Gun Owners of America on #LasVegasShooting

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America is not the the Wild West that you are depicting. We only have the problem in our cities and and unhappily in our schools where people like you have been able to get laws put on the books that keep people from being able to defend themselves.

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I honestly don't understand why you would rather have people be victims of a crime than be able to defend themselves.

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It's incomprehensible. You're an unbelievably stupid man aren't you? It seems to me that you're morally obtuse.

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You seem to prefer being a victim to being able to prevail over the criminal element.

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All right everybody, thank you. Welcome back everybody to next week with Jeff Durbin. I'm Jeff Durbin and in light of the recent events, the tragedy in Las Vegas, we thought it'd be important to do a meaningful and relevant discussion on the issue of gun rights, gun ownership, the use of weapons, self -defense, the

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Second Amendment. And so we got a really important guest and we think you'll really enjoy it.

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His name is Larry Pratt. He's the executive director emeritus with Gun Owners of America.

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Welcome to the show Larry. Thank you so much. Good to be with you. Well it's a pleasure to have you sir.

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Thank you so much for giving us the time that you are today. Larry, we had another awful event happen in the

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United States. An evil man fired down indiscriminately upon a crowd at a concert.

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59 people dead, over 500 people injured. I think it's important for people to hear from us as they pull on the heartstrings of America.

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As gun owners, how do we feel about the events that took place in Las Vegas? Well let's begin by noting that the

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Mandalay Hotel where the dirtbag was shooting from is a gun -free zone, quote -unquote.

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That's right. And that's where 98 % of our mass murders have taken place in the

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United States since 1950. You would think that we might start figuring something out that maybe there's a correlation perhaps between gun -free and dirtbags committing mass murder.

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We still haven't got that memo. I really don't know what it's going to take, but I can tell you it's something that Gun Owners of America has been trying to do for quite some time.

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So perhaps this will be the final event that gets the point across that gun -free zones not only are not helpful, they're downright dangerous.

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That's exactly right. I mean you make a good point when you point to the fact that these mass shootings have taken place where people are disarmed and they have no ability to defend themselves against a murderer and a crazed person like this.

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If I might add, I just learned today with a previous show that a security guard apparently had gone to the dirtbags door before he began shooting.

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I don't know why he was there. He had knocked on the door and he got shot in the leg. He was totally unarmed.

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I've gone online, I've downloaded the Mandalay Hotel's rules and regulations for their security guards.

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Absolutely no weapons of any kind are permitted their security force.

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Some security. Well that's a tremendous mistake obviously and I think you keep pointing to something, keep saying and I agree with you, keep calling him a dirtbag and so you're responding to this

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I think with a heavy emphasis on the person rather than the weapon. Yeah and I think most

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Americans unhappily know the guy's name. I think that may have been part of his objective.

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I care not, I choose not to use the dirtbag's name. He's a dirtbag, he's the

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Mandalay Hotel dirtbag as opposed to the San Bernardino dirtbag or you know you fill in the blanks.

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That's right, that's right and so your emphasis is on the person, the killer himself and not the weapon.

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Evil is right here, it's not in my gun. That's right. When you say right here, describe that because I think that what a lot of the late -night show hosts have done, what the major media has done is they've tried to place the emphasis upon the tool itself and they try to you

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I think, Larry, I think giving excuses to the dirtbag, blaming issues of mental health issues, those sorts of things, they're trying to focus in upon the wrong thing.

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Why should we be focusing in upon a fallen human heart, sin, evil, why should we be focusing in upon that rather than the tool itself?

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Well it's something that the liberal worldview in general and certainly those that are anti -second amendment tend to have, that they tend to look at the device as the critical element rather than the human heart and they refuse to accept the notion that wickedness is in our hearts and that only but by the grace of God can that be controlled.

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It's certainly not going to be controlled by one or another gun laws. Let's go back to where we started.

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They had a gun -free zone in that hotel. That should have done it, right? Right, yeah.

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No, I think that's important. Murder is already illegal. This is a gun -free zone and so more legislation isn't going to stop wicked people from carrying out their wicked plans.

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You know, Larry, you work with Gun Owners of America and your organization is promulgating the idea that gun ownership is a righteous thing, it's a good thing.

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My argument, Larry, would be that in light of events like this we should be actually arming

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United States citizens, not focusing it upon more legislation. I think good guys and innocent law -abiding citizens should have weapons to defend themselves against evil people like this.

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I think that that's the main thing we need to focus on. There's a bill that's before the

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Congress for too long. It's been held up by Speaker Ryan, who does not like it, but it's a measure that would let somebody, say, in my state of Virginia with a concealed carry permit to go even to New York City or Chicago and carry a concealed firearm with the permit that they have in that state.

