President Obama caused a lot of right-wing heads to explode when he nominated Merrick Garland to take the seat of Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. But few wingnut reactions have been nearly as ugly or unhinged as that of prominent gun-rights extremist Larry Pratt. Earlier this week, he made what sounded like a death threat against Garland for his rulings on gun issues.
Pratt is the executive director of the Gun Owners of America, an outfit that thinks the National Rifle Association isn’t extreme enough. On Thursday, he was a guest on “Trunews,” a far-right Internet radio program hosted by conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles. People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch got a clip.
Wiles and Pratt discussed Garland’s role in District of Columbia v. Heller, a case that challenged the District’s longstanding ban on gun ownership within the District. The case ultimately made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which struck it down as unconstitutional. Pratt claimed that when the case was before the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, Garland voted in favor of the ban. He also claimed that Garland voted in favor of a national gun registry. To Pratt, these votes prove that Garland is no moderate. Rather, he has a “consistent” track record of “opposition to the Second Amendment.”
There’s just one problem with those claims–they aren’t true. When the case initially came before the D. C. Circuit in 2007, a three-judge panel voted 2-1 to find the ban was unconstitutional. However, Garland was not a member of that panel. The dissent came from circuit judge Karen Henderson. The only time Garland was directly involved in the case came when the District requested an en banc hearing–a hearing before the full court. The court voted 6-4 not to rehear the case–with Garland voting in favor of rehearing it.
The other case Pratt referenced is NRA v. Reno, in which the D. C. Circuit found that the Brady Act’s requirement to destroy gun background check data didn’t require the data to be destroyed immediately. Rather, it could be retained for up to six months to give the FBI time to screen for potential fraud. Somehow, the fringe concludes this amounted to a gun registry.
When Wiles asked him how he thought Garland would rule on the Second Amendment, Pratt said this:
“Well, judicially, it’s in a heap of trouble. Happily, the Second Amendment is all about people like Judge Garland, so there is a limit to how far he can go, I think.”
What does Pratt mean here? Well, he believes that the Second Amendment gives people carte blanche to intimidate leaders they don’t like–even to the point of threatening their lives. Back in 2014, he told right-wing host Bill Cunningham that the Second Amendment was intended to instill “a healthy fear” in our elected leaders that they could be the target of a death threat if they don’t “behave.”
And a few months later, he told Alan Colmes that forcing politicians to live in active fear for their lives “is what the Second Amendment is all about.”
Despite such outrageous rhetoric, Pratt has attracted a very high-profile supporter–Ted Cruz. The GOA has endorsed Cruz for president, and Cruz has sent out a fundraising email on the GOA’s behalf in which he openly stated that he worked with them to derail gun-control measures proposed in the aftermath of Sandy Hook.
Put in this context, there can be no doubt–Pratt was making a thinly-veiled death threat against Garland. And yet, he did so in a way that gives him plausible deniability in case some kook does decide to kill Garland for one of his rulings. Since he didn’t directly call for Garland to be shot, he can’t be arrested since he wasn’t threatening “imminent lawless action.” However, even if Pratt was (barely) within the law with his remarks, that doesn’t make them acceptable. It says a lot about Wiles that he didn’t even try to shut Pratt down or call him out.
Lately, a number of prominent conservatives have dropped by Wiles’ show, even though he thinks Obama is demon-possessed, Scalia’s death was a pagan ritual, and Zika was some sort of divine punishment. But I thought that he had at least some standards. Apparently not, if he finds an on-air death threat acceptable.
