Gun Owners of America and its Racist Justification for Gun Violence

Glenn Beck said yesterday that “the Nazis are here.” And as we have pointed out here before, this is true, though not in the way Beck means. Who are really here are the crazies, Beck himself not least among them.

The Republican Party, that corporatist-theocratic entity that has become an excuse for all things vile and low, feeds on fear and paranoia and its sirens are faces like Limbaugh and Beck and Hannity and Coulter and Issa and Bachmann and Paul and too many others to name. The lunatic fringe has become the base and the base the sane fringe.

For 24 hours a day what you find on Fox News are stories about “the Benghazi fallout” – a Republican created scandal that is no scandal, and stories about Acorn (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a threat to democracy that was never a threat to democracy and that has not existed for three years, and other stories like it. Fox News, like the Republican Party itself, is a feeding frenzy of fear.

Look at a report coming out of Right Wing Watch yesterday, where, Miranda Blue writes,

On a recent episode of the Talk to Solomon Show, Gun Owners of America executive director and actual influential person Larry Pratt played a sort of conspiracy-theory Mad Libs with host Stan Solomon, which resulted in the conclusion that Obamacare will force gun owners to undergo electro-shock therapy against their wills.

Watch courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

It is unknown, of course, how many people actually believe these reports, but evidence suggests no small number. The NRA has been making hay with their “coming to get white folks’ guns” for years, no matter how many years pass by without anybody coming for white folks’ guns. If the NRA can get away with cray-cray, why not Gun Owners of America? Aren’t they white folks, too?

This is just a week after we had Pratt claiming that any charges the “racist” Attorney General Eric Holder brings against George Zimmerman will be designed to “intimidate the rest of the country so that we don’t think about defending ourselves” against “attacks by black mobs on white individuals.”

Take a gander at this one too, also from Right Wing Watch:

So they’re going to take white folks guns and even those who still have guns will be too intimidated to defend themselves against all those “black mobs” nobody sees anywhere, unless they’re groups of black people stopped and frisked by the New York City Police Department.

I’d say the racist white folks have matters well in hand. You would think Pratt would at least pretend not to be racist by maybe amending his fear-mongering to simply “mobs” and let the racist base fill in the blanks. But no, you have to wear your white power on your sleeve to be elected to office as a Republican today, like Texas Republican Steve Stockman, about whom Warren Throckmorton had a few things to say on July 29 of this year.

Pratt thinks Holder doesn’t belong here and that the whole situation would best be resolved by Holder moving to Cuba. Presumably to fill the place of Ted Cruz’s Castro-supporting Communist father.

And of course, Gun Owners of America doesn’t want Sheila Jackson replacing Janet Napolitano as head of the Department of Homeland Security because Jackson wants hurricanes named after all ethnic groups, not just white folks. Pratt complained – and this has to be one of the most nonsensical attacks of all time – that,

“[Jackson Lee thinks] one of the top pressing issues of our time … is the group NOAA, which takes part in naming hurricanes,” he explains. “She thinks that they’re racist because they don’t use black-sounding names like ‘D’Shaun’ and ‘Keisha’ and ‘Jamal’ and names like that.”

This, coming from a guy who thinks nonexistent “black mobs” taking guns from white folks is the biggest threat facing America.

What we’re seeing from gun lobbyists is just an endless parade of crazy, and it isn’t going to stop any time soon, given that it’s been going on for years and is so well-received by pro-slavery Republicans. After all, white folks have a right to defend themselves, they say, and whose more dangerous than a radical leftist than a black radical leftist?

Let’s face it: what chance do minorities have in this country when white Republicans insist on a right to impeach our president simply because he is a black man living in a big white house? If they can find sense in this, they can find sense in anything.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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