
Probably the best thing we’ve have going for us to get the media to deal somewhat more fairly is the fact that the old media is losing market share. They are losing money. They are letting people go. And we can find our information on the Internet rather more easily than going outside on the snowy morning and picking up the newspaper.
And so the media is belatedly beginning to realize this and you’re seeing print media offering themselves online, oftentimes for free, except for archives because they are looking for some way to keep their old readers. Their old readers are not going out to pick up the paper anymore.
I don’t get the Washington Post in Washington near where I live. If I need to see a Washington Post I can go online. Why should I pay Pravda to tell me a bunch of lies?
The New American:
Okay, you are up against somebody who is anti-gun and you’d like to have him change his position. What’s the single best argument to use?
Larry Pratt:
Well, one argument that I think does kind of silence the critic is one that I’ve heard you use, and that is, “oh, so guns are really bad.” “You want to put a sign on your house that says ‘there are no guns in this house'”?
You could offer to give them that sign for free and I’ve yet to find anybody that would take the sign. We’ve made these as bumper stickers and I still have the original stack that we had printed up, other than those I gave out to a few people that thought it was funny. Nobody is obviously serious about putting up a sign like that on their house, because that’s like putting up “steal me.”
The other thing you’ll get somebody that says — they’re sort of the agnostic of the debate — “I agree that the Second Amendment means what it says, that individuals are protected in their individual right to keep and bear arms, but I don’t feel like I need a gun right now.” “Oh good, so you don’t have homeowners insurance either, right?”
Okay. That usually makes the point. You hope your house is never going to burn down, but you still buy the insurance. You hope you are never going to use your gun, but it’s there if you need it.
This is something so typical of the liberal. Whether they are looking at the world abroad, or looking at the thug on the corner where they are walking down the street, their argument is self defense is too dangerous. You might hurt somebody else. Surely, talking would be better. “When did violence ever solve anything?”
Well, you can talk to the people of Sudan. There was a silent genocide, not Darfur, but the one in the south of Sudan where some two million people were murdered, and it stopped when the Islamic government of the north realized, “oh, somebody got guns to those people — they are killing us.” And so they struck a deal.
And as least as long as those people stay armed and willing to use their guns, I think there’s going to be a truce there in the southern Sudan. So, talking did nothing for twenty years, but guns did something in six months.
A friend of mine who is a missionary, who is South African, lives in Cape Town, and was worshipping in a church on a Sunday night. It was a large church, there were a thousand people at a Sunday evening service, and terrorists came into the church and began shooting and hand grenading.
Bodies and benches were flying in the air and Charl Van Wyk got down behind a pew in the back of the church because he sat there on purpose just with this horrible thought in mind, that maybe something like this, if it would ever happen, that’s where he wanted to be. He used the pew as a kind of bench rest, fired off a couple of rounds and that stopped attack.
One man, no special training, and actually not even a very good gun, but it was enough. He had a plan and the means to carry out the plan. These are the kinds of examples I think we can keep pushing that make the point, that even though the media doesn’t want to deal with it, we can just keep talking about it.
When we get into these debate situations, it’s up to us to introduce this kind of information. And when we do, people get a chance to see there were some really bad situations where an armed citizen made a huge difference.
I think a lot of times people who are gun owners have been their own worst enemies because again, there hasn’t been a proper understanding of what’s going on in politics and it’s confrontational. The other side very much think the way the Communists were known to think — “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.” And that’s what’s going on with guns.
The New American:
Have you ever had to defend yourself with a gun?
Larry Pratt:
Happily I’ve never had occasion to defend myself. I would say that being a gun owner I have been trained in some of the shooting schools to be always aware. This is hardly to be paranoid, this is to be opposite to being fat, dumb and happy dead.
Just looking around, when I come out of my office late at night and it’s dark, relatively empty parking lot, I just look around, see who’s there. Maybe there’s somebody who needs help, who knows. Maybe somebody’s trying to jump their car. But I’m always just trying to pay attention. I have taught myself that.
There was one time when we had just moved to a new house and I was traveling, my wife was not home and I happened to call in, I had a little time during the day. My daughter was very upset — “Dad, where’s the gun?” She knew where I kept it where we had lived, but when we moved, obviously it wasn’t in the safe, it was where it could do some good, but she didn’t know where that place was now.
And so I told her, and called back a couple minutes later, and her tone of voice was totally different. The chap who had been going door to door and thought maybe he wanted to perhaps get into the house or get her to open the door, he was no longer around. Once she knew where that gun was and had possession of it, her tone of voice, no doubt his attitude, had completely changed — both of them.
Probably at least half of the households or more have firearms in them, and that’s probably one of the best measures that America is still a rather well-armed society is that home invasions in the United States involve, about 13 percent of the time, one that is occupied. In Britain it’s about 65 percent.
It’s obvious the crooks know that in Britain if they have a little pipe, it’s probably all they are going to need to deal with some poor homeowner who might confront them. Whereas in the United States, that little pipe isn’t going to help them at all if they catch a bullet because half of the homes are known to be armed.
What you find, even when you’ve surveyed criminals, they will tell you if they think a house is occupied, kids toys out on the lawn or something like that, they just go somewhere else — too risky.
Oh, and I might add, that’s probably 97 percent of the defense of gun uses in America. Which probably happens some 2 1/2 million times a year. Nobody fires a shot, nobody’s killed, and nobody’s wounded. Americans are, which I think shows us, extremely responsible. Even though they’re in a dangerous situation, they don’t necessarily fire that gun 97 percent of the time.
The anti-gunner has a real problem. He has no constituency. If it weren’t for George Soros and his money financing a lot of the anti-gun folks, if it weren’t for the media which make it look as if the anti-gunners still have some kind of strength — in other words doing it by smoke and mirrors — it would be evident to the whole world that these people speak for a very small number of people; those that actually don’t believe in self-defense.
When I’ve debated them, and I have enough time other than the five minute segment that they might do on Fox News to actually set it up, I’ve gotten to where I ask them, “So you don’t really believe in self-defense do you?” And they refuse to answer.