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We should get to the point where we are in about 15 states where there's no permit required whatsoever.

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You got a pulse, you can carry a gun. That's the way it ought to be. Certainly criminals don't get permits, so I think eventually maybe the legislators will get the memo.

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You know, Larry, one of the things that shockingly is coming out of the mouths of, again, other late night hosts and liberal leadership, progressives, cultural

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Marxists, people like that, is they speak more towards now undoing the

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Second Amendment. It's not needed, Larry. We don't need it. It's something we should actually do away with. It's archaic. It's a part of a time long gone, and we need to rethink the

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Second Amendment. What's your first response when you hear people saying things like that? Well, except that it usually doesn't have a

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British accent, although sometimes it does. It sounds like George III. This is the notion that elitists who believe that they're the ones born to rule, and the rest of us were born to be ruled, have had in their minds for so long, and they try to convince the rest of the population that you just leave the managing of guns and lethal force up to us.

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And of course, we know how that worked out. Blacks were denied their civil rights. Well, during slavery, it was illegal for them to have a gun, and after slavery was done away with, it was all but impossible because of various gun control laws for them to get guns.

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We know that this was what disarmed first Jews and then all Germans virtually in Hitler's Germany.

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It's what Lenin and Stalin did to disarm the population in Russia. It's something that Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela, where he disarmed the population and then slammed down his tyranny.

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It's a kind of a similar pattern throughout the world. Tyrants go after guns.

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Now, I should say, not every country that has virtually disarmed has resulted in tyranny, but it's certainly not correct that, for instance, a place like England is such a happy place.

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I'm in Fairfax County, Virginia. Fairfax County, Virginia, is very urban.

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Don't believe me? Visit during rush hour. You'll find out. We have a murder rate that is the same or lower than England's every year.

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Now, England has virtually no guns, and they have, indeed, a very low murder rate. We're gunned up.

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You can own a machine gun here in Fairfax County. We have the same murder rate they have in England.

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I don't think ownership of guns bears on crime being committed. Right, right.

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So I got really three main questions I want to focus on with you, and let's start with the first one.

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The Second Amendment. People say things like needs to be rethought. It needs to be even. They've said Bill Maher has said it's bull.

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You know what? And it needs to be done away with. Second Amendment. Tell us,

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Larry, what does it say? The argument is often made by people who want to undo it that it has to do with a well organized militia.

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It isn't about citizens owning guns. Could you speak to that? Well, they're right. It's about a well organized militia.

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What they're apparently maybe truly unaware of because our schools have been rather deficient in this area that the militia was considered by law.

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A federal law enacted the same year that the Bill of Rights was finally ratified, including the

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Second Amendment. All men in the United States and now it would be all persons between certain ages.

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I think at the time it was 17 and 44. But you get the idea.

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All people had to have a military rifle and have a long gun, and that law was repeated more than once at the federal level.

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So the founders were interested in having an armed populace, and they actually requiring people to own guns.

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I don't think that's the kind of gun control that people like Bill Maher talking about. So maybe

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Bill Maher should take a look at his own opinions and decide where the bull something is.

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Right. So the argument is also made in terms of the Second Amendment that at the time we're talking about muskets.

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We're talking about a weapon that takes time to load. It's not something that cares. 30 bullets in a magazine.

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And so, you know, the argument today that people are allowed to have weapons that fire this many rounds, you know, it just doesn't make sense.

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It's not consistent. I would actually argue that the reason for the Second Amendment was we needed to be able to even fight against the tyrannical government, which would say that we need to have the same kind of, um, weapon, the gun that the military has.

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That's exactly what a look at our history does show. The spark, if you will, that led to the war for independence was the battle of Lexington, which followed a number of previously successful efforts by British soldiers to steal colonial ammunition from magazines that were maintained by the municipalities.

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And when they got to Lexington and tried the same stunt, they were met by a rather ragtag group, kind of ineffective at the moment.

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But they were held off at Concord Bridge and they were sent packing and they lost about a quarter of their detachment.

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Quite a few men, scores of men died. British soldiers died because the colonists kept hiding behind rocks and fences and barns, shooting at them as they retreated back to Boston.

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That's what the Second Amendment is all about, is to protect the people's ability to protect themselves from a government should the government go off the rails.

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And I would submit that our government, while it's once in a while look like it might be going off the rails, has ultimately been kept from doing that by an armed populace.

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Perhaps the most obvious example of that was in Athens, Tennessee in 1946, right after the

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Second World War. Returning veterans were appalled to find that they'd been risking their skins abroad fighting tyranny, when right at home, literally the ballot boxes were being stolen by the corruptocrats running

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Athens, Tennessee. And when they saw that was happening, they formed a very quick militia, rode into town on their tractors and their pickup trucks.

