Gun Group Aims to Stop Immigration Bill

What does an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws have to do with the Second Amendment right to own guns?

If you're the Gun Owners of America, everything.

The GOA, a smaller cousin of the National Rifle Association that often takes an even more aggressive approach, is branding the just-passed Senate immigration bill, with its path to citizenship for people in the country illegally, as an "anti-gun amnesty."

As the GOA sees it, allowing the estimated 11 million immigrants now in the U.S. illegally to eventually become U.S. citizens would inevitably lead to many more Democratic voters in the electorate and thus more votes for gun control legislation.

In an interview, Larry Pratt, the GOA's executive director, told me his experience with many Hispanic immigrants (he said he's bilingual and that he attends a Spanish-language church) suggests that "they really don't know much about American politics but that their default assumption is that the Democrats are their friends.

"And the Democrats very likely will end up getting their votes. And if that, indeed, winds up with a Democratic dominance politically, there go our guns," he said.

Read More: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/06/28/196707442/gun-group-aims-to-stop-immigration-bill?live=1