Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, whose endorsement Sen. Ted Cruz boasted of in a September presidential debate, claimed yesterday that the gunman who killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs last week chose his target because he knew it was a “Democrat place” and his victims would be unarmed. The patients at the Planned Parenthood were likely unarmed liberals, Pratt said, because “conservatives typically don’t knock off their children.”
In an interview with Florida talk radio host Joyce Kaufman, the radical gun lobbyist agreed with Kaufman that the Colorado Springs attacker shouldn’t have been allowed to have a gun, a rather odd statement seeing that Pratt wants to abolish all background checks for gun buyers.
But, Pratt said, “bad guys have a way of getting guns” and the real “pity is that nobody in the danger zone was able to protect themselves and shoot back.”
Kaufman asked why that was, given Colorado Springs’ permissive gun laws.
“They can [carry] if they wish,” Pratt answered, “but apparently when you’re talking about, let’s face it, a Planned Parenthood clinic: liberal. Conservatives typically don’t knock off their children, they’re kind of looking forward to having them. So, Planned Parenthood, they give to Democrats, it’s a Democrat place. So that’s where this dirtbag decided to go.”
He added that the Planned Parenthood was “unofficially” a gun-free zone because “that’s the way liberals think.”
Pratt did not mention that one of the three people the Colorado Springs shooter killed was a well-armed (and reportedly conservative) police officer.
This is similar to Pratt’s response to previous mass shootings. When a man killed six people and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, Pratt alleged that the gunman “didn’t find any resistance” because his victims were Democrats. (In that incident, an armed person nearby almost shot the wrong person.) He similarly blamed this year’s shooting at a church in Charleston on church’s pastor's support for gun restrictions.