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And there was a brief gunfight, and the cops who had stolen the ballot boxes, violating the state law that you had to leave the boxes in place until all the votes have been counted.

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The cops decided, well, this is not going to end well for them. They were outgunned, they left the ballot boxes, they fled.

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And it turned out, surprise, that the reform slate had actually won the election.

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That's the second amendment in action. It was working exactly as it was intended to work.

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That's fantastic. Okay, so 60 seconds here, quick end, and then we're going to continue the conversation over at ApologiaStudios .com

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and extend this discussion a little longer. But in about 60 seconds here, I think one of the major jabs against our position,

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Larry, people say, well, you don't want to do anything, you really just don't care about the people that are dying. You're cold hearted.

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So you don't really have an answer. You just say do nothing. Well, Larry, as the executive director emeritus from Gun Owners of America, what's your solution to something like Las Vegas?

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Well, you want to get rid of the gun laws that are on the books. Look at Chicago, they've got almost every single gun law that every anti second amendment type has ever dreamed of.

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And for their trouble, they lose many more people than were killed in Las Vegas every year, maybe 10 times the number of people are murdered with gunfire in Chicago than died in Las Vegas.

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Gun control is a big fat flop. And the way to stop this carnage is to get rid of gun control so that the average guy can and gal can defend themselves so that they're not just being left to the not very tender mercies of the criminal class.

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Wonderful. Larry, let's talk for a minute. You mentioned when we first started talking today off camera, you mentioned that you've written an article about a biblical defense of gun ownership or self defense.

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Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, I when I became an elder in my church,

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I thought, you know, I'd better be pretty clear that what I'm doing for a living is consistent with what

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I say. I believe as an officer in the church. And so I did a study and it's on our website.

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I think it's something like what the Bible says about gun control. And if you slide down the list of documents that we have under the fact sheet section,

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I think it was finally finished up around 1999. So I think that'll help you find it.

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The idea is that the Bible recognizes that the human heart is evil continuously.

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And one of the ways that it can be contained apart from the Holy Spirit coming into our lives is for evil to realize that it's not going to be able to accomplish its objectives.

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One of the most useful studies that I've ever seen was done by Dr. Seminole, who, at least at the time several years ago, was a psychiatrist at the

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St. Elizabeth Hospital for the criminally insane in Washington, D .C., not far from where I am right now.

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And what he found is that the criminal mind operates rather differently from most people, happily.

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Most people, even if they would think, well, I'd like to get that candy bar for free, just reach out and grab it.

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They don't because they're afraid of getting caught. Well, that's the only restraint that operates on the criminal.

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And if he thinks he can get away with it, he's going to go right ahead and commit the crime. That's why gun -free zones are such a disaster, why there's such lethal areas, because it's a signal to the criminal, y 'all come, no problem here.

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That's right. And, you know, there are people, I think, that often misinterpret the

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Scriptures. They hold to a position of pacifism, which is great as an ideal if we lived in a sinless world.

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We don't live in a sinless world, we live in a fallen world where people have sinful hearts and they do evil things.

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And so people will run to the Bible and they'll say, you know, we need to love our neighbor. And, you know, I've even heard people go so far,

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Larry, to say that, you know, if somebody breaks in your house and tries to kill or rape your wife and children, the

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Christian thing to do is just trust God and, you know, lean on his purposes and really do nothing, which

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I think is a complete distortion of the text of Scripture. And do you have any examples in Scripture?

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I'll trust God to trust that my aim will be true if someone breaks into my house threatening my life and or my family's life.

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Man, I like you. That's just my responsibility, particularly as the head of household, but anyone in the household would have the same ultimate responsibility, protect innocent life.

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That's, I think, one of the paramount responsibilities that we have as believers, really as people here on the face of the earth, whether we choose to accept that responsibility or not.

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We are to protect innocent life, and that's something that a firearm in a home can help greatly.

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We are not to be opening ourselves to the criminal element.

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That's really telling God that we don't give a rip about the gift of life that's been entrusted to us, that we don't think anything of protecting it.

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We're just going to rely. You know, if we believe that God is going to help me when this criminal is attacking, is

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God going to help me when I just lie back on my fat rear end and refuse to work? Well, I don't think so.

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I think the Scripture is pretty clear. If I don't work, I don't eat. Right. That's exactly right. Well, I'll ask you one more question,

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Larry. I think it's an important one because it comes up often in this discussion. What's with the need for an

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AR -15 rifle? What's with the need for 30 rounds?

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Like, what's the purpose of a weapon like that? What benefit does that offer to the average law -abiding citizen?

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Do they really need 30? Is that something that's important? Well, one of the most dramatic examples, to answer your question, occurred back in the

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Watts riots when Korean merchants defended their stores from the rioters with AR -15 type rifles with big magazines, lots of bullets.

