Larry Pratt Is the Gun Lobby's Secret Weapon | Politics News | Rolling Stone

What I am really interested in concerning this article, the Tea Party fringe fest.  Many dots are connected in this piece between the right-wing theocrats and the neo-confederate white power brokers,,,

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."

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.

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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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).


Larry Pratt Is the Gun Lobby's Secret Weapon | Politics News | Rolling Stone