PRATT 2 GOA

see main

maybe premature

where are they now?

funny you shd ask:

reprint merk

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/02/23/gun-lobbyist-speaks-to-students-at-secretive-event-after-ucsc-appearance-canceled/

Gun lobbyist speaks to students at secretive event after UCSC appearance canceled

Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt addresses about 500 demonstrators during a rally in support of the Second Amendment near the Washington Monument on April 19, 2010 in Washington. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images file)

Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt addresses about 500 demonstrators during a rally in support of the Second Amendment near the Washington Monument on April 19, 2010 in Washington. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images file)]

By NICHOLAS IBARRA | Santa Cruz Sentinel

PUBLISHED: February 23, 2018 at 5:48 am | UPDATED: February 23, 2018 at

SANTA CRUZ – One week after the Parkland, Florida, shooting, one of America’s most prominent gun lobbyists had been scheduled to speak to two conservative student groups at UC Santa Cruz on Wednesday night.

After word of the event — which had been scheduled weeks earlier — leaked online, organizers announced it had been canceled.

But in fact, former Gun Owners of America leader Larry Pratt did address about 30 UCSC students and a handful of others Wednesday night at an invitation-only event so secretive almost none of the attendees were allowed to know its location.

While survivors of the deadly Feb. 14 rampage called for increased gun control at a CNN-hosted town hall, the students were shuttled off campus to a meeting room at the Hilton Hotel in Scotts Valley. Even the drivers only learned the event’s location about an hour before it was scheduled to begin, out of concerns that protesters could put the safety of attendees at risk.

There, Pratt reportedly spoke at length about the history of the Second Amendment and American militias before fielding questions from attendees, most of whom were affiliated withUCSC student-groups Young Americans for Liberty and College Republicans. Pratt did not respond to a request for comment.

SPEAKER CRITICIZED

Before the Tuesday cancellation, dozens of UCSC students took to social media to condemn Pratt’s appearance both for its timing and for what they claimed were links between Pratt and white supremacist groups tracing back to a 1992 appearance at an event called Gathering of Christian Men. Pratt, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “stands at the intersection of guns and Jesus,” and has advocated for unrestricted access to firearms throughout his lengthy career.

UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal told the campus’s student government on Tuesday night that for Pratt to appear on the campus so soon after the Parkland shooting would be “needlessly insensitive.” Blumenthal was responding to a question about the event that he said he understood to be canceled.

“When tragedy happens, the time to talk about it is now,” said Eva Lomazov, 22, who leads Young Americans for Liberty chapter and was one of the event’s organizers. Lomazov said she believes that more guns, not fewer, are what is needed in response to school shootings. “I know that the Left will disagree with me, but that’s the belief I have. So if anything, I was more inclined to bring Larry Pratt to my friends — I wanted to bring him to the campus — because something had happened and now is the time to figure out what to change and how to change it.”

:{College Republicans President Brandon Lang agreed, saying the shooting only underscored the need to have an open and honest conversation around guns.}

UNDER WRAPS

The secretive nature of Pratt’s Wednesday appearance came out of fears for attendees’ safety, according to an organizer.

“I am genuinely scared of being hurt on the UCSC campus,” Lomazov said. She said she has received a number of online threats from fellow students due to her involvement in conservative political groups, and said she been called a Nazi numerous times. The senior computer science and economics double-major is Jewish, and said her parents came to the U.S. from the Soviet Union — contributing, she said, to her Libertarian beliefs.

The students were so committed to keeping the rescheduled Wednesday event under wraps that Lang denied Pratt would be speaking Wednesday during an interview with the Sentinel, while College Republicans spokesman John Weatherford declined to comment.

During the same interview, a would-be attendee approached Lang looking for an update, and Lang frantically waved him away. Confronted with the Sentinel’s knowledge that the talk would indeed take place, he said he felt betrayed that someone, he assumed, had betrayed the groups’ confidence.

But event had been kept under tight wraps even before its faux cancellation.

Lomazov said that while they wanted to host a public event, school officials told them it wouldn’t be possible to secure the insurance and security necessary to handle potential protesters. “We had no say in the matter,” she said.

According to Lomazov and other organizers, keeping information about it off Facebook, was mandated by the university.

“The agreement we signed said there was to be no social media leak, and if there was a leak we were responsible for it from our side,” Weatherford said.

UCSC spokesman Scott Hernandez-Jason wrote in an email that “there was no requirement to maintain confidentiality,” adding that the students were unable to make the event open to the public because their request came after a deadline needed to arrange for the necessary security. According to Hernandez-Jason, it was the students themselves who decided to cancel the event after being informed that they would not be covered under the original insurance.

Once the on campus event was canceled, the university’s involvement ended, leaving Lomazov without any security to call on and covering the costs of the meeting out of pocket, subsidized by the donations of attendees.

Editorial: End ban on federal research of gun violence

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Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg tells men: Don’t deprive women of mentoring in reaction to #MeToo

For Lang, the emotional intensity surrounding gun control is a barrier that stands in the way of productive dialogue. The “online hate mob” that he said he saw as a response to Pratt’s planned appearance called to mind another event in October, when a group of activists loudly interrupted a meeting of the College Republicans.

“I wish there could be something that could be done about getting the people that want to stop these dialogues from happening to open their ears for a minute and not just immediately say that whoever they disagree with is a white supremacist,” Lang said “I don’t know what the solution for that is other than to just keep pushing and bring in new ideas

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NYT

Pro-Trump Nonprofit Paid Millions to Companies Tied to Its Own Leaders

The Conservative Partnership Institute’s three highest-paid contractors had connections to the group’s leaders or their relatives, raising concerns about self-dealing.

Two men in dark suits shaking hands across a table.

A job fair sponsored by the Conservative Partnership Institute on Capitol Hill in June 2018. The group was founded the year before and aims to help conservatives wield power.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

David A. Fahrenthold

Reporting from Washington

May 6, 2024

The Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit whose funding skyrocketed after it became a nerve center for President Donald J. Trump’s allies in Washington, has paid at least $3.2 million since the start of 2021 to corporations led by its own leaders or their relatives, records show.

In its most recent tax filings, the nonprofit’s three highest-paid contractors were all connected to insiders.

One was led by the institute’s president, Edward Corrigan, and another by its chief operating officer. At a third contractor, the board members included the group’s senior legal fellow Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Last year, the Conservative Partnership Institute hired a fourth company connected to an insider: a fund-raising firm run by Mr. Corrigan’s brother, Patrick Corrigan. Public filings show the company received a contract three weeks before the firm was legally formed.

The Conservative Partnership Institute applied to the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit, and the agency approved. That means donations to the group are tax deductible, like gifts to a food bank or the American Red Cross. It also means that, by law, its money must serve the public good rather than private interests.

The nonprofit has pushed those limits by entwining itself with only one faction of American politics. It pays high salaries to some of Mr. Trump’s former officials, hosts retreats for Republican lawmakers at a rural compound and funds efforts to vet people and ideas for a second Trump term.

Legal experts say these insider transactions also raise concerns about self-dealing. While hiring insiders is permitted when certain safeguards are in place, the payments moved money out of daylight and into opaque entities that the nonprofit’s leaders helped control.

“There’s no checks and balances,” said Michael West, a lawyer at the New York Council of Nonprofits. Because there is no real third party to determine whether the insider-led companies were charging the nonprofit a fair price, Mr. West said, “the potential for overpayment here is epic.”

Mr. Corrigan, the institute’s president, did not respond to questions about what steps the group took to assure that it was not overpaying the insiders’ companies. The companies did not say what rates they charged.

Image

A close-up frame of Edward Corrigan. He is smiling.

Edward Corrigan, the president and chief executive of the Conservative Partnership Institute, at a panel discussion in National Harbor, Md., last year. His group applied to the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit and was approved.Credit...Leigh Vogel for The New York Times

Of the insiders who had dual roles at the nonprofit and its vendors, only one responded to questions from The New York Times. Wesley Denton, the institute’s chief operating officer and a former Trump administration official, said he also had been paid by Compass Professional, one of the vendors.

Mr. Denton’s annual compensation, with benefits, from the institute was $391,735. He declined to say how much he received from Compass Professional. He was on the board of both the vendor and the institute.

“We’re proud to have helped launch new, independent, nonprofit service providers that provide high-quality professional services,” Mr. Denton said in a written statement.

The institute’s donors include several Republican political campaigns, as well as conservative businesspeople. One major donor, the retired Texas aviation entrepreneur Robert Bruce, said the nonprofit’s leaders had not told him about their use of vendors with insider connections.

“I’ve never had a conversation like that,” Mr. Bruce said in a phone interview.

He estimated he had given “several hundred thousand” dollars to the institute. Mr. Bruce said he had no concerns that the nonprofit’s leaders were misusing money. “I’ve known them a long time,” he said. “They’re good people.”

The Times traced the relationships between the group’s leaders and their vendors by examining charity and corporate filings with the federal government, five states and the District of Columbia.

The records do not show what share of the $3.2 million went to the institute’s top leaders and their family members — only that the money flowed to companies where they served as an owner or a director. In at least one case, a company failed to flag that connection as required in a state filing.

Image

Two people wearing Trump 2024 hats and clothing.

The Conservative Partnership Institute pays high salaries to former Trump officials, hosts retreats for Republican lawmakers at a rural compound and funds efforts to vet people and ideas for a second Trump presidency.Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

The Conservative Partnership Institute was founded in 2017 by former Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, after he was ousted as the president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative nonprofit. The group’s aim was to help conservatives wield power, shepherding them “through the Washington swamps without being infected with Potomac Fever,” Mr. DeMint said in 2017.

The institute’s fund-raising actually improved when conservatives lost power.

In 2021, with Democrats in charge in Washington, the institute hired former Trump staff members, including Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. It began courting donors as the voice of Mr. Trump’s allies and ambitions.

Fund-raising jumped to $45 million in 2021 from $7 million in 2020. The nonprofit, newly flush, bought a 2,200-acre retreat on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a series of commercial buildings near the U.S. Capitol, with plans for a restaurant, a school and TV studios. The group also began convening workshops and seminars for conservative lawmakers and staff members as well as seeding new conservative nonprofits.

As the money flowed, the institute’s leaders began to found a series of companies in Delaware.

The first was Compass Professional. Its first annual report listed a slate of directors, including Edward Corrigan and Mr. Denton.

Next was Compass Legal Services. Its initial filing listed directors, including Ms. Mitchell and Charlotte Davis, one of the institute’s board members.

By the end of 2021, the group had paid its companies a combined $639,259, according to an audit that it filed with state-level charity regulators.

Federal law allows nonprofits like this one to hire insiders as long as they properly disclose the payments and ensure the insiders do not overcharge. Legal experts still advise against it because of the temptation for insiders to abuse their power over charity funds.

“You have an obligation to behave in the interest of that organization,” said Linda Sugin, a professor of nonprofit law at Fordham University. “The problem is, when you’re on both sides of the transaction, then we’re skeptical that you’re going to put the organization’s interests before your own.”

Ms. Sugin said the institute could have reduced its risk by soliciting bids from competing firms to gauge whether the insiders were charging market rates. The institute could have asked its leaders to recuse themselves from the decision to hire their own companies, she said.

Mr. Corrigan and other leaders did not respond to questions about whether their group took those steps.

If a nonprofit is found to have given improper benefits to insiders, the insiders could face financial penalties from state or federal regulators. In extreme cases, the I.R.S. could revoke the group’s tax exemption.

In 2022, a third Delaware company was formed: Compass Property Management. Its corporate filings show Mr. Denton as president.

During that year, the nonprofit paid the three insider-connected companies a combined $2.6 million, according to the audit that it filed with states. The institute said those payments were “for the use of facilities, personnel, human resources and other professional services.”

How much of that flowed to the insiders on those vendors’ boards of directors?

Mr. Denton offered only a partial answer.

He said the vendors did not pay their board members solely because they were board members.

However, as in his case, Mr. Denton said the companies could pay their board members for other reasons, for “doing employment work for these organizations, outside of their board duties.” The president of Compass Legal issued a statement saying his company did not pay “outside directors” but did not specify which directors were counted as “outside.”

Compass Professional and Compass Legal have worked for other clients, including Mr. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and Gun Owners of America, according to federal campaign and charity filings. The companies’ leaders did not respond to queries about how much of their business came from the Conservative Partnership Institute.

The most recent data on what the institute paid the three original insider-connected companies is from 2022. Since then, corporate filings show, the companies’ board members have shifted, but Conservative Partnership Institute leaders or their family members remained on the boards of each.

Last year, the institute also hired a company that was partly owned by Patrick Corrigan, Compass Direct LLC, to a fund-raising contract, paying $180,000 over the next year.

In a filing in North Carolina, the institute said that contract began on July 1, 2023. But Patrick Corrigan’s company was not founded until July 24, three weeks after it won the contract.

In its own filings with North Carolina, Patrick Corrigan’s company was asked if he was related “as parent, spouse, child or sibling to ANY officer, director, trustee or employee” as his client, which was his brother’s nonprofit.

