Washington --

Gun rights advocates have long linked hunting, target shooting and self-defense to the Second Amendment. But more recently some have added a new element: preventing tyranny.

"If you look at why our founding fathers put (the Second Amendment) there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George, and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny," National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month.

The Second Amendment "ensures against the tyranny of the government," Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, said on Fox News. "If they know that the biggest army is the American people, then you don't have the tyranny that came from King George. That is why it was put in there."

The "tyranny" rationale is "both a distortion of history and potentially very dangerous," said Dennis Henigan, a former vice president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

"I also call it the Timothy McVeigh theory of the Second Amendment," Henigan said, referring to the militia-inspired bomber of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 who was executed in 2001.

Fringe beliefs feared

Constitutional law experts, gun control advocates and some lawmakers on Capitol Hill worry that what was once a fringe belief of militia groups training in the woods with semiautomatic rifles is now merging into the mainstream of gun owners and gun rights advocacy.

At the same Judiciary hearing last month, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., recounted how NRA members in Illinois told him the Second Amendment is not just about hunting, target shooting and self-defense.

Durbin said he was told, "We need the firepower and the ability to protect ourselves from our government ... if they knock on our doors and we need to fight back."

LaPierre sidestepped Durbin's question on whether he agreed, talking instead about the need for guns if civil order breaks down in the midst of riots or natural disasters.

Baltimore County Police Chief James Johnson, asked by Durbin to comment, said he found the viewpoint "scary (and) creepy. And it's simply just not based on logic."

Tyranny talk from NRA leaders and others reflects fear, well founded or not, that the post-Newtown raft of gun proposals now before Congress will result in gun confiscations. It also may reflect the NRA's concern about being outflanked on the right by even more strident gun rights organizations such as Gun Owners of America.

In an exchange on CNN with Piers Morgan, Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt decried President Obama's effort to achieve gun control through executive orders, saying it "throws into question the legitimacy of the federal government."

"I would advise Mr. Obama to consider what happened to George III when he was doing similar things against the American colonists," Pratt added.

Once a leftist struggle

Words like these are a far cry from the 1960s and 1970s, when inflammatory language on armed struggle came from the extreme left, not the right.

In May 1967, 30 members of Oakland's Black Panther Party walked into California's state Capitol in Sacramento with shotguns and rifles. They were protesting legislation to ban open carrying of weapons - now a sacred cow of NRA members.

Many experts agree that the Founding Fathers did envision the Second Amendment as part of a bulwark against an overarching federal government with the potential of using its military power in undemocratic ways.

"The founders were concerned that the presidency could became a tyrannical force, which is why they divvied up power between the executive, legislative and judicial branches," said Adam Winkler, constitutional law professor at UCLA and author of "Gun Fight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America."

Nevertheless, it is "absurd" to think the Second Amendment was put into the Constitution as a way of sanctioning armed revolt against the government, Winkler added.