Larry Pratt, the leader of the firearm lobbyist group Gun Owners of America (GOA), suggested in a recent interview with FoxNews.com that Jews in Europe lacked “determination” to stop the Holocaust.
Although Pratt and GOA routinely promote such extreme views, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said at the September 16 GOP primary debate that he was “honored” to be endorsed by GOA. Pratt was once a contributing editor at an anti-Semitic publication.
In an October 12 video posted on FoxNews.com, Pratt was asked by Fox News Radio's Alan Colmes to respond to a recent ahistorical and controversial claim by Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson that the Holocaust “would have been greatly diminished” if not for Nazi Germany's regulation of firearms.
Pratt replied: “Had the Jews had really good amounts of armament, they could have given the Nazis a real headache for a prolonged period of time, and in fact, had they had that determination to fight long before the [Warsaw] Ghetto, it might have been an entirely different story.”
Colmes called Pratt's claim “an extremely offensive position to a lot of Jews and also historically inaccurate.”
Claims that the Holocaust could have been averted were it not for Adolf Hitler's gun policies have been repeatedly called historically inaccurate by The Anti-Defamation League, a national civil rights group. In fact, Hitler loosened gun laws for his political allies while banning firearms for the people he wanted to oppress, which is an indictment of fascistic policies -- not laws regulating firearms.
Pratt is widely seen as one of the founders of the 1990s militia movement in the United States. In 1996, he was forced to leave the presidential campaign of Republican Pat Buchanan after it was revealed he had spoken at militia gatherings with representatives from white supremacist groups, including the leader of the anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement. He also previously served as a contributing editor to a publication of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America.