In filings for 2023 and 2024, the company answered “no.” Patrick Corrigan signed the forms.

After The Times pointed this out, Patrick Corrigan responded with a one-line email: “The NC filing has been updated,” he wrote. He did not respond to other questions.

Robert Draper and Julie Tate contributed reporting.

David A. Fahrenthold is an investigative reporter writing about nonprofit organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades. More about David A. Fahrenthold

:{A version of this article appears in print on May 7, 2024, Section A, Page 15 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump-Allied Nonprofit Paid Millions to Firms With Ties to Insiders.

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phil vogel

1/17

Nobody on campus suspects that Ashley, an 18-year old freshman with olive skin, jet black hair, and a Hispanic last name supports Trump. “I was too afraid to tell anyone on campus who I voted for. Nobody asked me. I think they just assumed I voted for Hillary,” she says.

“My family and I originally supported Ted Cruz,” Ashley explains, “since [Cruz] wasn’t an option anymore, it basically left just Hillary or Trump. Hillary is pro-abortion, and that’s not something I will ever support. Christians would face a lot of scrutiny under Hillary.” Ashley tells me that she spoke with her pastors about the election and that “they were very open about supporting Trump and voting for him.”

https://mystudentvoices.com/doubling-down-behind-trump-inside-the-new-republican-subculture-on-liberal-college-campuses-fb723736a822

...

attended a second meeting that college Republicans held last Sunday evening in a ground floor room of Mchenry Library. Turnout was higher than anticipated, and several attendees had to sit on the floor, or stand with their backs against the wall. I was struck by how many freshman were at the meeting. A couple of the new members told me that the left-wing culture of academia already permeated down to their high schools, encouraging them to seek different schools of thought once they entered college.

One major conversation topic at the meeting was the mandatory diversity training sessions all incoming Freshman were required to attend. All of the Freshmen present agreed that the training sessions weren’t constructive. “We didn’t do any interactive workshops or anything like that,” said one member, “all we did was listen to speeches, singing, and bad slam poetry for two hours.” Another freshmen member vehemently disagreed with the content of the diversity training. “They told us that people of color couldn’t be racist. That’s ridiculous, all people can be hateful,” she says, “I am Mexican woman, I agree that there is a history of oppression in America, but I can still accomplish anything I want in this country.”

College Republican president Brandon sees programs such as the school’s diversity training as a chance to grow his club. “The culture on campus is driving people away from the left,” he tells me. “We are focussing on student outreach right now. We are looking for people who may not identify as conservative, but are willing to come in and have a conversation,” he continues. “A lot of progressives no longer see people as individuals. They assume that they will identify with a certain ideology because of how they look, instead of taking into account who they are.”

2 diff ucsc rep FB sites listed

https://www.facebook.com/CityonaPhil/

february 22 ·

spoke with Gun Owners of America founder Larry Pratt yesterday. We agreed to do a video interview next week, where he would answer all questions unedited from anybody in the UCSC student body regardless of their political views or affiliation. If you would like your question to be featured in the interview, please message me on the City on a Phil page. Mr. Pratt's lobby has 1.5 million members. He stated that he sees his organization as a "tugboat" to pull the NRA to the right and away from moderate positions. Whether you agree with his positions or not, the reality is that Mr. Pratt has a large (and increasing) presence on capital hill and in statehouses all over this country. In the wake of recent events, many people feel angry, frustrated and powerless. Please consider this opportunity to communicate directly with one of the gun lobby's key players.

...

Raymond Thacker The G.O.A and Mr Pratt are held in a much higher regard than the NRA by many firearm collectors/owners. I have the utmost respect for the man and the organization. They are against all forms of Gun violence and have what I believe to be a very effective solution to help stop / reduce these violent occurrences.

...

November 7, 2017 · :{:(style="background-image:url("):}:

I now have 100 percent of the video that UC will use in their hate/bias decision regarding the October 15th College Republican incident at Mchenry Library. I have decided to publish the raw footage. We may disagree with the upcoming ruling, but hopefully, we can at least agree on the facts.

On a more personal note, I hope the school reaches a quick decision and we can close the book on this story. This whole incident has taken a ton of my time, and I would much rather be writing about vapid, inconsequential topics such as male sexual ineptitude, and dilapidated college housing.

-Phil

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https://twitter.com/foxandfriends/status/921310061800108033

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FOX & friends

Verified account

@foxandfriends

Follow Follow @foxandfriends

UC Santa Cruz College Republicans meeting disrupted by leftist protesters, three arrested

2:40 AM - 20 Oct 2017

45 Retweets 71 Likes Peggy RichEd Morelandmary weatherfordCeline Diane RyanUCSC GOPJohn WeatherfordkrazirishgalAmrGailJC

23 replies 45 retweets 71 likes

Reply 23 Retweet 45 Like 71

D VICTOR PELLEGRINO

@DVICTORPELLEGRI

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends @willbarrett_1

0 replies 3 retweets 4 likes

Reply Retweet 3 Like 4

Mary

@Mar_K6788

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

Getting tired of these paid protesters.

0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes

Reply Retweet Like 2

Peggy Rich

@Pegnola

29 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

Proud of Republican students for standing on their 1st amendment rights! Way to go! Glad you didn't allow tyranny to silence you!!

0 replies 0 retweets 1 like

Reply Retweet Like 1

Peggy Rich

@Pegnola

29 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

First amendment demands these crazies not be allowed to stop free speech!

0 replies 0 retweets 1 like

Reply Retweet Like 1

UCSC GOP

@gop_ucsc

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

#UCSC CRs have recieved great support from peers in condemning these agitators. They damage school's image. Dialogue can heal wounds.

0 replies 0 retweets 1 like

Reply Retweet Like 1

Barb

@1BarbSalinas

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

Apparently they haven't learned much in college

0 replies 0 retweets 1 like

Reply Retweet Like 1

Shannon Ketchersid

@ShannonKetcher2

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

When is someone’s “right” to free speech able to override anothers? I’m sick of this crap! Using 1A to disrupt a meeting is not peaceful!??

0 replies 0 retweets 1 like

Reply Retweet Like 1

New conversation

Mmsitta

@mamasittalove

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

.... but let's allow this little Nazi and his tiki torch warriors roam free spewing their hate. ??

1 reply 0 retweets 1 like

Reply 1 Retweet Like 1

steven chance

@sandschance

20 Oct 2017

It is his right..

1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply 1 Retweet Like

Mmsitta

@mamasittalove

20 Oct 2017

??????????????????

Haaaaa haaaaaaaa haaaa..

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

End of conversation

Donald K. Carey

@DonaldKCarey1

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

Give then jail time. They do not have the right to stop anyone from speaking. Folks, here is demoncrat. I have x brain so I X let u speak.

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

Bobbie Johnson

@brwneyesnbama

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

We are being silenced by the left. We must stand up for ourselves

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

Bryan Chapman

@bryan65039

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

That's what the left does

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

Joseph

@Jgiantsfan3852

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

That’s liberal FREEDOM of speech for ya.

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

Annette Lang

@annette_lang

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

Shocking ??

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

Janet Shirah

@JanetShirah

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

Good :-)

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

Coach Gower

@Coach_Gower

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

Thanks Libs! Trump 2020!

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

Aristides Maldonado

@amaldonadojr5

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

See the difference between these and Antifa? They had uniforms!!

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

YouAreTooFunny

@everbodyBlocksU

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

YouAreTooFunny Retweeted Stonekettle

YouAreTooFunny added,

Stonekettle

@Stonekettle

Here's the thing the entire administration seems to be missing:

Myeshia Johnson lost her husband in a particularly horrible way.

Show this thread

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

Rita N

@RNik430

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

2/2 They relentlessly harassed her until she had to leave and eventually called home in tears! These were her sorority sisters ASA!

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

Rita N

@RNik430

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

1/2 ?? my child was bullied yesterday @ college 4 her conservative views & vote for our @POTUS! She sat quietly in the library-not engaging

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

VSTheFoodSnob

@VSTheFoodSnob

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

Lock thise cry babies up!

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

angelo

@bills1290

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

Takes a special kinda idiot to talk the way those stupid kids did! What a joke!!

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

Jim MEfish

@Jim_MEfish

20 Oct 2017

Replying to @foxandfriends

ANTIFA

0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Reply Retweet Like

}:}:}:*

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ref 404 https://web.archive.org/web/20150224051329/http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/030796circle.html

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A N T I F A I N F O - B U L L E T I N

:{:{:{*News * Analysis * Research * Action

Volume 1, Number 5 ***** March 7, 1996

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Communism as the ultimate evil has always been the specter haunting property owners, as it threatens the very root of their class position and superior status. The Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were traumas to Western elites, and the on-going conflicts and the well-publicized abuses of Communist states have contributed to elevating opposition to communism to a first principle of Western ideology and politics. This ideology helps mobilize the populace against an enemy, and because the concept is fuzzy it can be used against anybody advocating policies that threaten property interests or support accommodation with Communist states or radicalism. It therefore helps fragment the left and labor movements and serves as a political- control mechanism. If the triumph of communism is the worst imaginable result, the support of fascism abroad is justified as a lesser evil.

-- Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky

A Small Circle of Friends:

Larry Pratt, the Council for Inter-American Security and International Fascist Networks

*:{:{:{by Tom Burghardt

Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights}:}:}:*

:{:{*The Council for Inter-American Security

CIS and WACL: A Marriage Made in Hell

Larry Pratt, the Council for Inter-American Security and the War Against Immigrants

Conclusion

Appendix

Notes and sources}:}:*

Introduction

Recent allegations of anti-Semitism and racism levelled against Larry Pratt, a national co-chairman of the Buchanan for President campaign committee, is an intriguing example of media obfuscation and "truth" on the half-shell. That Pratt addressed the 1992 "Christian Men's Meeting," organized by notorious Christian Identity racist, Pete Peters, is an established fact. That Pratt shared the platform with Aryan Nations fuhrer , Richard Butler and "former" Klan "Grand Dragon," Louis Beam, the neo-Nazi architect of "leaderless resistance," is incontestable. That he gave a speech at the 1993 Jubilation Conference in Sacramento, California, an annual gathering of far-rightists' sponsored by the anti-Semitic publisher of Jubilee, the flagship tabloid of the Christian Identity movement, is true and has been accurately reported by the bourgeois press.

What should be of equal concern to the media is information about Mr. Pratt which is far more damaging -- his close collaboration over a 20 year period with an international network of war criminals, neo-Nazi terrorists, and the organizers of Asian, European and Latin American death squads. But because such activities advanced the geopolitical and military goals of the United States, Pratt's actual record is passed over in silence ; a facet of media self-censorship that has been well- documented elsewhere.[1]

At the outset of this report I will emphasize, Pratt is a reactionary whose political orientation can aptly be described as clerical-fascist. On numerous occasions, he has expressed disdain for democracy and the economic, political and social rights of the oppressed. His ideological and personal links to the theocratic wing of the Christian Right, the anti-abortion movement and "Patriot" militias, though of interest, will be explored in another report currently in preparation.

This edition of AFIB however, will explore at some length, the dimensions of Larry Pratt's ties to the national security state. I will demonstrate that Pratt, Buchanan and a host of other "respectable conservatives," far from being "outsiders" or "populists" are active agents and apologists for the global crimes of U.S. imperialism.

[back to top]

*:{:{**The Council for Inter-American Security:

Intellectuals in the Service of Global Terror}:}:*

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The Council for Inter-American Security (CIS) is a rightist outfit that played a pivotal role formulating Washington's program for counter-revolutionary war and mass murder in Central America during the 1980s. Larry Pratt, was a central figure within the CIS hierarchy as was Patrick Buchanan; Pratt was secretary to the group while Buchanan functioned as an organizational director (seeAppendix for complete list of board members and principle players).

But CIS was more than a New Right think-tank researching and formulating foreign policy for the Reagan administration. The group functioned in a dual-capacity; as an alarmist "public policy institute" and as a domestic spy ring, a "privatized" version of the FBI's infamous COINTELPRO operations. Having staked-out Latin America as their geopolitical niche, CIS targeted Central America solidarity activists, progressive clergy, and the Salvadoran exile community. The group gathered intelligence and disseminated disinformation, funneling data on foreign policy opponents to the FBI and the intelligence service of the Salvadoran death squad state.

