You may think you’ve seen some incredible batshit crazy right wing rants, but this one deserves some kind of award…. Larry Pratt of the NRA’s less politically correct alter ego Gun Owners of America went on the Talk to Solomon Show with wingnut blogger Greg W. Howard yesterday, to push a fear-mongering fantasy about President Obama confiscating guns because he wants to provoke a violent response so that he can round up right wingers and imprison them, en masse. That’s insane enough on its own to warrant the award, but then host Stan Solomon took it all the way into weapons grade Wacko territory with a bizarre, ugly racist fever dream: Gun Activists Warn Obama Is Raising a Private Black Army to Massacre White Americans.
I’ve written at length about how the NRA is controlled by a cabal of paranoid conspiracy theorists who equate gun control with the advent of Big Tyrannical Government and its insidious plan to Take Our Guns. Even worse, the NRA is a false front for the gun industry, charged with ensuring gun manufacturers won’t be held responsible for selling products designed to kill people. Not surprisingly, the NRA isn’t the only gun rights organization controlled by barely lucid, foaming at the mouth gun nuts. Besides crackpots like Alex Jones, there are zealots like Larry Pratt from Gun Owners of America (ironically enough, headquartered in Newtown, CT). Not being content with calmly and rationally presenting a well-supported argument (which he’s yet to do), Pratt has opted to go for full-on crazy: claiming that Barack Obama is raising an African-American army with the intent of destroying White Folks.
Welcome to today’s “WTF???” moment.
…but I’m saying specifically if you are a white, heterosexual, Christian, working, married person, if you don’t have a gun on you, know how to use it and make sure that everyone in your family who is of age has a weapon and knows how to use it, there is at least a substantial chance that you and/or some member of your family will be hurt and/or killed.
Yeah, I know; “WF???” was pretty much the only reaction I could muster.
Never mind that Pratt lacks even the barest shred of credible evidence to back up his ridiculous assertion. Never mind that what Pratt is accusing the President of is unconstitutional, illegal, and frankly impossible. Pratt evidently lives in a world so divorced from reality that the mere act of thinking about a “threat” makes it real.
Pratt predicted that President Obama may begin confiscating guns in order to provoke a violent response to justify further oppression, which host Stan Solomon feared would lead to the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people.
Pratt once again insisted that Obama is acting like King George III, a sentiment with which Solomon concurred, saying, “That will happen quickly and they will wipe those people out to set an example.”
But Solomon wasn’t finished: “I believe they will put together a racial force to go against an opposite race resistance, basically a black force to go against a white resistance, and then they will claim anyone resisting the black force they are doing it because they are racist.”
Howard agreed: “You may be right because he has been sowing the seeds of racial hatred; we were healing quite well as a nation on racial issues until Obama came along and now we have a lot of racial discord.”
Evidently unburdened by the need or even the expectation that one be able to even minimally support his argument, Pratt, Howard, and Solomon are fanning the flames of racism. FEAR THE BLACK MAN! Oh, and send us your money…LOTS of your money, because without financial support the President and his evil, jackbooted (and, no doubt, African-American) thugs will silence and patriots like us…and ultimately you as well. They want our freedom and liberty, and if they must do it via force of arms, then that’s EXACTLY what they’ll do.
Pratt goes on to invoke the Branch Davidian massacre at Waco, TX, and warns ominously that if the President “playing the massacre game the way you did at Waco,” he and his family won’t be safe. It’s hard to stop laughing long enough to do this, but it should be pointed out that there are two obvious flaws with Pratt’s “argument”:
Barack Obama was not President when the Branch Davidian compound was attacked by ATF agents. That would be Bill Clinton…but hey, what’s historical fact among patriots, right??
Threatening the President happens to be a felony…not that Pratt or his ilk recognize or understand that the law applies to them. Being a “patriot” doesn’t insulate one from accountability under the law…except in their fevered, hyperactive, self-serving imagination.
The truth is that Pratt’s lunatic fringe is populated by a small, vocal, unhinged minority. His rancid bleatings may be crude dog whistle appeals to the faithful for financial support, but they’re certainly not indicative of the Republic being under any threat from a mythical African-American army. People as bigoted and ignorant as Pratt are generally incapable of doing much beyond making noise. I suspect Pratt couldn’t lead a pack of hungry Cub Scouts to a Dairy Queen. Still, one has to wonder: If Pratt and his fellow travellers begin to collect a wider following, could our New Idiocracy be far behind?
AMERICA!!! FEAR THE BLACK MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE!! AND SEND US MONEY!!
