Immediately after a white gunman killed nine worshippers at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, last month, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America started laying blame on the church’s slain pastor, who was also a state senator, for supporting gun control and not allowing concealed weapons in his church.
In an interview with Armed America Radio that was posted online last week, Pratt doubled down, claiming that the shooter, Dylann Roof, targeted a church “populated by liberals” and pastored by “Mr. Anti-Gun” because he knew his victims would be unarmed.
“Since this particular church was pastored by a state senator who was Mr. Anti-Gun,” he said, “then it became pretty obvious that yep, that was a gun-free zone, a bunch of liberal Democrats in there, and the dirtbag that struck, I think knew exactly what he was doing. There’d be plenty of black churches that he could have gone into, and he probably could have met effective resistance, but he went to one where it would be known to be populated by liberals, and then he had open season.”
Pratt made a similar argument about the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, claiming that the shooter “didn’t find any resistance” because Giffords is a Democrat.