The domestic side to illegal CIA-Contra operations were aided by a broad spectrum of domestic and international reactionaries. Many of the state-sanctioned criminals who sought to subvert democratic processes in the U.S. and overseas were connected to a network which included, among others: the John Birch Society (JBS); the World Anti-Communist League (WACL); Christian fundamentalist and Catholic theocrats; anti-Castro terrorists grouped in Alpha 66/Brigade 2506; the LaRouche organization and the Unification Movement of South Korean fascist, Rev. Sun Myung Moon.[2]

While such groups operated secretly, they did so with the knowledge, financial backing and encouragement of powerful American corporate and political interests. According to journalist Ross Gelbspan:

A...private group which flourished during the Reagan era was the Washington-based Council for Inter-American Security. The group disseminated reams of material during the 1980s purporting to prove linkages between a Soviet-inspired global terror network and liberal and left-wing American groups opposed to US foreign policies. CIS also expended considerable effort to improve the public image of the reputed Salvadoran death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson. When the FBI's CISPES files were pried open in 1988 by a lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights they were found to contain several reports written by J. Michael Waller, a researcher whose work has been sponsored by the nongovernmental Council for Inter-American Security. But Waller's work to connect American political dissenters to an international communist-terrorist plot was part of a public- private partnership.[3]

By 1984, FBI "active measures" against CISPES and the Sanctuary Movement were in full-swing. Fifteen Bureau field offices, dozens of agents and hundreds of "private" right-wing intelligence "assets" were involved in these illegal operations. More than 200 incidents of harassment and intimidation against activists were documented. Many incidents involved church and office break-ins, theft of files and the infiltration of local CISPES chapters by Bureau informants. Peaceful public rallies and demonstrations were disrupted by goons affiliated with Rev. Moon's Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP).

One case that had particularly ominous implications was that of Yanira Corea, a 24 year old Salvadoran exile active in the Los Angeles CISPES chapter. In June 1987, the young woman was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, tortured and threatened with death if her "subversive" activities didn't stop. Corea's brother was a union activist in El Salvador. Prior to her abduction she received a threatening letter containing dried flower petals a photo of her three year old son and the notation -- "Flowers in the desert die," a traditional warning of the death squads.[4]

Though Bureau informants could not produce a shred of evidence linking these groups to "terrorism," the FBI actually increased the level of their attacks. According to the logic of Bureau red hunters, the lack of criminal activity in and of itself was demonstrable evidence of a broad "conspiracy" hatched by shrewd agents linked to the KGB. This was an illusion that the Council for Inter-American Security helped to create.

Throughout the period, the FBI were fed reports alleging that CISPES was a "terrorist" organization. Waller, a research director and editor of the CIS journal, West Watch , wrote a text with the fanciful title, "CISPES: A Terrorist Propaganda Network," that was given wide play by the media.[5] However, because Mr. Waller's services produced the desired propaganda effect intended by his handlers, he secured several generous grants from the State Department's Latin American Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD).[6] Recent American history is replete with examples of the profitability of lying in order to advance State interests; Elliot Abrams and Oliver North are but the tip of the iceberg in this regard.

Prior to Reagan's 1980 election, CIS was the principle organization leading the charge for an "activist" foreign policy to "defeat communism" in Central America. In 1980, they published the influential, A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties , generally known as the "Santa Fe Document."

Lewis Tambs, "Sante Fe's" principle editor, would be appointed by Reagan as ambassador, first to Columbia and then to Costa Rica, the launching pad for Contra attacks into Nicaragua along the "Southern front."[7] Other Committee of Sante Fe members included Roger Fontaine, a National Security Council (NSC) adviser on Latin American affairs; retired Lt. General Gordon Sumner, who became a special assistant to the Secretary of State for Latin American affairs; and Lynn Francis Bouchey, an active organizer for the Unification Church's CAUSA operations in Central and South America.[8]

Bouchey, the co-author of The Strategy of Terror (written with Stefan Possony), was a former member of the Young Americans for Freedom employed by the American-Chilean Council, a front for the murderous Pinochet regime.[9] Possony, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute, long-time WACL operative and board member of Lyndon LaRouche's, Fusion Energy Foundation, was a founding member of the Council, as was Dr. Anthony Bouscaren, a right-wing operative who had worked for the racist Pioneer Fund (see below).[10]

The Committee of Sante Fe alleged among other things, that the U.S. "must seize the initiative or perish. World War III is almost over." CIS viewed the Soviet Union as an "aggressor" that was "strangling the Western industrialized nations."[11]

Central America was described as "the soft underbelly of the United States." The authors called for the "restoration" of the Monroe Doctrine as the linchpin of U.S. regional strategy. In other words, the United States was free to pursue its regional interests unhindered. Bluntly, this meant that the internal politics of the Central American states were subject to "review" by the U.S.: "correctives" -- dictated from Washington -- would be applied as needed.

As a practical necessity, such "correctives" included the destruction of the Cuban, Grenadian and Nicaraguan Revolutions and the maintenance of "the fundamental order of things" in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The Committee wrote:

America is everywhere in retreat. The impending loss of the petroleum of the Middle East and potential interdiction of sea routes spanning the Indian Ocean, along with the Soviet satellization of the mineral zone of Southern Africa, foreshadow the Findlandization of Western Europe and the alienation of Japan.

Even the Caribbean, America's maritime crossroad and petroleum refining center is becoming a Marxist-Leninist lake. Never before has the Republic been in such jeopardy from its exposed southern flank. Never before has American foreign policy abused, abandoned and betrayed its allies to the south in Latin America.

...It is time to sound a clarion call for freedom, dignity and national self-interest which will echo the spirit of the American people. Either a Pax Sovietica or a world-wide counter-projection of American power is in the offing. The hour of decision can no longer be postponed.[12]

Though the authors freely employed alarmist rhetoric with little regard to the actual history of U.S. regional domination, "Sante Fe" was not the production of marginal right-wing "kooks" obsessed by the "red menace." According to the Interhemispheric Resource Center,

In the early years of the Reagan administration, the organization was one of the more influential think tanks of the New Right, providing both policy and policymakers to the new administration. In the heyday of its influence, one observer noted, top officials of CIS "shuttle[d] to and from key policy-making and advisory roles in the administration...." Among those tapped for administration positions were Patrick Buchanan, who became President Reagan's communications director...[13]

Today, Buchanan markets himself as an "outsider" standing up for the "workin' man," against a godless, secular humanist cabal of multinational corporations, abortionists, feminists, homosexuals, immigrants and socialistic "one-worlders" intent on imposing a New World Order on the American people. His project has been assisted by the media who have tossed his actual record down the Orwellian memory-hole.

As noted above, CIS was engaged in a covert war against U.S. leftists, progressive clergy and the Salvadoran exile community, channeling information gleaned by its operatives, to the FBI and the Salvadoran national security apparatus. This too, has a long history in the United States.[14]

Col. Samuel Dickens, a former intelligence officer and CIS board member, was the executive director for inter-hemispheric affairs for the American Security Council (ASC), an outfit founded by ex-FBI agents. ASC was an instrumental group which targeted leftists during the 1950s, the period of the McCarthyite witch-hunts. Founded in 1955, ASC funding has been provided by Motorola, Lockheed, Boeing and General Dynamics, among others.[15] The information they collected, much of it bogus, was then sold to ASC's dues-paying corporate members. At the height of their domestic operations ASC red hunters, including the sinister Roy Cohn, Senator McCarthy's chief inquisitor, were gathering the names of alleged "subversives" at the staggering rate of 20,000 per month. [16] One analyst has said that the ASC is "not just the representative of the military-industrial complex, it is the personification of the military-industrial complex."[17]

Another significant source of support for the Council and a host of other "conservative" organizations, was Rev. Moon's Unification Church. Bouchey helped organize two conferences for CAUSA, led by another retired general, E. David Woellner.[18] He was also a board member of the United States Global Strategy Council, identified by researchers, Louis Wolf and Frederick Clarkson as "another CAUSA operation."[19] In 1981, Bouchey was "specially commissioned" by Moon's World Media Institute to prepare and present a "content analysis" of media coverage of U.S. policy in El Salvador.[20]

Active chapters of Moon's organization existed throughout the region; the largest affiliates were centered in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay. In Brazil, the director of CAUSA said, "we are forming the future base for a large political party, though at present we are still apolitical...we want to form a movement like Le Pen's in France." Needless to say, French fascist, Jean Le Pen, has done just that with the National Front, with significant financial backing from the Moon network.[21]

But Moon's extensive Latin American operations had a dual- purpose: the construction of an anti-communist "armed church" and as a "unofficial" link among CIA intelligence assets and the leaders of the death-squad states.

In Bolivia, Thomas Ward was a liaison between the CIA, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, Barbie's organization, the "Fiances of Death" and the regime of "cocaine general" Luiz Garcia Meza, prior to Bolivia's bloody 1980 putsch. Ward and Barbie "were often seen together;" the introspective Ward was described as an individual "who always seemed to be absorbed in prayer." According to Col. Bo Hi Pak, Moon's chief lieutenant: "God has chosen the Bolivian people in the heart of South America as theones to conquer communism." This during a period when Bolivian narco-operations were greatly expanding -- with the knowledge of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.[22]

Other CIS board members or advisors who have had close ties to the Moon organization:

Roger Fontaine: a former member of the National Security Council. After leaving the NSC, Fontaine became a reporter and political analyst for the Washington Times , a newspaper owned by a subsidiary of the Moon network. Salvadoran death-squad leader, Roberto D'Aubuisson bragged of his ties to the Reagan administration, particularly Roger Fontaine, to the New York Times during a 1981 interview.[23]

Lt. General Gordon Sumner: a CIS director and advisor; Sumner was also a board member of the International Security Council (ISC), described by Herman and O'Sullivan as the "main U.S. agency of the Moon system in the field of terrorism propaganda." An international conference organized by ISC and CAUSA was held in January 1986 in Tel Aviv; speakers included Bo Hi Pak and Arnaud de Borchgrave, the publisher of the Washington Times. [24]

These were neither incidental nor marginal connections. CIS served both as an intelligence conduit from "private" sources such as the American Security Council and CAUSA, and as an informal employment agency which provided analysts to the Reagan administration at the inception of Washington's murderous counter-insurgency wars in Central America.

As CIS secretary, Larry Pratt was a well-placed "asset" in his own right, serving as a link between the public policy/research arms of the organization, the interventionist wing of the theocratic Christian Right and as an "informal" public relations spokesperson for Washington's Central American agenda via Gun Owners of America and the CIS-affiliated, North-South Institute.

But in order to fully appreciate the sinister nature of the Council for Inter-American Security, Pratt's involvement and his broader links to international fascist networks, there is another organization, also little explored by "mainstream" media, which deserves our attention, the World Anti-Communist League.

[back to top]

CIS and WACL: A Marriage Made in Hell

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https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Larry_Pratt

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https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2011/06/20/fox-hosts-official-from-extremist-linked-pro-gu/180720

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Fox & Friends hosted John Velleco, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America (GOA),* to argue in favor of concealed weapons laws by dubiously claiming that "crime goes down" when "a state tries to relax concealed carry laws." But according to PolitiFact, crime data shows no "straight-line correlation between states with 'right to carry' laws and crime rates"; moreover, GOA's executive director has been tied to militia groups, white supremacists, and has a history of extremist rhetoric.*

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Velleco Claims "Crime Goes Down" When "A State Tries To Relax Concealed Carry Laws"

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Velleco: Concealed Weapon Carry Laws Makes "Crime [Go] Down." On the June 20 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Velleco claimed: "Every time a state tries to relax concealed carry laws, we hear the Chicken Littles of the world saying that blood is going to flow in the streets, and it just doesn't happen. In fact, crime doesn't go up, crime goes down, because criminals don't know who is carrying a firearm to defend themselves." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 6/20/11]

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In Fact, Experts Argue There Is No Link Between Right-To-Carry Laws And Decrease In Crime

PolitiFact Called Claim That Right-To-Carry Laws Reduce Violent Crime "False." In a February 16 post, PolitiFact evaluated the claim that "violent crime in jurisdictions that recognize the Right to Carry is lower than in areas that prevent it." PolitiFact determined that the claim was "false." From PolitiFact:

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We found the the [sic] states without "right to carry" were spread out across the list, not bunched together at the top. The District of Columbia, which has strict gun control laws, ranked highest for violent crime. The other states ranked as follows: Delaware, No. 5; Maryland, No. 10; Illinois, No. 13; California, No. 17; Massachusetts, No. 18; New York, No. 24; New Jersey, No. 30; Hawaii, No. 36; Wisconsin, No. 39, and Rhode Island, No. 42.

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We also couldn't help noticing that some states with laws that favor gun ownership placed at different points along the list. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence rates state gun laws, so we looked at the 14 states that had the weakest gun laws. Here, we also saw a wide variation in where the states ranked in terms of violent crime: Alaska, No. 6; Louisiana, No. 7; New Mexico, No. 8; Arkansas, No. 11; Oklahoma, No. 12; Missouri, No. 15; Arizona, No. 21; West Virginia, No. 32; Kentucky, No. 38; Montana, No. 41; Idaho, No. 44; Utah, No. 47; North Dakota, No. 48, and South Dakota, No. 49.

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So using the 2009 data, we don't see any evidence that state gun laws correlate with violent crime rates one way or the other, at least not "across the board" as LaPierre suggested in his speech.

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[...]

