Conservative South Florida radio host Joyce Kaufman, who briefly served as chief of staff to former Republican Rep. Allen West, said today that she did not believe that the terrorist who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando this weekend targeted the location out of animosity toward gay people, but instead because he knew that club-goers would be unarmed.
“How long does he have to be the president before he figures out that what we had happen in Orlando was a terrorist act?” Kaufman asked of President Obama, who called the massacre an “act of terror and an act of hate.”
“I don’t care if the guy was gay, I don’t care if his wife took him there, he launched an attack of terror against the patrons of the Pulse nightclub,” Kaufman said. “I don’t look at them as gay patrons, they are the patrons, they are fellow human beings. It could have been any nightclub in anywhere in any country. When you’re crazy like that, the last thing I think you’re concerned about is the gender preference of your victims. I just don’t believe it. I don’t think this was a hate crime, I think this was an act of terrorism, I think he knew he had a group of people who were in a gun-free zone and who don’t carry guns for the most part anyway … I don’t know any gay men who carry.”
While Florida concealed carry permit holders are not allowed to bring firearms into establishments that serve alcohol, the Orlando attacker did confront “good guys with guns”: He exchanged fire with an off-duty police officer who was guarding the club and two other police officers during the attack.
Yesterday, Kaufman interviewed former Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt, who said that politicians who support gun regulations are “complicit” in the Orlando shooting. Kaufman and Pratt urged listeners to defy gun-free zone regulations and carry firearms even where they are prohibited.
“Listen, I have had it with no-gun zones, I have had it with soft targets, and I recognize the fact that from now on, I’m responsible for my security,” Kaufman said, to an “amen” from Pratt.
They two said that if they had been in the club that was attacked, things would have turned out differently.
“Had I been one of those people cowering in the bathroom, I would have done more than text home,” Kaufman said.
“Yeah, shooting a text and shooting a gun are really enormously different in how effective they can be against a dirtbag with a gun,” Pratt said. “And for our legislators to keep insisting that somehow we are going to be better off in a gun-free zone, that makes them complicit. And I’ll say it to their face, they are complicit with what happens in Orlando…”
“And you and I both agree that what they’re forcing people to do is become lawbreakers themselves,” Kaufman said. “Law-abiding citizens are not going to abide by these laws in the future because they want a fighting chance.”
“Not if they want to survive and they go to any place that’s quote-unquote ‘gun free,’” Pratt responded.
Kaufman added that gun-free zones are impeding her “free access to places”: “Look, I don’t have to march into a post office with a gun or into a federal courthouse with a gun, but I’ll be darned if I’m told where I can eat, where I can drink, where I can dance by the government. And since I don’t go without a gun, they have begun to impinge upon my free access to places.”
