Larry Pratt

-Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, Springfield, VA -He published a book, Armed People Victorious, in 1990 and was editor of a book, Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution & Militias, 1995. His latest book, On the Firing Line: Essays in the Defense of Liberty was published in 2001. -Pratt has held elective office in the state legislature of Virginia, serving in the House of Delegates. Pratt directs a number of other public interest organizations and serves as the Vice-Chairman of the American Institute for Cancer Research. (Source is GOA website: http://gunowners.org/larry-pratt.htm) According to SPLC: - Larry Pratt is a gun rights extremist who also advocates a theocratic society based on Old Testament civil and religious laws, and a pivotal figure in the militia movement. - Larry Pratt stands at the intersection of guns and Jesus, lobbying for absolutely unrestricted distribution of firearms while advocating a theocratic society based upon Old Testament civil and religious laws. - spoke at the notorious 1992 “Gathering of Christian Men” in Estes Park, Colo., where 160 neo-Nazis, Klan members, anti-Semitic Christian Identity adherents and others arguably laid the groundwork for the militia movement that would explode in 1994. - While the United States has forgotten its success in this area, other countries have rediscovered them. It is time that the United States return to reliance on an armed people. There is no acceptable alternative." —Armed People Victorious (comparing militias during the American revolution to death squads in Guatemala), 1990 "The right to keep and bear arms is just as important today as when the Bill of Rights was drafted. The right to keep and bear arms will be important until Christ comes again, because until then, people will be sinful. Crooks will steal, and murderers will kill, and government officials will tyrannize. The common thread is man presuming to make himself into a God." —"Tools of Biblical Resistance," 1983 - Born in Camden, N.J., on Nov. 13, 1942, Pratt graduated from American University with a political science degree. When he joined GOA in 1976, it was just one year old, a spinoff of Gun Owners of California. That group was founded by California state senator Bill Richardson in response to proposed legislation that would have banned all handguns in the state. Richardson, who was chairman of the California Senate Fish and Game Committee, led a successful effort to defeat the legislation and subsequently expanded the organization nationally. - Under Pratt's stewardship, GOA has steadfastly opposed any efforts to restrict the ownership and availability of firearms. Although it is small compared to the NRA’s 4 million members, GOA's outsized influence helped pushed the NRA into opposing proposals such as universal background checks for all gun purchases, which the NRA supported until 1999. - In 1996, Pratt was forced to resign as co-chairman of Patrick J. Buchanan's presidential campaign when it was publicized that he had been a speaker at the 1992 Gathering of Christian Men in Estes Park, Colo., where he rubbed shoulders with neo-Nazis, Klansmen, adherents of the anti-Semitic Christian Identity theology, and other radicals. The gathering was held to formulate a response to the Ruby Ridge standoff in northern Idaho earlier that year between federal agents and white supremacist Randy Weaver; a U.S. marshal and white supremacist Randy Weaver’s wife and son were killed during that 11-day mountaintop confrontation. The gathering was organized by the late Pete Peters, a pastor of Christian Identity, which posits that Jews are biological descendants of Satan and people of color are subhuman. Among the 160 Estes Park attendees were Aryan Nations leader Richard G. Butler and former Aryan “ambassador” and Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam. Many analysts see the Estes Park meeting as critical to the formulation of the militia, or “Patriot,” movement that would explode nationally in 1994. - Pratt's attendance as a supposed "moderate" on the radical right was based partly on his authorship of a 1990 book entitled Armed People Victorious. That book is thought to have introduced the concept of citizen militias to the radical right. It included a detailed study of the "citizen defense patrols" used in Guatemala and the Philippines against Communist rebels — murderously brutal patrols that came to be commonly described as death squads. Pratt's speech in Estes Park offered a scenario for how similar militias could be organized in the United States. - On the day after Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah federal building was bombed in 1995, Pratt spoke to a group of 550 so-called “Christian Patriots” (including Pete Peters) at the International Coalition of Covenant Congregations Conference at the Lodge of the Ozarks in Branson, Mo. Pratt's topic was the "Biblical Mandate to