Crazy Larry Pratt of the Gun Owners Action League got himself a little attention by smacking Chris Matthews's gob for him last night. Pratt's long been the fringiest of gun-fringers, and he also has served as kind of unofficial public liaison to the survivalists, the various militias, and to the white supremacist fanatics who follow them around. (The indefatigable Dave Neiwerthas been on this case — and on this nutcase— for some time.) Essentially, Pratt argued for the unlimited private ownership of firearms in case armed sedition every becomes necessary. When asked by Matthews to name a single example of a citizen uprising of the kind that Pratt seemed to be proposing, and Pratt cited Athens, Tennessee in 1946.

"The Battle Of Athens," as it's usually called, involved an armed attack, mainly by World War II veterans, against a local political apparatus that had completely broken down the democratic process in McMinn County in Tennessee. (McMinn was a rebellious place from jump. It had allied itself with the Union during the Civil War and it had declared war on Spain before the rest of the country did.) Local government had become almost entirely corrupt to the point where, when the local vets came home, they found any attempt at political redress crushed by, among other institutions, the local cops, who harassed them for any offense, no matter how petty, real or imagined, and also infuriated them by getting between the vets and their hootch.

Bill White recalled coming home from overseas with mustering-out pay in his pocket: "There were several beer joints and honky-tonks around Athens; we were pretty wild; we started having trouble with the law enforcement at that time because they started making a habit of picking up GIs and fining them heavily for most anything-they were kind of making a racket out of it. After long hard years of service-most of us were hard-core veterans of World War II-we were used to drinking our liquor and our beer without being molested. When these things happened, the GIs got madder-the more GIs they arrested, the more they beat up, the madder we got ..."

In August of 1946, the vets ran a slate of throw-the-rascals-out candidates, and, on election day, the local machine posted armed guards at the polling places. The vets responded by going home and arming themselves. (The first person killed was an elderly black farmer who merely was trying to vote and was shot in the back by a deputy.) General mayhem ensued.

At the Strand Movie Theater across from the courthouse, the marquee read: "Coming Soon: Gunning for Vengeance." Bill White, who had fought in the Pacific while still in his teens and come home an ex-sergeant, had gotten angrier as the day wore on. At two in the afternoon he had harangued the group of veterans in the Essankay, saying: "You call yourselves GIs-you go over there and fight for three and four years-you come back and you let a bunch of draft dodgers who stayed here where it was safe, and you were making it safe for them, push you around. ... If you people don't stop this, and now is the time and place, you people wouldn't make a pimple on a fighting GI's ass. Get guns..."

At 2:48 A.M. the first dynamite was tossed toward the jail; it landed under Boe Dunn's cruiser, and the explosion flipped the vehicle over on its top, leaving its wheels spinning. Three more bundles of dynamite were thrown almost simultaneously; one landed on the jail porch roof, another under Mansfield's car, and the third struck the jail wall. The explosions rattled windows throughout the town; leaves fell from the trees, debris scattered for blocks, and the jailhouse porch jumped off its foundation. The deputies barricaded in the courthouse a block away rushed onto the balcony, eager to surrender. The jail's defenders staggered from their ruined stronghold and handed the ballot boxes over to the veterans.

With the Cantrell forces conquered, ten years of suppressed rage exploded. The townspeople set upon the captured deputies and, but for the GIs, probably would have killed them all. Minus Wilburn, a particularly unpopular deputy, had his throat slashed; Biscuit Farris, Cantrell's prison superintendent, had his jaw shattered by a bullet; and Windy Wise was kicked and beaten senseless. Joined by a number of their fellows, the GIs cleared the jail of the rioters and locked up their prisoners for the night.

The events in question have become iconic on the fringe of the gun movement wherein resides Larry Pratt and, indeed, the veterans of McMinn County, fresh off battlefields in Europe and the Pacific theater, were disinclined to get pushed around by political bosses who'd stayed safely at home and gotten fat off the political spoils. It's important to remember, however, that these same arguments are largely denied in history to, say, the coal miners at Matewan, or to the Black Panthers, whose arguments from the 1960s are indistinguishable from those made by Pratt to Matthews last night. Both groups were equally powerless against a political machine deaf to their pleas. Somehow, I doubt that Larry Pratt has a picture of Fred Hamptonor Sid Hatfield on his office wall.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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