Larry Pratt, executive director of the radical Gun Owners of America and a noted supporter of the militia movement, left presidential hopeful Patrick Buchanan's campaign on February 15 after being linked with white supremacist groups. His exit was ostensibly a "leave of absence" and Pratt said he hoped to return. Patrick Buchanan supported Pratt, one of four co-chairmen of his campaign, while Bob Dole's campaign headquarters said that Buchanan should have fired Pratt.
Actually, Pratt's ties with militia and racist groups have been well known for some time. Pratt is the head of the Gun Owners of America, a group of about 150,000 radical second amendment activists who view the NRA as too moderate. Pratt himself believes the Bible sanctions gun ownership and has been quoted as saying that "Consider that when Cain killed Abel, God did not ban...the ownership of whatever it was that Cain used to kill his brother." But Pratt has gone far beyond bizarre biblical analogies in his quest for absolute gun rights. Pratt emerged as one of the leading advocates of the militia movement in the early 1990s. He discussed forming militia groups in his 1990 book Armed People Victorious, and in 1992, following the Ruby Ridge incident, gave a speech advocating the forming of militia groups.
That speech has since come back to haunt Larry Pratt, since it was part of an Estes Park, Colorado, gathering that was essentially a "Who's Who" of racists in America. Organized by Pete Peters, leader in the white supremacist religious sect Christian Identity, attendees in addition to Pratt included Richard Butler, head of Aryan Nations, former KKK leader Louis Beam, and Kirk Lyons, attorney to many racist groups and founder of CAUSE, an organization that is essentially a legal defense fund for racists in Canada, Australia, the United States, South Africa and Europe. This was not Pratt's only tie with racists: he has appeared on Pete Peters' television show; has addressed a Christian Identity gathering in Branson, Missouri; and
the GOA's "charitable wing," the Gun Owners Foundation, has given money to CAUSE.
Originally Posted by Catshooter
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