In an interview with Dove TV on Tuesday, Gun Owners of America Communications Director Erich Pratt claimed that laws permitting concealed carry of firearms will be “the death knell for terrorists” because “the only way that you’re going to stop” terrorist attacks is with a heavily armed populace.
Discussing the attack on an anti-Islam event in Garland, Texas, which was thwarted when local and federal law enforcement officers shot the attackers, host Perry Atkinson told Pratt, “In some ways the war on terror in America now has been unleashed at a new level. Wouldn’t that become gun owners’ greatest defense?”
“Oh absolutely,” Pratt responded. “That is the only way that you’re going to stop this, because terrorists are notorious showing up at a scene, gunning down a bunch of people, and then they run back into the woods, type of scenario. But what happened in Texas is textbook for how you deal with this.”
Citing a debunked report of an ISIS training camp in Mexico and “all kinds of reports of Middle Eastern people who are coming across our southern border,” Pratt said the Garland attack was “just a reminder that people need to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.”
“And the more and more that people are carrying, we’ve actually seen violent crime rates dropping,” Pratt said, demonstrating a grasp of statistics reminiscent of his father, GOA director Larry Pratt. “It’s very interesting, just in the last five years, the number of concealed carry permit holders has doubled in this country, and yet at the same time, the gun murder rate has dropped 12 percent. So we’re literally seeing more guns, less crime. And that approach is the death knell for terrorists. They can’t deal with that.
