MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Police gather around site where Cong. Gabby Giffords was shot and others killed on January 8, 2011. (Photo: SearchNetMedia)

Larry Pratt, long-time head of the Gun Owners of America (GOA) - which is to the NRA what the Tea Party is to the GOP - believes United States representatives should live in dread of being shot.

According to Right Wing Watch,

Prominent gun lobbyist Larry Pratt is doubling down on his insistence that members of Congress should have a “healthy fear” of being shot, lecturing a congresswoman who felt threatened by one of his group’s members that she just doesn’t understand the Constitution.

Right Wing Watch first reported Pratt’s comments in a March interview with radio host Bill Cunningham. Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, told Cunningham that a member of his group had spoken to a congresswoman who told him, “you want to shoot me, don’t you.” “Well, that’s probably a healthy fear for them to have,” Pratt said. “You know, I’m kind of glad that’s in the back of their minds. Hopefully they’ll behave.” Since that veiled threat, Pratt has slyly retreated into translating his words into a disclaimer: “I have never encouraged, or even suggested, that anyone harm anyone.” Then he went on to explain that the fear of being shot is a tool to educate elected representatives about gun rights. BuzzFlash isn’t funded by corporate advertising, but by readers like you. Can you help sustain our work with a tax-deductible donation? Yet, educating elected officials apparently includes once again implying that the bullet box may replace the ballot box. According to Pratt: Should you attempt to disarm Americans the way the British crown tried 240 years ago, the same sovereign people who constituted this government using the cartridge box someday may need to reconstitute it, as clearly anticipated by the Declaration of Independence. Larry Pratt is a spokesperson for the enemy within the United States – and what is more unnerving is that he is not even the most radical zealot of gun extremists. Needless to say, his fanning the flames of members of Congress fearing being shot is not only inciting violence (although he paradoxically denies that is what he is doing), but it takes on a particular malodorous, offensive and heartless opprobrium considering the shooting of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and the killing by firearms of persons attending an informal meeting with her.

Another article in Right Wing Watch entitled, “Gabrielle Giffords' Husband Urges Lawmakers To Reject Support From Gun Owners Of America,” reports: Understandably upset by Pratt’s comfort with threats of gun violence to members of Congress, Kelly issued statement yesterday urging lawmakers to reject contributions from GOA.

“No matter where you stand on policies that reduce gun violence, Larry Pratt’s view that our leaders should live in fear of gun violence is an affront to all responsible gun owners, Gabby and me included,” Kelly wrote.

“No candidate for office should accept the support of Larry Pratt’s organization again.”

Trying to keep up with the threat of the gun lobby, including its militant offshoots such as Gun Owners of America, is a full time task.

Speaking of guns as an ongoing threat to the health and lives of the nation - a public health problem - a Florida court just upheld the right of the state legislature to forbid physicians from speaking to families and gun violence victims about the dangers of guns in the home.

Yes, as Think Progress writes, “Court Upholds Florida Law That Punishes Doctors For Talking About Guns”:

Several years ago, the American Medical Association advised doctors to ask their patients about firearms and “educate patients to the dangers of firearms to children” in the name of public health. But doctors in Florida may be suppressed from giving this medical advice, now that a federal appeals court upheld a Florida law that became known as the “physician gag rule” because it punishes doctors for talking about guns.

The ruling could have major implications as policymakers examine gun violence as a public health issue. The National Rifle Association-backed law it upheld imposes severe limits on when doctors can ask their patients about guns or keep records in their patients’ charts about firearm safety. Doctors who are found to have violated the provision risk sanctions or loss of their license.

A doctor can lose his or her license for counseling at risk individuals about the dangers of guns? However, Larry Pratt is not prosecuted for cunningly implying it’s okay to keep those in Congress in fear of being assassinated.

In essence, the bloodshed (some 30,000 deaths a year in the US as a result of gun homicides, suicides and accidents) caused by a radical interpretation of the Second Amendment supersedes the First Amendment right of a physician to save lives through informing people about the dangers of firearms.

That's an inversion of the Constitution that is literally killing the United States.

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Prominent gun lobbyist Larry Pratt is doubling down on his insistence that members of Congress should have a “healthy fear” of being shot, lecturing a congresswoman who felt threatened by one of his group’s members that she just doesn’t understand the Constitution. Right Wing Watch first reported Pratt’s comments in a March interview with radio host Bill Cunningham. Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, told Cunningham that a member of his group had spoken to a congresswoman who told him, “you want to shoot me, don’t you.” “Well, that’s probably a healthy fear for them to have,” Pratt said. “You know, I’m kind of glad that’s in the back of their minds. Hopefully they’ll behave.” - See more at: - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/larry-pratt-doubles-down-telling-congresswoman-she-should-fear-being-shot#sthash.MN2QJxYW.dpuf