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I'm not sure why MSNBC thinks that anyone from an organization that makes the NRA look like moderates deserves to get some air time or to be treated as someone the public should take seriously, but they brought Gun Owners of America's Erich Pratt (son of Larry Pratt) on to bash President Obama after his press conference today calling for sweeping new gun laws.

As Think Progress noted, he decided to dish out a bit of revisionist history on just when St. Ronnie was in support of gun control and as I noted this week, it was before he was president and well before he started exhibiting symptoms of Alzheimer's disease: Reagan Only Supported Gun Control Because He Was Senile, Prominent Gun Advocate Suggests:

As he unveiled his comprehensive package of gun safety regulations on Wednesday afternoon, President Obama urged Americans to stand up to irrational opponents of restrictions on military-style weapons, noting that even President Ronald Reagan supported sensible restrictions on assault weapons. “And by the way, so did Ronald Reagan, one of the staunchest defenders of the Second Amendment, who wrote to Congress in 1994 urging them — this is Ronald Reagan speaking — urging them to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement community and support a ban on the further manufacture of military-style assault weapons,” Obama said.

Asked about Reagan’s position during an appearance on MSNBC shortly after Obama’s remarks, Erich Pratt of Gun Owners of America, suggested that Reagan only supported greater restrictions because he was senile:

ANDREA MITCHELL (HOST): What’s the problem with registering a gun? If you have a bushmaster, first of all, why would you have one?

PRATT: President Reagan owned an AR-15.

MITCHELL: And he supported gun control. He advocated…

PRATT: In his later years. We have to keep that in account.

MITCHELL: In his later years he was almost killed by John Hinckley.

PRATT: But all through his presidency he opposed gun control, that’s my point.

Read on...

Pratt was also defending the NRA's new ad that they decided to double down on today, even though, as Andrea Mitchell noted, it's generally considered off limits to be going after the children of presidents. These groups don't care how low they have to go if it gets their base whipped into a frenzy and protects the gun manufacturers who are funding them.

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Gun Owners of America Director Larry Pratt on Sunday called for lawmakers to end gun-free zones at schools instead of "wasting out time" with the "false security" of universal background checks.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden told host Chris Wallace that the argument that background checks wouldn't help stop mass shootings was "absolutely wrong."

"If we look at the Virginia Tech shooting, that was because we had a faulty background check system that that person wasn't caught," she explained. "He should not have had a gun because he had problems with mental illness... People would be alive today if we had these kinds of things in place."

Pratt, however, said that gun safety advocates were "avoiding the reality that we have been moving in the direction that somehow self defense is not valid, that we can somehow protect ourselves by this background check idea."

"I think it's false security that somehow we're going to stop problems, when there's really no way to spot these problems," he insisted. "Some of the most horrendous mass murders that have happened recently -- including the one in Newtown -- would not have been stopped by a background check."

"We're wasting our time going in that direction when we should be talking about doing away with the gun-free zones, which have been so convenient and such a magnate to those who would come and slaughter lots of people knowing that there's going to be nobody that's legally able to defend themselves in these zones."

Pratt added: "In fact, background checks wouldn't have stopped most of these mass murders that have occurred... We got to face the reality that we've got empower average people, including teachers and other people in schools to be able to defend themselves."

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I'm not sure what the Gun Owners of America's Larry Pratt thought he had to gain by going on the air with The Young Turk's Cenk Uygur, but he found himself getting blasted after defending George Zimmerman for murdering Trayvon Martin and claiming he had a right to shoot him dead.

Pratt's argument; that one witness claimed he saw Zimmerman on the ground being beaten up by the unarmed kid who was 100 pounds lighter than him and once the guy he was stalking was getting the better of him in a fight, he had the right to shoot him dead. Unbelievable. Needless to say, Uygur went off on him for promoting that level of vigilantism.

This guy is a real piece of work. The Southern Poverty Law Center has this on his background from a report they issued in 2001.