Arm." Also in 1995, Pratt edited a book of essays entitled Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution & Militias, with the theme of constitutional guarantees for the formation of non-governmental militia groups. The next year, it emerged that Pratt was a contributing editor to a periodical of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America, and that GOA had donated money to a white supremacist attorneys’ group. - Pratt's worldview is heavily influenced by the tenets of Christian Reconstructionism, which is a particularly hard-line version of the larger movement of “dominionist” Christians, who seek to impose Biblical law on civil society. (Prominent dominionists include U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex.), and retired Gen. Jerry Boykin, executive vice president of the Family Research Council.) Reconstructionism is based on the writings of the late Rousas John Rushdoony, a kind of Calvinist on steroids who sought to impose Old Testament law on the United States, meaning, among other things, the death penalty for adulterers, abortionists, gays, blasphemers, idolaters, witches, and others. - Pratt's Christian Reconstructionist roots go way back. In 1983, he contributed an essay titled “Tools of Biblical Resistance” to the Reconstructionist publication "Tactics of Christian Resistance." In it, he wrote: "Clearly, the Bible is no longer available as the bedrock of law and society as it was for our founding fathers. In place of the Bible, the ultimate law in the America of the secular humanists has become the Supreme Court. In the name of a 'living constitution,' nine men and women have taken the authority to find rights that never existed and take away rights bestowed by God and set forth in the Constitution drawn up 200 years ago." - As a soldier defending "righteousness," Pratt sees guns as essential to that fight, which might come in the form of a race war. During a 2013 appearance on the "Talk to Solomon Show," posted on YouTube by Right Wing Watch, Pratt envisioned "some sort of social implosion" during President Obama's second term. "These folks in power are seeking that kind of confrontation, and it would be a wonderful surprise if it did not happen," Pratt said. The show's host, Stan Solomon, predicted a coming race war that would take the form of attacks “on Christian, heterosexual white haves by black, Muslim and/or atheist — not that there’s much difference — black have-nots.” Any "white, heterosexual, Christian, working, married person" who doesn't have a gun faces "a substantial chance of being hurt and/or killed," Solomon said. - Pratt saves his most inflammatory rhetoric for interviews with right-wing media figures such as Alex Jones, Stan Solomon, and NewsMax's Steve Malzberg. Discussing the Trayvon Martin "Stand Your Ground" shooting with Malzberg, Pratt said the unarmed 17-year-old African American youth was killed because he had a "broken family." - While all this bombast plays to Pratt's GOA base, it is also effective in influencing mainstream lawmakers. In 2013, when Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) was parlaying with Democrats on a bill to expand background checks for gun buyers, Pratt mobilized GOA members in Oklahoma to torpedo the effort, according to The New York Times. The article also describes potential presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) as Pratt's “key ally in the Senate,” adding that GOA contributed to Cruz's primary campaign. Another important GOA supporter is former Texas congressman Ron Paul, whose quote is emblazoned at top right-hand side of the GOA website: "The only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington." - Pratt was also personal friends with George W. Bush's attorney general, John Ashcroft, and they were both members of the Council for National Policy, a secretive invitation-only strategic planning organization for conservative Christians. According to The Guardian, while he was a U.S. senator from Missouri in 1998, Ashcroft withdrew his support for a juvenile justice bill when Pratt alerted him to provisions that would have increased penalties for gun law infractions. - Pratt has himself dabbled in politics, getting his feet wet as a Reagan delegate to the 1980 Republican convention, and in 1981 serving in the Virginia House of Delegates as a Republican from the 19th district. In 1994, he was defeated as a Libertarian party candidate for the Nevada State Assembly - While GOA is Pratt's highest-profile organization, he has founded several less successful groups to further his aims. The Committee to Protect the Family, an anti-abortion organization active in the 1980s and ’90s, has shut down. U.S. Border Control, an anti-immigration group, is languishing in obscurity under new management. A third group, English First, is devoted to lobbying for English as the nation's official language. But its website appears to have been last updated in 2011.