Defending Gun Ownership, Part 1 of 4

Larry Pratt is executive director of Gun Owners of America (GAO), a no-compromise pro-gun lobbying organization that supports the rights of gun owners guaranteed by the Second Amendment. He also hosts GAO’s weekly radio program Live Fire. The New American questioned him in depth about the Second Amendment, concealed-carry laws, how best to argue for gun rights, and much more. We published a shortened version of the interview in our April 28, 2008 issue, but offer here the complete interview broken into four parts.

The New American: What's the main goal of your organization?

Larry Pratt: Gun Owners of America is organized to lobby Congress to focus on pro-Second Amendment legislation and actually to try and get what's been put on the books taken off, as the federal government has no authority regulating guns.

The New American: How do you differ from other groups that are also doing this?

Larry Pratt: I think we stand apart for perhaps two reasons in particular.

1) We do think that gun control really needs to be taken off the books. We don't support something that has unhappily rather accepted by gun owners in general and that is the Brady Instant Check. We don't think it's constitutional to make somebody prove his innocence before he exercises a right.

It doesn't comfort us that it's done within a matter of minutes in most cases. It just means the "trains are running on time," and that's not necessarily a good thing if the government is doing it.

2) Beyond that, we think that politics is inherently confrontational. Our founder Senator H.L. Richardson, when he was in the California Senate for over a couple of decades, saw time and again how the forces of freedom, not just on the gun issue, but certainly including the gun issue, would give ground and give ground, thinking this was going to show that they were nice guys and that would stop the assault on their freedom. It doesn't work that way.

Confrontational politics means you may or may not wish to participate, and it just means you're going to lose faster if you don't, and you'd better get organized and learn what it takes to make it happen. Because the other side, the Marxists, the socialists, the Democrats, the liberal Republicans, whatever you want to call them, they're very good at this. They understand how this works. That's why they've been so successful over the years.

The New American: You mention H.L. Richardson as the founder of your organization. How did you become the executive director?

Larry Pratt: Well once the organization had been set up, Senator Richardson came to the East, looked around for a hired gun in the East if you will. I thought this would be a great opportunity to really defend the whole of the Bill of Rights because the Second Amendment issue even back then in the mid- to late-'70s had a built-in constituency who were already somewhat organized and clearly were willing to fight legislatively and politically with their time and their money to make things happen. So, it was a good choice.

The New American: Basically it comes down to the definition of an individual right vs. a collective right. So, that's the real argument?

Larry Pratt: The issue about it being an individual or collective right is now before the Supreme Court. And, for a long time myself included, we kind of assumed that "well, if the Court agrees with the Founders - which would be nice if they ruled constitutionally once in a while - they would have to say it's an individual right and end of argument, right?" Well, no.

We've seen from the Bush administration's brief in the case before the Courts called D.C. v. Heller that they can agree that it's an individual right and then right out of George Orwell where peace is war and strength is weakness, and all of that, why an individual right doesn't stop a court, a federal court, from finding some reasonable basis for banning any or all guns that it wants. And so, they would conclude that the D.C. gun ban which has a virtual long-gun ban as well would be just perfectly fine and it wouldn't violate the individual right to keep and bear arms.

We are hopeful that this latest entry in 1984 "newspeak" is going to be batted down, but it's a very serious problem when the Supreme Court has a brief from the administration they unhappily tend to put a lot of weight in what the administration is arguing for the powers, the interests, the rights of government, something which don't exist, but nevertheless in their minds, bless their heart, they do.

The New American: The terminology in the Second Amendment mentions the word "people" - "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." There are some that still say it's a collective right, even though that's the terminology. But aren't there other places in the Bill of Rights where the word "people" appears?

Larry Pratt: The term "people" is something that you find in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 9th and 10th Amendments at least. The Supreme Court reviewed that in 1991 and in a kind of an aside - it wasn't part of the ruling in the case - they found that whenever the Constitution uses the term "people" in the Bill of Rights, that's actually a reference to individuals. So the court's been on record, actually, that it is an individual right, not the right of the state of New York to have it's own militia let alone National Guard, which didn't exist for over 100 years after the Bill of Rights had been adopted, after the Second Amendment had been ratified. We're not talking about something that belongs to a state.

Actually the brief that came up out of the lower court, the D.C. Court of Appeals, handled this issue very well. Judge Lawrence Silberman writing for the majority pointed out that the term militia was something that was used in colonial America and into early Republican America for that matter; the term militia was used to indicate all free men as individuals who had to have a military-style long arm.