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We do not find that current crime statistics support this point. Some academics have said trends over time show that "right to carry" laws lower crime rates, but that argument is contested. There's certainly not straight-line correlation between states with "right to carry" laws and crime rates. LaPierre made it sound like the data clearly supported his view. They don't. We rate his statement False. [PolitiFact, 2/16/11]

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John Donohue: Empirical Evidence Refutes Claim That Right-To-Carry Laws Would Reduce Crime. In a New York Times post, Stanford Law professor John Donohue wrote: "[W]hile some early studies by John Lott and others suggested that state policies providing greater freedom to carry guns would reduce crime, empirical evidence refutes this view. Wise gun policy and individual consumer choice to carry weapons involves weighing competing probabilities." [New York Times, 1/11/11]

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Donohue's 2002 Study Concludes: "No Longer Can Any Plausible Case Be Made On Statistical Grounds That Shall-Issue Laws Are Likely To Reduce Crime For All Or Even Most States." In a 2002 study titled, "Shooting Down the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis," Donohue and Yale Law professor Ian Ayres concluded, "No longer can any plausible case be made on statistical grounds that shall-issue laws are likely to reduce crime for all or even most states." Further, Donohue and Ayres stated:

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While we do not want to overstate the strength of the conclusions that can be drawn from the extremely variable results emerging from the statistical analysis, if anything, there is stronger evidence for the conclusion that these laws increase crime than there is for the conclusion that they decrease it. [Donohue and Ayres, "Shooting Down the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis," 10/02]

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NRC Committee: "Not Possible To Determine ... Causal Link Between The Passage Of Right-To-Carry Laws And Crime Rates." In 2004, a National Research Council (NRC) committee released a report on right-to-carry laws and their effects on crime. The committee concluded that "it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates." From the committee's conclusion:

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The literature on right-to-carry laws summarized in this chapter has obtained conflicting estimates of their effects on crime. Estimation results have proven to be very sensitive to the precise specification used and time period examined. The initial model specification, when extended to new data, does not show evidence that passage of right-to-carry laws reduces crime. The estimated effects are highly sensitive to seemingly minor changes in the model specification and control variables. No link between right-to-carry laws and changes in crime is apparent in the raw data, even in the initial sample; it is only once numerous covariates are included that the negative results in the early data emerge. While the trend models show a reduction in the crime growth rate following the adoption of right-to-carry laws, these trend reductions occur long after law adoption, casting serious doubt on the proposition that the trend models estimated in the literature reflect effects of the law change. Finally, some of the point estimates are imprecise. Thus, the committee concludes that with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates. [Firearms and Violence, Committee on Law and Justice, National Research Council, 2004]

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2010 Study Concurs With NRC Committee's Conclusion But Added That Panel Data Suggests "RTC Laws Likely Increase The Rate Of Aggravated Assault." In a June 2010 study re-examining the NRC committee's analysis on the effects that right-to-carry laws on crime rates, Donohue and professors Abhay Aneja and Alex Zhang stated that "we agree with the [NRC] committee's cautious final judgment on the effects of RTC laws," but that "[i]f one had to make judgments based on panel data models of the type used in the NRC report, one would have to conclude that RTC laws likely increase the rate of aggravated assault." From the conclusion:

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Finally, despite our belief that the NRC's analysis was imperfect in certain ways, we agree with the committee's cautious final judgment on the effects of RTC laws: "with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates. Our results here further underscore the sensitivity of guns-crime estimates to modeling decisions.If one had to make judgments based on panel data models of the type used in the NRC report, one would have to conclude that RTC laws likely increase the rate of aggravated assault. Further research will be needed to see if this conclusion survives as more data and better methodologies are employed to estimate the impact of RTC laws on crime. ["The Impact of Right-to-Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy," 6/29/10]

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Study Finds "Weak Evidence That RTC Laws Increase Or Decrease The Number Of Public Mass Shootings." A November 2002 study by criminologists Grant Duwe, Tomislav Kovandzic, and Carlisle Moody analyzing 25 right-to-carry laws found "virtually no suport for the hypothesis that the laws increase or reduce the number of mass public shootings." ["The Impact of Right-To-Carry Concealed Firearm Laws on Mass Public Shootings," 11/02]

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Criminologist Citing 2002 Study: "[T]he Effects Of RTC Laws Are Negligible, Neither Encouraging Nor Discouraging Mass Murder." In a January 12 post on The Boston Globe's Crime & Punishment blog, James Alan Fox, professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern University, cited the 2002 study by Duwe, Kovandzic, and Moody and wrote:

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[T]he effectiveness of concealed-carry laws in deterring mass murder is an empirical question, one that has been examined thoroughly by criminologists Grant Duwe, Tomislav Kovandzic, and Carlisle Moody. Using fairly sophisticated analytic techniques, they assessed the extent to which enactment of various RTC laws in 25 states across the country were associated with any change in the incidence of public mass shootings in the years from 1977 through 1999. Based on their estimates, the effects of RTC laws are negligible, neither encouraging nor discouraging mass murder. [Boston Globe's Crime & Punishment blog, 1/12/11]

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Daniel Webster: "Permissive Right-To-Carry Laws Could Make It Harder For Police ... To Deter Gun Violence." In a New York Times post, Daniel Webster, co-director at the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, wrote:

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[L]aws prohibiting gun-carrying are an important tool for police to use to suppress the practice in so-called hot spots for shootings. Police units focused on deterring illegal gun-carrying have been the most consistently effective approach to reducing gun violence. Permissive right-to-carry laws could make it harder for police to use this law to deter gun violence. [The New York Times, 1/11/11]

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Webster: "Permissive Right-To-Carry Laws" May Actually Increase Crime. In his New York Times post, Webster also wrote:

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When mass shootings occur, many think that, if only one of the citizens at the site had access to a firearm, they could have taken the gunman out and saved lives. That's an odd argument to make in a state where probably more people carry guns than in any other state.

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While you can find an example to prove this point, it begs the question of whether it's sound public policy to allow anyone who is not prohibited by our weak gun laws to carry firearms anywhere they choose. It is not clear that permissive right-to-carry laws haven't increased violence. There have been numerous studies of these laws, many of which have substantial flaws. The best study was done by Ian Ayres and John Donohue, law professors at Yale and Stanford, respectively, and disaggregates the effects for each state and type of crime.

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The estimates from their best models show right-to-carry laws associated with increases in 7 of 9 crimes studied, with the largest effect (+9 percent) being the crime many researchers would have hypothesized would increase -- aggravated assaults. [The New York Times, 1/11/11]

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GOA's Executive Director Was Allegedly Tied To "Professional Racists," Militias

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GOA's Executive Director Was Reportedly Fired From Buchanan's '96 Campaign For Ties To "Professional Racists." According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), GOA's executive director, Larry Pratt, "hit the headlines in a big way when his associations with [white supremacist minister Pete] Peters and other professional racists were revealed, convincing arch-conservative Pat Buchanan to eject him as a national co-chair of Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign." [SPLC, Summer 2001]

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Pratt Was A Contributing Editor To Anti-Semitic Group's Periodical. The SPLC further reported that "[t]he same year, it emerged that Pratt was a contributing editor to a periodical of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America, and that his GOA had donated money to a white supremacist attorney's group." [SPLC, Summer 2001]

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Pratt Reportedly "Advocated" For "Militias In The United States." From the SPLC:

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In 1990, Pratt wrote a book, Armed People Victorious, based on his study of "citizen defense patrols" used in Guatemala and the Philippines against Communist rebels -- patrols that came to be known as death squads for their murderous brutality.

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Picturing these groups in rosy terms, Pratt advocated similar militias in the United States -- an idea that finally caught on when he was invited for a meeting of 160 extremists, including many famous white supremacists, in 1992.

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It was at that meeting, hosted in Colorado by white supremacist minister Pete Peters, that the contours of the militia movement were laid out. [SPLC, Summer 2001]

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GOA's Pratt: "All The Gun Laws That Are On The Books Are Bad Laws "

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Pratt: "All The Gun Laws That Are On The Books Are Bad Laws." From an interview with John Birch Society president John McManus:

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McMANUS: Are there any bad laws currently on the books that you're worrying about?

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PRATT: Well, all the gun laws that are on the books are bad laws. [The John Birch Society, Self Defense with GOA Larry Pratt, uploaded 5/7/08]

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Pratt: Laws Prohibiting Gun Ownership By The Dangerously Mentally Ill Are "Dictatorial," Like "Nazi Germany."

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On the September 24, 2009, edition of MSNBC's The Ed Show, Pratt told host Ed Schultz that legislation denying firearms to the dangerously mentally ill was "a dictatorial power" which "they use[d] ... in Nazi Germany." From MSNBC's The Ed Show:

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SCHULTZ: I do believe psychiatrists and psychologists should have the power to deny -- you know, you shouldn't own a firearm. I mean, I do believe that.

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PRATT: You know, that's a dictatorial power --

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SCHULTZ: No, it's not.

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PRATT: They used that in Nazi Germany. They used that in [the] Soviet Union. They use it in Cuba. That doesn't have any place in America. [MSNBC, The Ed Show, 9/24/09 via Political Correction]

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Velleco Suggested That Gun Owners Should Be Able To Carry Guns At Presidential Events. From the August 19, 2009, edition of MSNBC's Hardball:

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CHRIS MATTHEWS (host): Suppose the president has a town hall meeting with 10,000 people at some high school gym or college field house. Should everybody in the place be allowed to have a gun? Everybody in the place that the president's speaking.

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VELLECO: If it's legal to carry guns in that location, absolutely.

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MATTHEWS: So, it's fine with you?

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VELLECO: Fine with -- yeah. [MSNBC's Hardball, 8/19/09 via Crooks and Liars]

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GOA Has Opposed Background Checks And Even The Act Of Showing Identification. At the April 19, 2010, Open Carry March, Pratt told the audience that people "[s]houldn't have to have any ID to buy a gun anywhere. That's something we're going to be taking care of." [Open Carry March, 4/19/10 via Political Correction]

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2016

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https://www.thetrace.org/2015/12/gun-owners-of-america-larry-pratt/

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Since GOA’s establishment, its public face has been Larry Pratt, now 73. An unimposing figure with a grandfatherly air, his policy beliefs and worldview are grounded in the laws and tenets of the Bible, which he believes should hold sway over the United States. “The right to keep and bear arms will be important until Christ comes again, because until then, people will be sinful,” :{he wrote in a 1983 essay:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: called “Tools of Biblical Resistance.” “Crooks will steal, and murderers will kill, and government officials will tyrannize.”

GOA claims 300,000 members — making it :{a fraction:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: of the size of the NRA — with an annual revenue stream of roughly $2 million. Still, over the years it has :{managed to influence policy:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:. In the 1980s, it worked closely with lawmakers to pass the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA), which outlawed the creation of a national gun registry. Over 20 years later, in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, it helped kill the Manchin-Toomey proposal to expand background checks. GOA spread literature that alleged, erroneously, that the act would revise FOPA and put in place a federal registry. The campaign proved successful. Previously, the NRA had offered “qualified support” for the Manchin-Toomey bill, but as fears of a federal registry gained ground, it withdrew its approval.

It was a huge victory for Pratt, who is an expert at fanning paranoia. For decades, he has found common cause with white supremacists and the Christian Identity movement, speaking at their events about the need to keep the evils of government at bay with firearms. In the early ’90s, he became a key figure in the country’s burgeoning militia movement, which was sparked after federal marshals got into a shootout with an alleged neo-Nazi in Idaho’s Ruby Ridge mountains. Pratt joined leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations at an event in Colorado to discuss the standoff. According to a Rolling Stone article from the time, his appearance signaled that the “gun lobby would be at the center of a web of right-wing warriors.” :{The Southern Poverty Law Center:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: considers him to be a dangerous “extremist.”

Most recently, Pratt has :{become the “youth pastor”:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:of the campus-carry movement. He travels to universities around the country, calling on students to rise up and fight for the right to bring their firearms on to college grounds. The effort :{came to fruition in Texas:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: this summer, when Governor Greg Abbott signed campus-carry into law, nine years after Pratt articulated the guiding philosophy of his cause. “If we lose the hearts and minds of the next generation,” he said, “we will never win the ultimate battle to regain our lost rights.”

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rational wiki

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Larry "Prat" Pratt is a wingnut Republican pundit who also happens to be the founder and/or head of several organizations, such as Gun Owners of America (a "gun rights" advocacy group that makes the NRA look sane like radical gun-confiscating pinko commies in comparison), English First (an English-only movement organization), U.S. Border Control (an anti-immigrationgroup with a name intended to cause confusion with the U.S. Border Patrol, the federal law enforcement agency that actually patrols the border), and Committee to Protect the Family (an anti-abortion and anti-same-sex marriage organization).

He was briefly a member of Pat Buchanan's Constitution Party campaign staff during the 1996 U.S. Presidential Election ^[1].

Larry Pratt also has been affiliated with the Libertarian Party, despite being a dominionist and thus, as Ed Brayton said, the exact opposite of someone who believes in individual liberty.