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And those were the stores sometimes rather dramatically standing alone amidst the rubble surrounding them of other burned out structures.

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They were able to preserve their stores because they were standing sometimes on the roof, shooting down, if need be, at the rioters.

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And the rioters got the message very quickly. That's not a good place to go. We'll go someplace else. And that was,

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I think, one example of where large magazine was helpful. Recently, there was a mother whose home had been invaded by some dirtbags.

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And she was able to hold them off. And I think she killed two of them. And the other one was able to get away because she had an

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AR -15 type firearm with a magazine with several rounds in it. And she needed it because, you know, unlike the movies, when we shoot at a bad guy, the adrenaline is running.

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I have enough trouble being a good shot when nobody's coming at me. And certainly, if I'm in a dangerous situation,

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I know from all the things that I've read, our aim goes down considerably.

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Some people say that maybe you'll be about half as good as you were at the range when the paper wasn't shooting back at you.

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Yeah. You know, it's interesting, Larry, my my oldest daughter is 16 years old.

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And she takes after her mom. So she's, she's really small and, you know, not, you know, not very strong.

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And, you know, when I've left at times, and I know she's going to be at home alone, she knows right where my AR -15 is, and she knows how to load it up and how to get it ready to go.

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And that's actually the weapon I prefer for her to try to defend herself with. I think that the pistols that I have the handguns that I have, are a little more hard to manage for someone of her size.

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It's the AR -15 that's easier to shoot. If she's not a very good aim, she's got 29 more.

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So I think that actually, it's the more effective. And just, it's the best option for my 16 year old daughter with a small frame.

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That's certainly a very good choice. There are other ways, perhaps other firearms that people might prefer.

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But that's an argument among friends. And the main thing is she has something that's got a lot more oomph than her fist to protect herself from maybe a 200 pound thug on drugs.

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That's exactly right. All right, Larry, you're a blessing. I like you a lot. Just a quick question. You said you're an elder in a church.

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What church? The Harvester Presbyterian Church in America, here in Springfield, Virginia.

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Yeah, I got some Presbyterians on staff here that are super excited about that one, brother. All right, so Larry, how can people...

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And it's the 500th anniversary of something that our forebears had something to do with.

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Well, I'm a Reformed Baptist. We got Presbyterians on staff. We're all right in line.

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Now, we know we're part of the same club now, Larry. So that's good. So, Larry, how can people get a hold of you?

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How can they support Gun Owners of America? Well, go to gunowners .org and for free, you can sign up for the email alerts that we put out.

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And the reason for that, not only is it information, but also it makes it very easy to fire off your own email, if you like what we've written, pre -written email, to your own member of Congress so that they realize that what they're thinking about doing is either a good idea or a bad idea, depending on what it might happen to be.

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They're fixing to come after the bonfire stock that was used by the dirtbag in Las Vegas.

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It's not a particularly effective device, in my opinion. But we know from what

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Nancy Pelosi has said, that if they get started banning that, that's not going to stop.

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They're going to try to make that the beginning of the slippery slope. So I think it's incumbent upon us if we believe that the

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Second Amendment is to restrain the government. The government has no business telling us with what means we might use to restrain them.

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That doesn't seem to be very logical. Excellent. I'm going to ask you a tough question right now, Larry.

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And if you decide you want this off the record, we'll make it off the record. But it's really just a personal question

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I have for you. At what point, Larry, in your opinion, as an elder in a church,

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I'm an elder in a Reformed Baptist church, but in your opinion, at what point as citizens, as Christians, do we actually defend ourselves or say, this is enough?

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Like, at what point is, where's the cut off for us in your mind, in terms of the government has gone too far?

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At what point do we actually exercise or flex the Second Amendment rights?

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Where's the cutoff in your mind? I don't think we can know that ahead of time. Consider that in 1775, there had been a number of skirmishes, a number of raids by the

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British on municipal magazines. The War for Independence didn't really kick in, if you will, until the

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Battle of Lexington. That turned out to be, in retrospect, what really got things started.

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And I don't think we're going to know if that, God forbid, ever were to happen again, until that time comes and we look back and say, that was it.

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But the one thing that I do know is that we need to be prepared. We have to have our

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AR -15 type firearms and magazines and ammunition ready beforehand, because we're not going to be able to go to the store when it gets started.

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That's right. All right, everybody. Larry Pratt, Executive Director Emeritus of Gun Owners of America. Larry, you've been a gift today and a blessing.

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I'll pray for all of your work. Thank you for all you're doing. Good to be with you. Let's do it again. Thank you.

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Next week with Jeff Durbin, the late night show with the unpopular opinion. Tuesday, only on Facebook Live.