They had to have a blunderbuss, a firelock, some kind of rifle - they had to have something suitable for military use. They had to own it. They had to bring it with them to muster. They would take it to any military engagement. They would keep it at home. And the only time they exercised gun control, other than requiring gun ownership, was from time to time they might get suspicious that somebody didn't actually own the gun he signed an affidavit for at muster, so they would go door to door to make sure the gun was actually in the home - rather different from why we go door to door today, looking for guns the government can snatch.

The other term the judge found was applicable to this whole issue of "no, it's not a collective right," is that the term state - the Second Amendment states that a "well regulated militia being necessary to a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" - the term "state," was not something that was a reference to New York or Virginia, or any of the 13 former colonies. It was a reference to them as individual nation states.

They had fought through the War for Independence without even the Articles of Confederation till the last few months. So they were simply allied states among the states of the world.

And the term actually, while that was one of the meanings, in the 18th century the term more than anything, for the protection of a free state, was the protection of a free government, of a free society. So the militia was there to protect society against New York, against Virginia, in case they ever wanted to do what George III and Parliament had done.

The New American: People often say that they have their Second Amendment rights, but isn't that incorrect? Isn't it a God-given right protected by the Second Amendment?

Larry Pratt: Yes, and actually [in] what was otherwise not a particularly good decision that came down in the 19th century, Cruikshank observed that the very truth that rights do not originate from the government having established them, but that the rights such as the Second Amendment predated the existence of the American Republic and its Constitution. All the Constitution is doing is observing their reality and endeavoring to protect rights, because that's the way God made us.

The New American: The last 20 years or so, you were considered to be a main factor in the spread of militias and there were lots of attacks on the concept of militias. What is your attitude about that and is it the same today?

Larry Pratt: The militia movement seems to have subsided. I think as much as anything it was a response to the government's effort to ban semi-automatic firearms, called by gun banners "assault weapons," even though they are not. When the law passed people variously gave up, and also noticed in the ban itself, there was a provision for a sunset in ten years.

And happily that sunset has come and gone and the law is no longer on the books. I think that was the removal of one of the major concerns that led to people talking about organizing as militias.

A lot of people feared in the late '80s and early '90s that the government was intent on disarming the people even as Great Britain had endeavored to disarm our forefathers and they wanted to be as organized as our forefathers had been organized. They wanted to have a well regulated militia, which meant something that would be able to express the sovereign will of the people - even if the government which was supposed to be itself an expression of the sovereign will of the people.

If the government went off track, the people would still be on track.

The New American: You've been trashed somewhat by Rolling Stone magazine...

Larry Pratt: Good....

The New American: ...that you're the guy that stands in the way of any meaningful gun control. How do you respond to that?

Larry Pratt: Well, I hope Rolling Stone is correct. Although we haven't always won our battles, and so I'm not sure, even if we're the only ones standing against gun control, we're actually necessarily keeping it from happening. We try. Not only do we try to keep new gun control laws being added to the books, we try to take existing ones off the books.

The New American: Is that what separates you from some of these other groups?

Larry Pratt: I think that's one of the things that does set Gun Owners of America apart. We really are trying to find politicians who will introduce legislation and then push that legislation to get rid of the bad laws that have been put on the books.

The New American: Are there any bad laws currently on the books that you are worried about?

Larry Pratt: Well, all the gun laws that are on the books are bad laws.

The New American: Are there any gun laws being considered to add to the books?

Larry Pratt: Yes, we just lost a battle over substituting a psychiatrist's diagnosis for due process in a court of law. This has specifically has hammered veterans. And that's why, even though now it's law, it applies to more than just veterans.

They are the ones who have a diagnosis that triggers loss of gun rights; they're the ones whose diagnoses have been put into computers at the Veteran's Administration and then sent over to the FBI to be added to the Brady Instant Check List of people who can't buy a gun. Hence we call it the "Veterans' Disarmament Act."

There were two major objections to this - even though we thought they were compelling, and the NRA supported this measure and this was one of the things that really separated us from the NRA - we objected to the idea that one person's unsubstantiated opinion, a psychiatrist no less, who's hardly an objective person, nor is he practicing anything scientific.

In fact psychiatry is highly political, and, in fact, if we look at the last century in a number of countries, psychiatry is prostituted by the government and used as the handmaiden to dispose of unwanted people including politically incorrect people. We think that it's important that if somebody is going to lose his right to keep and bear arms - something which the Founders themselves believed in; they didn't think criminals should have guns - but the idea that you could lose your gun rights because of a diagnosis instead of a trip to court with all the due process, the ability to confront your accuser, the ability to have your attorney protecting your rights throughout that whole process, that's a very different question and it's just been given up.

We were aghast the NRA would sign off on that because this is something that has the potential to be broadened to people who have other diagnoses allegedly that would make them possibly - possibly - a danger to self and to others.

Continue to Part Two....

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