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The Second Amendment

Larry Pratt is the founder of the radical libertarian gun rights organization Gun Owners of America, which he organized because he thought the National Rifle Association wasn't taking a strong enough position on gun control. Therefore, it is unsurprising that he has made many questionable statements about guns as well.

For example, in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Pratt called for the abolition of gun-free zones, which he said "are like magnets for the monsters in our society." He believes that the more guns are allowed in more places, the safer everyone will be, and went on to say that gun control advocates "have the blood of little children on their hands."^[2][3]

He justifies his beliefs about guns and self-defense with the Bible, particularly Exodus 22:2 (NIV): "If a thief is caught breaking in at night and is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed."^[4]

Pratt also opposes penalties for "straw purchases," or sales to people who intend to sell or give the weapon to someone else who cannot pass a background check, saying, "There would not be straw purchasing if there were no limits on who can carry a gun."^[5]

*Immigration Reform[edit***]

Larry Pratt believes that immigration reform is a plot to “bring in a gazillion Democrat voters” who are "probably just sitting around drawing welfare and voting Democrat." He went on to claim that most of those people are illiterate in their own Spanish language (just in case you needed any clarification that he's railing against Hispanic immigrants here), while he supposedly speaks fluent Spanish.^[6]

*Conspiracy Theories[edit***]

On an episode of VCY America's "Crosstalk", Pratt claimed that the Left was responsible for the 2012 Benghazi attack because of its "profound dislike of self-defense [...] either personally or as a matter of national self-defense." In that same episode, he also insinuated that the FEMA Corps could be used in the future to persecute political opponents, and insisted that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will help the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives find "reason[s] to disenfranchise gun owners" (presumably by finding them too unstable to be trusted with a gun). However, in reality, the Affordable Care Act explicitly forbids discrimination against gun owners and any kind of national gun owner registry, and the law screening out people with mental illness from gun purchases through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System was passed by President Bush. ^[7][8]

*Racist Connections[edit***]

Pratt has served with several anti-Semitic and white power organizations. Basically, if it's conservative, Christian and Caucasian, he wants to be a part of it. He has attended numerous rallies in the past with some of the most virulent anti-Semites and racists today. The Center for Public Integrity released a report crediting him with "introducing the concept of militias to the right-wing underground."

In 1992, Pratt advocated the start to a militia movement in a meeting hosted by Christian Identity minister Pete Peters.

In 1996, it was revealed that Pratt was a contributor to the anti-Semitic organization United Sovereigns of America, and that the Gun Owners of America had given donations to a known white supremacist group.^[9]

According to Kenneth Stern, the American Jewish Committee's expert on anti-Semitism and hate groups and author of the book "A Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia movement and the Politics of Hate", Pratt "bridges the gap between the far right, anti-Semites, racists, and members of Congress."^[10]

*Possibility of Terrorism[edit***]

In 1990, Pratt wrote a book called Armed People Victorious, which advocated for the establishment of citizens' militias similar to those used in Guatemala and the Philippines against communist rebels. Said Guatemalan and Filipino militias later became known as "death squads." But hey, maybe that's what he was going for.^[11]

In an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball, Pratt said that gun owners should be prepared "to take on our government" because "this government has gone overboard," adding that it is time to take action "when elections are stolen." Oddly enough, Pratt expressed no such objection to stolen elections in 2000.

*References[edit***]

:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ The New York Times
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ The Huffington Post, Gun Owners Of America Steals Newtown Gun Debate Spotlight While NRA Hides
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Salon, Gun Owners of America: Gun control advocates “have the blood of little children on their hands”
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Sunday Tribune, US extremist calls for NI Protestants to be armed
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ The New York Times
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Right Wing Watch, Pratt: Reform Will Grant Citizenship to a 'Gazillion' Immigrants Who'll Be 'Sitting Around Drawing Welfare and Voting Democrat'
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Right Wing Watch, Larry Pratt: Obamacare Will 'Take Away Your Guns'
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Los Angeles Times, Bush signs bill geared to toughen screening of gun buyers
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Southern Poverty Law Center, False Patriots: Profiles of 40 antigovernment leaders: Eight lanes out: Larry Pratt
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ JWeekly.com, News Analysis: Buchanan dogged by links to extremists
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https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/larry-pratt

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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. A pivotal figure in the rise of right-wing militia, or “Patriot,” groups, he 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. He believes that white Christians must arm themselves for self-protection in the inevitable social implosions and riots that are soon to come.

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“We are looking at a major assault on the right to keep and bear arms, and it is kind of reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, where they used doctors as part of their torture routines and got people sent to the camps for improvement of their mental health."

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:{:{:{*‘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."

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:{:{:{*"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."

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:{:{:{*Background:

During his nearly 40-year tenure as executive director of Gun Owners of America (GOA), Larry Pratt has positioned the organization as a more radical alternative to the National Rifle Association (NRA). This radicalism is reflected not only by an absolute "no-compromise" stance on gun control, but also by Pratt's ties to the militia movement, white supremacist organizations, and Christian theocrats. Nonetheless, with the support of GOA's 300,000 members and a Beltway lobbying effort, Pratt continues to be heeded by some in Congress and the national media.}:}:}:*

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.

Nevertheless, if it restricted itself to the politics of gun control, GOA would be just another right-wing voice inflaming Second Amendment paranoia. But Pratt has extended the issues far beyond hunting and self-defense, injecting radical religion and racist politics demagoguery into the debate.

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.

This was not a one-time dalliance with radical racist politics for Pratt. The following year, in 1993, he spoke at the “Jubilee Jubilation” in Sacramento, Calif., an event sponsored by the Christian Identity newspaper Jubilee, where he again shared the stage with Louis Beam, a key architect of the revolutionary doctrine of “leaderless resistance” that today is embraced by many terrorists of the extreme right. Pratt was also a frequent guest on Pete Peters' talk show.

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."

An “anti-Christian" government such as the United States cannot be counted on to protect the population, and by restricting gun ownership it is "trying to enslave the citizenry," Pratt reasons. He is fond of citing a biblical passage from the Book of Samuel as justification for a heavily armed American populace. As the story goes, only two people in Israel had swords, because the Philistines had banned them. After their empty-handed soldiers lost a battle, God permitted the Israelites to rearm and win a rematch.

“Today, the same goals of the Philistines would be carried out by an oppressor who would ban gunsmiths from the land. The sword of today is the handgun, rifle or shotgun,” Pratt wrote in a 1999 GOA column. “The sword control of the Philistines is today’s gun control of those governments that do not trust their people with guns.”

"The Old Testament also tells us a great deal about the positive relationship between righteousness, which exalts a nation, and self defense," Pratt continued. "It makes clear that in times of national rebellion against the Lord God, the rulers of the nation will reflect the spiritual degradation of the people and the result is a denial of God's commandments, an arrogance of officialdom, disarmament and oppression."

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 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.

"I don't think there's anything stretching to say that," Pratt replied. "I think there are people that really want to bring violence about, because they see that as the engine of social change. That's exactly the target for the Alinskyites [a reference to social reformer Saul Alinsky]. And I think they must figure that they've got their guy in power, and they will then have at least some of the agencies of the police powers of the state at their back, and this is the time to go for it."

Defending American society from the "arrogance of officialdom, disarmament and oppression" is a busy job. When he's not hobnobbing with avowed racists and theocrats, Pratt makes regular mass media appearances, often in the wake of a mass shooting, or on the anniversary of one. Dour, contentious, and evasive, he argues against any form of gun control.

He suggested to CNN's Wolf Blitzer that instead of background checks for mentally ill people seeking to buy guns, those people should simply be institutionalized. CNN host Piers Morgan confronted Pratt with retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal's call for restrictions on assault-style weapons. Pratt was unmoved, replying that "the general and his troops are not going to be there to protect the average American, the military nor the police after social order implodes, after a hurricane, after an earthquake, during riots." Appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball" with host Chris Matthews, Pratt said teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn., where a mass murder took place in late 2012, should have been armed. On "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace, Pratt argued for because they are too restrictive.

Pratt saves his most inflammatory rhetoric for interviews with right-wing media figures such as, 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 ."**:(style="background-image:url("):}::(style="background-image:url("):}::(style="background-image:url("/maxresdefault.jpg)."

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.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-zealot-larry-pratt-is-the-gun-lobbys-secret-weapon-20140714

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The Zealot: Larry Pratt Is the Gun Lobby's Secret Weapon

How the fear-mongering, paranoia-stoking executive director of the Gun Owners of America remade the modern gun movement

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Larry Pratt Christopher Gregory/"New York Times"/Redux

By Alexander Zaitchik

July 14, 2014

ng the winter weeks after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, the gun lobbyist Larry Pratt made the short drive from his offices in Springfield, Virginia, to the Arlington headquarters of the Leadership Institute, a training center for young conservatives. Pratt and the Institute's founder, Morton Blackwell, share a history in conservative activism going back four decades, and Pratt had spoken there many times, providing legislative updates on the politics of guns. Today, there seemed to be a jauntiness to the oddly boyish-faced 71-year old, who'd found himself at the center of a national media story just beginning to fade. He opened with a joke.

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"Piers Morgan sends his regrets he won't be able to attend," Pratt deadpanned.

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The audience chuckled at the reference. On December 18th, 2012, four days after Adam Lanza's killing spree, the CNN host had invited Pratt to debate gun control, as most major networks have over the years. When Pratt stated that gun-free school zones — and, by extension, gun control advocates like Piers Morgan — were to blame for the tragedy in Newtown, Morgan stuttered and seethed. "You're an unbelievably stupid man, aren't you?" said the host.

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America's Gun Violence Epidemic

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Pratt's critics have called him many things over the years: extreme, radical, pernicious, creepy, dogged, effective. But no one who's studied his multi-faceted career could describe him as stupid. On CNN, Pratt was smart enough not to tell Piers Morgan what he really thinks about the Second Amendment. Because what he really thinks resonates deeply with the theocratic tenets of Christian Reconstructionism, which holds that American government should be ordered according to events and dictates found in the Old and New Testaments. Nor is Pratt so stupid as to use his regular access to mainstream media to promote the "active measures" he believes American gun owners will one day be forced to unleash on a secular federal government. In his 1999 essay, "What does the Bible Say About Gun Control?" Pratt writes, "If Christ is not our King, we shall have a dictator to rule over us, just as Samuel warned."

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Pratt doesn't talk like this when being interviewed by The New York Times or answering questions on C-SPAN. Instead, he uses the more familiar language of ensuring public safety and respecting constitutional rights. He has employed this two-track communications operation with admirable efficacy and consistency since launching Gun Owners of America as the Beltway's first "no-compromise" gun-rights lobbying group in 1976. Over 40 years, Pratt has blazed the path and built the model for a gun-rights movement that has transformed the landscape of American gun politics.

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Today, Pratt, who declined to be interviewed for this piece, holds the power to derail and delay gun legislation enjoying broad public support, and quickly inject falsehoods and amplify paranoia among a growing network of gun activists. With the rise of the Tea Party scene, Pratt has discovered new constituencies and new platforms for spreading his message of a Biblically mandated rollback of all gun regulation. He has also found new champions in the forms of his favorite senators: Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. He believes this November offers a chance to further grow the "Second Amendment Absolutist" bloc in Congress.

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Larry Pratt addresses about 500 demonstrators during a rally in support of the Second Amendment in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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"Look forward to 2014 as a time when we get involved as never before," Pratt told an audience at the Leadership Institute. "Look for those candidates that deserve our support. The Rand Pauls. The Ted Cruzes. The Steve Stockmans of the House and try to multiply their number. The RINOS [Republicans in Name Only] need to be humiliated. They need to be driven out of public life."

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By Pratt's design, today's gun movement has little room for RINOS, but accommodates extremists and sometimes adopts their language. As the director of an organization claiming 300,000 members, Pratt understands the gun movement's role as that of a heavily armed guard, holding a cautionary gun to the head of America's would-be dictators.

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"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."

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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."

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This is the language found etched along the gun-movement's aqueduct into the dark crosscurrents of the militia movement and the radical right. It is written in Pratt's voice, because he has personally overseen engineering and construction of this aqueduct while building the larger gun-rights movement. This movement, considered as a whole, is not as conservative as Pratt. It is increasingly flavored with Libertarian ideas and language, building on outreach efforts designed to deflect attention from socially conservative politics that command ever fewer Americans. But it is no less zealous than Pratt on the question of gun reform. The gun-rights movement is distinct from, and often at odds with, the official gun "lobby" that is dominated by the National Rifle Association and its industry allies. The NRA remains the 500-pound gorilla of gun politics, with a budget and membership that dwarfs all other gun groups combined. But it is now surrounded, most heavily on its right, by a growing cluster of so-called "Second Amendment Absolutist" groups, from influential state-level activist networks like the Arizona Citizens Defense League, to ascendant fundraising dynamos like Dudley Brown's National Association for Gun Rights.

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Among the most pedigreed of these purist outfits is Pratt's Gun Owners of America.