False Patriots - Profiles of 40 antigovernment leaders:

Eight Lanes Out
Larry Pratt, 58

Larry Pratt, a gun rights absolutist whose Gun Owners of America (GOA) has been described as "eight lanes to the right" of the National Rifle Association, may well be the person who brought the concept of citizen militias to the radical right.

In 1990, Pratt wrote a book, Armed People Victorious, based on his study of "citizen defense patrols" used in Guatemala and the Philippines against Communist rebels — patrols that came to be known as death squads for their murderous brutality.

Picturing these groups in rosy terms, Pratt advocated similar militias in the United States — an idea that finally caught on when he was invited for a meeting of 160 extremists, including many famous white supremacists, in 1992.

It was at that meeting, hosted in Colorado by white supremacist minister Pete Peters, that the contours of the militia movement were laid out.

Pratt, whose GOA has grown since its 1975 founding to some 150,000 members today, hit the headlines in a big way when his associations with Peters and other professional racists were revealed, convincing arch-conservative Pat Buchanan to eject him as a national co-chair of Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign.

The same year, it emerged that Pratt was a contributing editor to a periodical of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America, and that his GOA had donated money to a white supremacist attorney's group.

Pratt is today close to the extremist Constitution Party and its radical theology.

And here he was back in 2009 arguing on Hardball that we should have everyone packing heat at presidential events.

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Chris Matthews allows 2nd Amendment protesters Larry Pratt and Skip Coryell to dig their own hole while trying to get them to explain what freedoms are being taken away from them and what right the 2nd Amendment protects. The one thing that's obvious from watching them is that their irrational fears and blind hatred for the President has little to do with anyone taking away their guns.

For a reminder on who these guys are, here's what David Neiwert shared with us on Pratt back in August of 2009.

But then, that shouldn't be terribly surprising. As hate-group expert Brian Levin, the second guest, tries to explain, the GOA has a long history of right-wing extremism, dating back to the days in the 1980s when it was part of Willis Carto's white-nationalist operation. The main figure in all this was GOA's longtime and current leader, Larry Pratt.

Moreover, as the ADL explains, Pratt actually played a critical role in the formation of the militia movement in the 1990s:

In 1992, Larry Pratt, leader of a radical gun- rights group [the GOA] and an advocate of the formation of militias, issued a statement in the wake of the Rodney King riots urging the Los Angeles Police Department to "take advantage of what the Founding Fathers called the unorganized militia" in order to forestall further unrest. Many people initially joined the fledgling militia movement largely as a way to protect more aggressively their right to bear arms; even today, gun-related issues dominate many of the newsletters published by militia groups.

The SPLC has more on Pratt.

David Corn has this on Skip Coryell:

On April 19, an assortment of gun-rights groups will mount the Second Amendment March at the grounds of the Washington Monument. On the Web site for the march, its founder, Skip Coryell, calls it a "peaceful" event. But these folks, as the Violence Policy Center points out in a new report, are pushing a virulent strain of anti-government extremism that certainly could drive a body to take violent action.

Last month in an article for Human Events, a conservative magazine, Coryell noted that one aim of the march is to imply the threat of violence:

My question to everyone reading this article is this: "For you, as an individual, when do you draw your saber? When do you say "Yes, I am willing to rise up and overthrow an oppressive, totalitarian government?"

Is it when the government takes away your private business?

Is it when the government rigs elections?

Is it when the government imposes martial law?

Is it when the government takes away your firearms?

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating the immediate use of force against the government. It isn't time, and hopefully that time will never come. But one thing is certain: "Now is the time to rattle your sabers." If not now, then when?

... I understand that sounds harsh, but these are harsh times. ...

I hear the clank of metal on metal getting closer, but that's not enough. The politicians have to hear it too. They have to hear it, and they have to believe it.

Come and support me at the Second Amendment March on April 19th on the Washington Monument grounds. Let's rattle some sabers and show the government we're still here.

Notice that Coryell says he's not advocating the immediate use of force against the government. That sure makes it sound like he's revving up the gun-rights troops for possible rebellion down the road.

Transcript below the fold.

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