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"The NRA describes itself as a religion, and Larry Pratt is the snake handler," says Tom Diaz, a former analyst at the Violence Policy Center, a Washington-based gun control group, and author of two books on the gun lobby. "The NRA debates using arguable premises of the American system: What is the meaning of the Second Amendment, of self-defense? Pratt unconnects from all that, and appeals to the least informed, most paranoid people." In parallel with his frequent national media appearances, Pratt aggressively pursues smaller radio audiences to peddle conspiracy theories and recycled John Birch Society propaganda from the 1960s. In recent years he has argued that the Aurora, Colorado, mass shooting was an inside job and that the Justice Department was pursuing charges against George Zimmerman to stir up racial animosity, trigger social chaos, and "build their own communist society."

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As the gun-rights movement grows into and with the new century, Pratt is seen as a dinosaur, yet one who still commands respect. "Larry's a hardcore throwback and a bit of a weirdo — a black helicopter and Trilateral Commission kind of guy — but he has a certain brand and a name he's been around forever," says a staffer in the office of a veteran GOP senator. Indeed, few figures have had a greater impact in the development of the pro-gun movement. Purist groups created on his "no compromise" model now lead the charges in the courts and the states to block new gun-control legislation and chip away at those that exist. Most make the NRA look moderate by comparison.

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"The NRA is concerned about its right flank on purity from people like Larry," says Richard Feldman, a former gun industry lobbyist and president of the Independent Firearms Owners Association. "He has said things I thought were crazy at the time, but turned out to be right. Activists respect him for getting things done."Adds Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center: "When NRA members stamp their feet over some rumored compromise, Pratt's who they go to. When he says make the calls, the calls are made, and it has influence on the Hill."

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Larry Pratt speaks at a pro-gun rally organised by the 'Restore the Constitution' movement in Virginia park near Washington D.C. Sipa via AP Images

This influence has only recently caught the attention of media that have generally focused on the NRA and ignored the growth of groups like Pratt's. When Gun Owners of America helped lead the gun-rights charge against an expansion of background checks, the New York Times discovered this "influential force" capable of both "freezing" and "empowering" senators. This influence may help to explain the reluctance of elected officials and their staffs to discuss Pratt's lobbying operation. When contacted, several current and former members of Congress and congressional staffers from both parties declined to comment on the experience of being on the receiving end of GOA's lobbying fire. The list of those who shied away from talking included nine senators and congressman, such as Republican Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, as well as Democratic Senators Jon Tester and Mark Begich.

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Pratt enters his fifth decade of gun activism with ambitious plans for this influence. At an age when many lobbyists are considering retiring, Pratt is working through GOA's PAC, his membership, his allies, and a small team of fellow lobbyists to do what he's been trying to do since the 1970s: defeat any Republican who does not share his absolutist understanding of Second Amendment freedom. And it is nothing if not absolute: GOA agitates against background checks, waiting periods, and fines for straw purchases (guns purchased legally for resale on the black market).

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In his crusade to rollback every gun law on the books, Pratt likes his allies unalloyed with records and habits of compromise. Many of Pratt's current targets in the primaries enjoy high or perfect ratings from the NRA. Some of them, like Mitch McConnell, have long enjoyed "B" or higher grades from the GOA. But only perfect grades like Rand Paul's "A+" are truly acceptable in Pratt's purist world. Unlike the NRA's system, GOA counts votes on any bill that tangentially touches on gun rights as a "gun vote." Sometimes no vote is required at all to arouse Pratt's displeasure, merely inaction. In explaining GOA's support for Mitch McConnell's challenger, Matt Bevin, the group cites the senator's failure to vigorously oppose The Affordable Care Act.

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"Obamacare is allowing the medical profession to use information that people give their doctor against them, to take their guns," says Tim Macy, vice chairman of GOA. "McConnell hasn't stopped it so far, and he's been in a position to help stop it."

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For much of today's gun movement, the NRA's more myopic rating system has never had much credibility. To understand why, it's necessary to go back in time to the era of GOA's founding, and imagine that the NRA has announced plans to sell it's D.C.-area offices, abandon politics, move to New Mexico, and re-open as a crunchy nonprofit devoted to conservation and hiking.

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What sounds like a piece of alternate-history science fiction is the starting point for understanding the rise of Larry Pratt and the current configuration of forces in the gun debate.

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II. Genesis

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Among the many social convulsions of the 1960s was a public opinion turn in favor of gun control. The legislative expression of this turn, the 1968 Gun Control Act, established today's regulatory framework for firearms, including a federal licensing system for dealers. It was the first major gun law since Prohibition-era violence and the advent of the "getaway car" transformed crime and led to the 1934 National Firearms Act, which brought machine guns, short-barreled rifles, and silencers under strict government regulation. Another federal law soon followed: the National Firearms Act of 1938, which required the licensing of interstate gun dealers.

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In both the thirties and 1968, the NRA either accepted or collaborated in the writing and passing of the law. For the group's hardline members, this was one compromise too many. Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Gun Control Act deepened a longstanding fissure inside the organization that widened into a full breach five years later. In 1973, the NRA board put its finger in the air and determined that its future depended on pivoting away from guns and toward conservation and outdoor sports. Plans were put in motion to sell its D.C. headquarters, relocate to Colorado Springs, and build a "National Outdoor Center" in New Mexico, where backpacking, hiking and wilderness survival classes would be taught alongside shooting sports. To help figure out how to finance the overhaul, the NRA commissioned the liberal New York consultant Harold Oram, whose clients included Greenpeace, McGovern for President, and the New York Civil Liberties Union. Oram's report, issued in the summer of 1976, concluded that raising the $30 million needed for the NRA's Outdoor Center would require de-emphasizing its past opposition to gun control and avoiding all mention of gun politics in NRA publications. If it renounced its past and promised to stay out of politics, Oram advised, foundations like Rockefeller, then and now a major source of non-profit grants, could be counted on for financing.

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During the years of the NRA's slow careen left in search of Rockefeller money, Larry Pratt was making a name for himself in a movement where the Rockefeller name was synonymous with liberal Republicanism — and nearly synonymous with the Devil himself. In 1970, the 28-year-old Pratt became executive director of the American Conservative Union, founded six years prior by William F. Buckley to carry forward the flame of Barry Goldwater's failed presidential campaign. It was in this capacity that Pratt attended the 1972 GOP Republican Convention in Miami Beach, where he joined fellow conservatives in battles over Nixon's reelection platform. In Miami, Pratt forged a friendship with another young religious conservative on the make, Paul Weyrich. The two men were so similar, politically and physically, that they looked like a mirror image when they were talking to each other. At the time, Weyrich was raising funds for what would soon become the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. One of the men in Weyrich's growing network was *H.L. Richardson, a frustrated NRA board member, California State Senator, and member of the far-right John Birch Society. Weyrich introduced Pratt and Richardson, who became fast friends.*

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Larry Pratt South Jersey Times /Landov

In 1975, Richardson founded Gun Owners of America on the model of his first group, Gun Owners of California, established earlier that year to (successfully) oppose a state handgun ban and (less successfully) the extension of ownership waiting periods from five to 15 days. That year also saw the establishment of one of the country's first national gun control groups, the National Council to Control Handguns. Richardson wanted a full-time lobbyist near Washington and tapped Pratt to lead the group's Northern Virginia office. In the fight against gun control, GOA would pick up the slack created by NRA drift.

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"In 1975, we were the first folks on the street looking at races and the lobbying side," says Tim Macy, GOA's vice chairman. "There was a lot of talk about gun legislation, in California and nationally. When we started, the NRA did not have a political arm."

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Pratt had grown up in suburban Indiana and was relatively new to guns when he took GOA's helm. He'd purchased his first firearm during the 1968 riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King. "There were some racial difficulties," Pratt later recalled. "I heard on the radio that the police weren't sure they could control the rioters coming north on 16th Street, so I went out and bought a shotgun."

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In his adult arrival to the world of guns, Pratt resembled another rising star emerging from the 1960s conservative firmament, one who would go on to rival Pratt's influence in national gun politics. In 1971, Alan Gottlieb, a 24-year-old organizer for Young Americans for Freedom (another Buckley-founded group) founded the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Gottlieb nurtured the group on two key resources: mailing lists, and seed money from William Loeb, the conservative publisher of the Manchester Union Leader. Like GOA's founder Richardson, Loeb sat on the NRA board. Sidelined by the liberal majority, he'd spent recent years fuming over the group's direction and was eager to help nurture a new player.

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Loeb and Richardson weren't the only conservatives on the NRA board, but it took a dramatic member insurgency for them to wrest power from the liberals. At the group's 1977 annual meeting in Cincinnati, hundreds of rank-and-file from around the country staged what has become known in gun culture lore as "The Cincinnati Revolt." During a long night of speeches and politicking, the membership voted in a new board drawn from the NRA's fledgling lobbying division, the Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), and changed the by-laws in favor of strong political engagement and tighter member control. By morning, the NRA was controlled by a group of rough-edged conservatives committed to fierce political engagement. The NRA returned to Washington to find it was no longer the only gun game in town. There were now two young upstarts on the scene, Alan Gottlieb and Larry Pratt. Since Gottlieb was based in Seattle, and focused his work on direct mail, education and the courts, this left Pratt and the Gun Owners of America as the leading alternative to the NRA.

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In the many legislative battle to come — handgun bans, armor-piercing bullets, background checks — the NRA would have to contend with GOA and its leader, who was neither temperamentally nor politically inclined to yield to an establishment power that had collaborated on the 1934 and 1968 gun control bills. The NRA may have undergone a radical course correction, but it was still a large institution with a deep sense of entitlement and turf.

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"They've always wanted to be the only kid on the block," says Alan Gottlieb. "The NRA didn't appreciate the growth of a gun rights movement, because a movement is much harder to control. What started in the mid-1970s with my group and GOA has flowered. Now there is all this pressure from the local and state grassroots level that the NRA has to deal with."

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When the NRA re-launched its lobbying machine in 1977, it attempted to accommodate Pratt's presence in D.C. by developing a good-cop, bad-cop routine.

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"Where the NRA played an 'inside game', the GOA was about confrontational politics, more stick, less carrot," says Jeff Knox, director of the Firearms Coalition and a prominent gun journalist whose father, Neal Knox, headed the NRA's lobbying arm between 1978 and 1982. "When dad was at ILA, he saw the GOA as an extension of his tool box. They were useful to him when he could point to a GOA mailing and tell [politicians], 'See, we're being reasonable, and if you don't want us to go there, then you need to deal with us, or you're going to have to deal with them.' The relationship between the NRA and GOA has been a weird one over the years, at different times flourishing and failing. Now [they're] dramatically butting heads." (The NRA did not respond to requests for comment.)

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The most recent clash between GOA and the NRA occurred last winter, over the latter's initial, qualified support for a bipartisan Senate bill that would have shored up the country's background check system, while also relaxing restrictions on interstate gun sales. The gun community was split on the measure sponsored by Senators Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), with even some purist leaders like Gottlieb calling the bill "more gains than anything." But Pratt has never seen victory in anything that required giving an inch — especially an inch involving handing information to the federal government. The GOA sent out mailers claiming, "If your private gun transaction is covered by Toomey-Schumer-Manchin (and virtually all will be) . . . you can assume you will be part of a national gun registry."

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This was a lie. The text of the bill not only reiterated existing laws against the compiling of a national gun database, it went so far as to threaten a jail sentence of "up to 15 years" for breaking them. But the lie worked. There is a consensus that a grassroots backlash against the bill, sparked and sustained by GOA and other purist groups, forced the NRA to drop its support for the bill, helping doom it at the last hour.

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Jeff Knox says the GOA played an important role, but that it was part of a swarm of limited power. "Something like 34 groups came together prior to the April vote on Manchin-Toomey. We did have an impact on NRA's decision. But the bottom line is that all of us could swarm Congress, but if [NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris] Cox walked in and gave a wink and a nod, they'd go against us. NRA is the big dog. They are the ones with the direct, immediate clout, they have the politicians' ears. That's why we have to be members [of NRA] and keep them on the straight and narrow."

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According to Knox, Pratt's biggest strength is being "right on top of what's going on. The GOA is just faster. The NRA is hidebound and not on top of the news cycle at all. It takes them a week to respond to new information. After Newtown they waited too long, then delivered a tepid response. GOA sees the threats that others often miss."

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GOA has used similarly aggressive and dishonest tactics at the state level to defeat bills it does not like. In New Hampshire this winter, a group called Pro-Gun New Hampshireis backing a state bill that would create pathways for restoring gun rights to people disqualified by federal laws related to mental health problems. From his perch in Springfield, Pratt saw the bill as too weak, and attacked. Soon thousands of New Hampshire voters received anti-bill mailers with the words, "See a shrink, lose your guns" printed in red ink on the envelope. The letter attacked local groups supporting the bill as "anti-gun" — a funeral-serious charge in gun circles usually reserved for likes of Chuck Schumer.

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Pro-Gun New Hampshire did not appreciate the epitaph, or Pratt's meddling, which it described as either ignorant or mendacious.

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"Pratt sent out this B.S. propaganda that falsely claimed the bill will disqualify gun buyers if they see a shrink," says the group's vice president, Sam Cohen. "GOA and groups like it want to promote themselves as the premiere guardian of your rights. They feel in a competitive position with each other to be the 'no compromise' group and get members. It's particularly egregious in this case because if you carefully read the law, you know they're wrong."

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III. The Schism

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GOA's role in undermining Manchin-Toomey led to a burst of media attention around the group. The New York Times visited GOA's Springfield office to investigate what it called "the upstart group" that "pushes harder than the N.R.A." A two-sentence biographical paragraph described Pratt as having "long been active in Republican politics," including brief stints as a Delegate in the Virginia legislature and a co-chair of Pat Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign.

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As with Pratt's frequent appearances on cable television over the years, no mention was made by the Times of his fringe political and religious beliefs, or the dark corners of American gun culture and rightwing politics to which these beliefs have led over the years. But these links between mainstream and fringe have long been at the core of his role in rightwing politics.

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"Larry Pratt has served over the years as an extremely important bridge between the more rabid parts of the gun rights movement and the radical right," says Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. "The fact that he's been linked to so many different extremists for so long — including Klansman and Christian Identity leaders — together with his roaming around on the militia circuit for God knows how long — it should put him beyond the pale."

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Larry Pratt speaks at a rally at the state capitol opposing a bill to repeal Michigan's ''stand your ground'' law in Lansing, Michigan. Jim West/ZUMAPRESS.com

Pratt's political journey through America's neo-Nazi and insurrectionist subcultures began in an unlikely setting. It was in the leafy suburbs of northern Virginia, home to some of the country's wealthiest zip codes, that Pratt settled with his wife Priscilla in the 1970s, and where he remains. It is here that he raised four children, and, once upon a time, sought to launch a political career on the other side of the lobbying desk.

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In the months leading up to the 1977 "Revolt in Cincinnati," Pratt, then 34, announced an insurgent candidacy to represent the suburbs of southern Fairfax County in the Virginia House of Delegates. Pratt was part of a slate of conservatives seeking to knock off the moderate Republicans that dominated the local party. Typical of this old guard was five-term Republican Warren E. Barry, who supported a proposed national ban on the cheap revolvers known as "Saturday Night Specials." In announcing his candidacy, The Washington Post described Pratt as "a Washington representative for Gun Owners of America and an Amway distributor."

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Pratt lost the local race, but could comfort himself with a growing national reputation. Early the following year, the Post featured Pratt in a piece on "The New Right Network" that gathered weekly at the Capitol Hill Club to debate strategy and hatch initiatives. Among more than a dozen names listed in the paper's group profile, Pratt is one of the last still active in public life. Sometimes these initiatives impacted gun rights; other times, Pratt found a gun angle to justify using GOA resources. In 1979, he devised a plan, in cooperation with the American Legislative Exchange Council, which he helped found, to throw up constitutional roadblocks to D.C. statehood. "The amendment would bring in two senators who would probably be minority, and would definitely be liberal on gun control," Pratt said.

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Pratt again contested a seat in the House of Delegates in 1979. Boosted by financing from his friend Jerry Falwell, the Lynchburg evangelist, and ties to what the Post called "Joseph Coors' Heritage Foundation," Pratt outspent other candidates nearly two to one. He won in a local GOP tide. But his colleagues in Richmond had never seen his breed of Republican before. "Larry was part of a small group of far-right ideologues who thought it was apostasy to vote for an MLK holiday," remembers Wiley Mitchell, Republican floor leader in the Virginia Senate from 1976 to 1988. "He was strongly opposed to women's rights. He was against everything."

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Pratt proved a divisive and an ineffectual politician. Seven of eight bills Pratt introduced his first year were defeated, including a ban on nude images on motor vehicles. (If passed, the law would have required modifying the Virginia state seal, anticipating by decades the order by Pratt's friend John Ashcroft to cover the breast of a statue in the Department of Justice.) His one victory concerned a housekeeping procedural change. The national media noticed him just once, when he declared a war on bongs and fought to ban the sale of drug paraphernalia in Virginia.

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The bong battle failed to win him many friends. On the eve of losing his reelection bid, a Norfolk Virginian-Pilot poll ranked Pratt "the least effective member of the House of Delegates."

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Elsewhere in the country, more conservative districts than Fairfax were electing social and religious conservatives like Pratt. What's more, GOA, which Pratt claimed at the time was approaching 100,000 members, was in a position to help them. The year Ronald Reagan moved into the White House, Pratt told reporters his PAC was spending almost $1 million annually in support of pro-gun candidates. Closer to home, Pratt's friends were taking over the reigns of government. The August 1981 issue of Life magazine included Pratt among the ten most influential "Young Turks of the Radical Right." The spread featured a photo of Pratt cradling his first gun, the 12 gauge purchased during the 1968 riots, like a baby.

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The defining gun battle of Reagan's first term didn't involve gunshot, but a new breed of armor-piercing bullet. It was a fight that would pit the GOA against the NRA, and in the process illuminate the radical anti-statism at the heart of Pratt's worldview.

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IV. Judgment Days

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In January of 1982, NBC broadcast a prime-time news special titled, "Cop-Killer Bullets." It described the rise of a new breed of handgun bullets made from metals capable of penetrating the common Kevlar police vest. Other media reports followed, and soon an ex-cop and New York congressman named Mario Biaggi had introduced a bill banning a wide range of armor-piercing ammunition. The gun politics fight that followed reveals how the NRA sought to protect its image from purist groups like GOA, while also maintaining its "inside game" on the Hill.

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After Biaggi introduced his bill, the NRA sent out a fundraising letter calling it "backdoor national gun control" and promised to oppose all "inanimate object controls." Behind closed doors, it did the opposite, and began working with Texas Congressman Jack Brooks, a Democrat like Biaggi, to draft another bill that more narrowly targeted handgun ammo, leaving hunting and competitive shooting bullets unaffected (in contrast to the original House bill). The Brooks bill and a sister bill in the Senate, with quiet NRA support, quickly gained bipartisan traction and the backing of the Reagan administration.

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The gun movement was livid. Gottlieb's Citizens Committee, Pratt's Gun Owners of America, and Neal Knox's Firearms Coalition swung into action to derail the compromise bill. They produced mailers and accusations about the "betrayal" of the spirit of Cincinnati. The noise on its right may have been annoying, but it allowed the NRA to play good-cop. In October 1985, the NRA wrote letters to Congressmen reminding them that "Gun Owners of America is generating postcards in opposition to [the House and Senate bills] both of which are supported by the National Rifle Association." In December, a revised version of Biaggi's bill passed the House. In March, it cleared the Senate with 97 votes.

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In casting his lone nay vote, Steve Symms, a conservative Republican senator from Idaho, thanked Pratt by name for alerting him to the law's infidelity to the Second Amendment.

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Pratt had more success influencing the McClure-Volkmer bill, the signature gun-legislation of the Reagan era. Known as the Firearm Owners Protection Act, it relaxed many of the provisions of the 1968 Act regulating the sale and purchase of firearms. It also outlawed the creation of a federal gun registry. The GOA worked closely with Democratic Rep. Harold Volkmer from Missouri on the final version of the Senate bill introduced in early 1985. The final bill voted on the next year was a mixed bag from the perspective of purists. Though it loosened many regulations, it not only codified the 1934 Act's regulations on automatic fire machine guns, it went further and forbade the sale of machine guns produced after 1986.

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Pratt was a delegate to the 1980 Republican convention and knew figures in and around the new administration. But having a conservative in the White House did not lessen his hatred and distrust of the federal government. Early in Reagan's term, Pratt wrote a fundraiser mailing warning against school-trip visits to the ATF building, where children were given honorary badges and told to be law-abiding citizens. The ATF, Pratt wrote, was "encouraging them to spy on their parents and neighbors. Tomorrow while you're at work these kids could be sneaking around your property [trying to] find out more about your hunting rifle or gun collection . . . [then] sending a SECRET report to the government." Nor did Pratt's ties to the administration stop him from turning his fire on individuals working in the Oval Office. When Reagan advisor Mike Deaver blocked the president from accepting a gift from Gun Owners of America in the form of a Colt Peacemaker revolver, Pratt organized a letter-writing campaign. "Friends, President Reagan does not need people like Mike Deaver on his staff," Pratt wrote to GOA members. "I want to flood the White House with postcards over this outrage. Deaver must go!"

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Along with his gun work, Pratt was involved during the Reagan years in a wide range of social and foreign policy issues. He was a member of the Council for National Policy, a think tank bringing together leading conservative figures to generate policy for the new administration. In 1980, he founded the Committee to Protect the Family Foundation, which raised money for anti-gay campaigns and assisted the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue with legal defenses. In 1986, during the depths of the AIDS crisis, Pratt bought ads around the country highlighting a D.C. law forbidding health insurance companies from denying coverage and raising rates for people who test positive for HIV. "We don't think AIDS should have civil rights," Pratt told the Los Angeles Times. "The law is a dangerous and outrageous precedent for other wacko legislators to follow. [Those who support it should be] held accountable for voting to support homosexual privileges."

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The following year, Pratt called for the quarantine of people suffering from AIDS. "Our judges coddle criminals instead of caring for the victims of crime," he wrote in a Family Foundation fundraising letter. "They've chased God out of our schools, defended abortions…and now they are trying to infect us and kill us with strange and horrible diseases."

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Pratt's activities didn't stop at the U.S. border. Throughout the 1980s, Pratt added the last missing element to his extensive portfolio of conservative causes: foreign policy.

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Pratt did more than support Reagan's arms build-up. He assumed a major role in a global operation assisting in the brutal, sometimes extralegal, execution of Reagan's "full-court press" against leftist forces in Central America and beyond. Under the direction of his friend Pat Buchanan, Pratt served as secretary for the privately run Council for Inter-American Security, or CIS. Ostensibly a think tank advocating an "activist" hemispheric foreign policy, the CIS in fact engaged in propaganda and intelligence gathering in the service of U.S. client states.

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Sometimes this made a scramble of Pratt's anti-statist ideology. When it came to the ATF, he saw an American Stasi. But he was happy to help the FBI build files on activists. During Pratt's tenure, the CIS collaborated with the Bureau in tracking undocumented Salvadoran refugees living in the U.S. In his book, Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement, Ross Gelbspan documented the joint CIS-FBI effort to identify and deport political refugees back to El Salvador. The Political Asylum Project of the American Civil Liberties Union estimates that of the 154 people sent back between 1983 and 1984, over 100 were either killed or disappeared.

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The CIS was part of a larger network of rightwing Cold War groups that launched Pratt well beyond his public orbit of religious conservatives focused on guns, taxes, and abortion. One CIS allied organization was the Unification Church-funded World Anti-Communist League (WACL) a notorious Who's Who federation of neo-Nazis, war criminals, and rightwing terror outfits. A Washington Post reporter who observed the League's 1979 conference counted "former Nazi SS officers, two neo-fascists from Italy reportedly wanted for terrorist acts, [and] members of Alpha 66, a right-wing Cuban exile group." (The reporter didn't know it at the time, but one of the attendees he quoted, Sam Dickson, was a white power activist and Atlanta-based Klan attorney.) The chair of WACL's US branch was Roger Pearson, a former Heritage Foundation hire of Pratt's friend Paul Weyrich. After revelations of Pearson's neo-Nazi activities, he stepped down, replaced by Elmore D. Greaves, a former organizer with the segregationist Citizens Councils.

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During the 1980s and early Nineties, it was difficult to look at Pratt's network without tripping over a WACL connection. Pratt was also active in the United States Taxpayers Party, led by WACL member Howard Phillips. WACL ties carried over into a transitional phase of Pratt's activism: His work hyping Hispanic immigration and bilingual education as national security threats. In the mid-Eighties, Pratt launched another organization, English First, as a project within his Family Foundation to wage a racially charged war against bilingual education. He got help from Anthony Bouscaren, a CIS advisor who also sat on the board of WACL. Bouscaren's publishing credits included numerous articles in the *neo-Nazi Roger Pearson's Journal for Social, Political and Economic Studies. This didn't stop more than a dozen GOP legislators, including Dick Armey, from joining the board.*

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It was during his involvement in Central American policy and supporting counterinsurgencies around the world that Pratt made multiple trips to Guatemala to observe rural "Civil Defense Patrols." Contemporary human rights observers (and two subsequent Truth Commissions) consider them "death squads" for their role in killing and torturing civilians. But Pratt found much to admire. He combined observations from these visits with similarly impressed notes on the Civilian Home Defense Forces, vigilante patrols in Ferdinand Marcos' Philippines, for a slim book published by the Gun Owners Foundation in 1990, Armed People Victorious. In it, he praises the leadership of Efrain Rios Montt, the country's military leader during 1982 and 1983 who greatly expanded the civil defense patrols. Twenty years later, Guatemalan judges would find Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. One Amnesty International Report from Montt's tenure detailed massacres in 60 Indian villages over a three-month period, leaving more than 2,500 dead. As late as 2001, Pratt was publically praising Montt as a "powerful Christian leader." In the concluding chapter of Armed People Victorious, titled "Bringing the Lessons Home," Pratt writes:

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The War on Drugs can be won the same way the guerilla insurgencies were pushed back in Guatemala and the Philippines… The history of the United States for years before and after the founding of the Republic was the history of an armed people with functioning militias involved in civil defense… While the United States has forgotten its successes 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.

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Having defeated communism abroad, might not similar tactics work against enemies within? After the election of Bill Clinton, a significant chunk of gun culture would begin wondering the same thing — and about enemies more diverse than drug dealers. Just as he did during the social and foreign policy clashes of the Cold War, Larry Pratt would make sure he was right in the middle of things.

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V. Storms of Fire

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In February of 1991, a reclusive Idaho man named Randy Weaver failed to appear at trial on charges of selling sawed-off shotguns to undercover ATF agents. His absence in court surprised no one familiar with the case. Weaver and his family had moved to the wooded mountains of Ruby Ridge to get as far as possible from the government they hated. That, and to advance what the large local population of neo-Nazis and white supremacists called the "Northwest Territorial Imperative" to carve out a racially pure state in the Pacific Northwest. Weaver believed the feds had set him up to use him against his friends in the Aryan Nations, an extremist group based in nearby Hayden Lake. Weaver's response to the repeated summons was blunt: "Whether we live or whether we die, we will not obey your lawless government."

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Not much happened for more than a year. Then, on the afternoon of August 21st, 1992, a group of armed federal marshals approached Weaver's cabin. A forest gunfight ensued in which Weaver's wife, young son, and a federal marshal were killed.

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The bloodshed and the armed standoff that followed catalyzed groups across the far right into action. This activity would soon produce a national militia movement for which Ruby Ridge functioned as a modern-day Alamo. The most important event in this development was a three-day meeting convened in October 1992 by Christian Identity leader Pete Peters. Christian Identity maintains that Aryans are the true Jews, that blacks are a pre-Adamic subhuman species, and that a race war is coming, after which whites will establish a "Christian government." These were the baseline ideas uniting the 150 far-right leaders who answered Peters' call to action at a YMCA hall in Estes Park, Colorado. Among those present was Larry Pratt. According to media reports, Pratt railed against the 14th Amendment and delivered one of his favorite lines: "The Second Amendment ain't about duck hunting."

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According to Leonard Zeskind's report from the conference, published in a November 1995 Rolling Stone story, Pratt's fellow speakers consisted mostly of extremists with little mainstream profile or Washington connections, people like Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler and Texas Klansman Louis Beam. Pratt represented a link between these worlds and the rightward edge of the conservative establishment. Pratt's presence, wrote Zeskind, "signaled the transformation of the gun lobby. Organizations like GOA or even the National Rifle Association, which were devoted to the single issue of firearms, would become the leading edge of a far right, multi-issue assault on government institutions and democratic rights. The gun lobby would be at the center of a web of right-wing warriors."

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If so, they had ample opportunity to discuss this strategy. According to Richard Feldman's gun-lobby memoir, Ricochet, Pratt was part of an elite tri-annual meeting during the late Eighties and early Nineties held in D.C.'s Park Terrace Hotel. The so-called "quilting bees," writes Feldman, "were frank (no-notes-taken), free-ranging discussions of gun politics and industry trends" that brought together Pratt, Alan Gottlieb, gun-writer Joe Tartaro, Neal Knox, and the NRA brass. "We wanted to know where each group stood on an issue — so all of us could keep moving in the same general direction and avoid being sideswiped in legislative conflicts."

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The NRA and GOA may have been moving in the same general direction, but the larger group never followed Pratt to the outer fringes of the right. When ATF agent Robert Rodriguez infiltrated the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, it was a GOA video that David Koresh played for him. According to a Treasury Department report cited by Zeskind, the video "portrayed ATF as an evil agency that threatened the liberty of U.S. citizens." This view of the agency hardened when the ATF led a siege of the compound in April of 1993 that killed 76.

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In militia circles, the siege confirmed the worst suspicions about the federal government. The links between the militia scene and the gun groups had deepened to the point where NRA fundraising letters echoed the language of extremist publications on the radical right. In one 1995 letter, NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre described ATF officers as "jack-booted thugs" in "Nazi bucket helmets." But the NRA stopped short of supporting the Christian Identity lawyer Kirk Lyons, who was representing multiple victims of Waco. Pratt and the GOA had no such compunction and donated tens of thousands of dollars to Lyons's white supremacist organization CAUSE (short for the Aryan bastions of Canada, Australia, the United States, South Africa and Europe), "Not $50,000 — but a lot of money for us," Pratt told Rolling Stone in 1995.

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For many, the gun scene's rhetoric of an "evil" and "fascist" government was immediately rendered in more sinister shades when Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb under Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah federal building on April 19, 1995, the second anniversary of the Waco siege. Former president George H.W. Bush spoke for many when he cancelled his NRA membership in the bombing's wake, citing LaPierre's incendiary rhetoric.

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Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association. Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

On the afternoon of the Oklahoma City bombing, Pratt was in Washington, D.C., demonstrating in front of FBI headquarters for its role in the Waco tragedy. Three days later, Pratt spoke before a gathering of 600 Christian Identity adherents and assorted radicals convened by Pete Peters at the Lodge of the Ozarks in Branson, Missouri. Pratt addressed the "Biblical Mandate to Arm" and seemed to justify McVeigh's act of terror, at the time the bloodiest in American history. According to an account by Michael Reynolds in Playboy, Pratt told the gathered, "The government behaves as a beast. It did in Waco, and we have somebody, whoever it might have been, whatever group it might have been, assuming they can't rely on the Lord to take vengeance."

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Pratt's extremist ties and activities only began to garner widespread attention during his brief tenure as a co-chair of Pat Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign. During Buchanan's surprising surge in New Hampshire, Pratt was forced to step down after his extremist political views and ties came to light. But his friend hardly threw him under the bus. At a GOP debate in Manchester, Buchanan used his closing comments to defend Pratt as "a devout Christian" who was under attack because of his opposition to gun control. "I would urge the gun owners of New Hampshire and America to stand with Larry Pratt and stand with me," he said.

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Receiving less attention, then as now, was Pratt's work on Capitol Hill. The Republican class of 1994 brought a new generation of conservatives to town, including the biggest recipient of GOA PAC funds that cycle, Rep. Steve Stockman of Houston. Stockman and Pratt likely knew each other through the militia scene and other common friends on the radical right. Following the election, both Pratt and Stockman addressed a conference convened by the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby, including a testimonial banquet in honor of its publication, The Spotlight. Mary Jacoby, who covered Congress for Roll Call, remembers Pratt as "almost a shadow Congressman" during this time. "He was always around, essentially running then-Rep. Steve Stockman's office," she says, "and writing anti-gun control legislation."

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At the cusp of the George W. Bush era, Pratt decided to publicly address the revelations about his ties to the racist far-right and assorted extremists. In "Letter to a White Separatist," written in 1997 and published in his 2001 essay collection, On the Firing Line, Pratt tells a racist member of Guns of America that it is faith, not race, which makes a Christian in the eyes of God. "The Christian Identity position you espouse depends upon non-biblical ideas that end up contradicting the Scriptures." Pratt goes on to cite the Bible, as well as his travels to Latin American and South Africa, where he met many good Christians of all races, while "their pagan neighbors are still enslaved in all the works of the flesh that Paul describes in Galatians 5. They live side by side and the contrast is readily apparent."

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Pratt has on numerous occasions rejected the charge of racism and anti-Semitism. But his habit of drawing "contrasts" (as in the above quote) can belie an idiosyncratic understanding of race. During a January 2014, interview conducted on his syndicated radio show, The Gun Owners News Hour, Pratt expressed his wish that "very happy" black Africans could say to "surly" African-Americans, "Hey, buddy, you got this all wrong, let me explain to you the world really works."

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"The African from Africa is a very pro-American person, a very happy person," explained Pratt. "I know several. And they are always just happy with a joke, a pleasant smile on their face. And they clearly don't identify with the surliness that's all too frequently the attitude of their fellow African-Americans here. And they're very conservative politically. The country of Ghana, it's still illegal to commit an abortion, it's illegal to be a homosexual."

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VI. The Reckoning

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As GOA gears up for its nineteenth election cycle under Pratt's leadership, it remains relatively small. According to public tax records, its revenues in recent years have ranged between $1.5 million (2006) to slightly below $2.3 million (2009), compared with an NRA budget of $250 million. Most of this money is generated through direct public support (direct mail, internet appeals, etc.). Annual membership dues of $20, meanwhile, usually make up between one-quarter and one-third of the total. This renders implausible Pratt's claims to having 300,000 members. Even accounting for lifetime memberships and student discounts, the 300,000 figure would bring in millions of dollars in dues alone. No doubt what members he does have are enough to make elected officials wary of crossing him, but it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the size of the activist army under is command is overstated.

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GOA expenses have tended to equal revenues, with most money being spent on "Membership Expenses" described on tax documents as funds to "update and inform members on the progress, accomplishments, and future programs of the organization." No one appears to be getting terribly rich off of the GOA operation, including the PAC and Foundation. Only five people are included on the employee list on GOA's 2011 990 form, though that number doesn't include lobbyists like Pratt's son, Erich Pratt. While compensation for the Board has tripled from $65,000 in 2004 to over $200,000 in 2011, Pratt's compensation from GOA ($137,500 in 2011) has dipped a bit in recent years, not including additional income from the Gun Owners Foundation and a residual income ($20,000 in 2011) from the defunct English First.

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In membership and resources, GOA lags behind not just the NRA, but also newcomers to the hardline scene like Dudley Brown's National Association of Gun Rights. NAGR claims to offer activists the "best bang for your pro-gun buck." But few in the gun-rights movement agree with this claim. "If you take a look at what NAGR actually does with its money, there isn't a whole lot," says Alan Gottlieb. "I don't see NAGR ever turning bodies out or being anywhere, basically. In all the states we're involved in, if we bump into them one out of every 20 times, I'd say that's a lot. GOA is in more places than NAGR is with less resources." (Brown declined to comment for this story.)

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Being there is what matters. Those who do not share Pratt's politics appreciate his work, and appear willing to overlook his ties to extremists. Pratt's former role as a contributing editor at a publication of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America hasn't even seemed to complicate his relationship with Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. "None of that strained GOA's relationship with JPFO," says L. Neil Smith, a Libertarian member and writer for JPFO. "I myself would also talk to white nationalists and neo-Nazi groups. I talk to liberal groups, but people don't accuse me of being liberal. I wash all that off at home. It's important to talk to anyone who will listen."

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"Most gun people don't know his background," says Dan Zimmerman, editor of the blog TheTruthAboutGuns.com. "He's seen in a positive light. He'll go on and spar with Piers Morgan and jump in the lion's den and wave the flag."

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But, says Zimmerman, his broader appeal stops at guns.

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"The universe of gun owners is far too diverse and far too wide for any organization to take a hardcore stand one way or the other on social issues. It's much more libertarian leaning than conservative leaning. There's crossover, but its much more a leave-me-alone thing than it is better-dead-than-red."

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Could that orientation hinder GOA in the new century, if the politics stays the same under the next generation of Pratts?

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"I would say, yes, Pratt's conservatism will hinder him," says Robert Farago, publisher of TheTruthAboutGuns.com. "Gun owners are diverse. They go across the spectrum, sexuality, politics, race. There is a new wave of gun owners who are libertarians, not social conservatives at all. The real battle among gun rights groups is for the new people coming in. We're getting a lot more women. Minorities are the future . We have excellent demographic data. The small, more pure groups have the momentum. We call the NRA member an OFWG — Old Fat White Guy."

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"The gun rights movement is comprised of every political stripe," says Jeff Knox of the Firearms Coalition. "Women involvement has grown dramatically. One of the most involved activists in California is a post-op transsexual. That's one of the strengths of the movement."

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All of which means that the movement Pratt helped found shows signs of moving in directions — tolerant, diverse, secular, gay-friendly — that he sees as evidence of the gun-grabbing dictatorship of Biblical prophecy. It would be a circular irony indeed if, at the end of his long career, Larry Pratt found himself targeting not just the secular federal Leviathan, but also his purist peers in the gun-rights movement he did so much to build.

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This story was reported in conjunction with the American Independent Institute.

PRATT 2 GOA

A Small Circle of Friends:

Introduction

:{:{*The Council for Inter-American Security:

CIS and WACL: A Marriage Made in Hell

The Second Amendment

Immigration Reform[edit]

Conspiracy Theories[edit]

Racist Connections[edit]

Possibility of Terrorism[edit]

References[edit]

*:{:{**The Council for Inter-American Security:

*Immigration Reform[edit***]

*Conspiracy Theories[edit***]

*Racist Connections[edit***]

*Possibility of Terrorism[edit***]

*References[edit***]