Philip Van Cleave (born 1952 in Kankakee, Illinois) is an American gun rights advocate and the president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL). In 2018, he appeared on the show ''

Who is America? ''Who Is America?'' is an American political satire mockumentary style television series created by Sacha Baron Cohen that premiered on July 15, 2018, on Showtime. Baron Cohen also stars in the series as various characters and executive produce ...

'' where he instructed preschool children how to use guns in a fictitious show.

Early life

Van Cleave grew up in Illinois. When he was 16, his mother bought him his first gun: a

.410 bore The .410 bore is one of the smallest caliber of shotgun shell commonly available (along with the 9mm Flobert rimfire cartridge, and the less common .22 rimfire shot shell). A .410 bore shotgun loaded with shot shells is well suited for small g ...

shotgun A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which usually discharges numerous small p ...

. When he was 21, he volunteered as a reserve deputy sheriff in San Antonio and purchased his first

.357 magnum The .357 Smith & Wesson Magnum, .357 S&W Magnum, .357 Magnum, or 9×33mmR as it is known in unofficial metric designation, is a smokeless powder cartridge with a bullet diameter. It was created by Elmer Keith, Phillip B. Sharpe, and Douglas B. ...

Ruger service revolver.

Career

Van Cleave joined the Virginia Citizens Defense League in 1995, a year after it was founded. In June 2004, he received the Gun Rights Defender of the Month Award from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Views

Van Cleave is a proponent of a strong interpretation of the

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution protects the Right to keep and bear arms in the United States, right to keep and bear arms. It was ratified on December 15, 1791, along with nine other articles of the Un ...

, believing open access to guns guarantees that individual Americans have the right to defend themselves and, as he put it in 2004, "to take back your country should it ever become a totalitarian state." Although some other gun rights groups (such as the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms) have criticized the VCDL for having its members open carry en masse, Van Cleave has defended this practice, saying that it helps educate both citizens and the police about Virginia's gun laws. He has also defended the VCDL's advocacy for passing concealed carry laws that allow college students to carry guns on campus if they have a permit, saying after the Virginia Tech shooting, "If just one of those adult students had been armed in that building, there would have been a much better chance that somebody would have stopped the madman." In 2010, it was reported that he was pressuring Virginia lawmakers to legalize gun carrying and drinking among non-police officers as well as police officers, so long as they are not drunk while carrying the gun, arguing that "We're not allowed to drink, but they can. That's two classes of citizens." Van Cleave has been interviewed on 60-Minutes, Nightline, the Washington Post, and a host of other places. Van Cleave appeared on '' The Daily Show'' in 2013 for a segment about

gun control Gun control, or firearms regulation, is the set of laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms by civilians. Most countries have a restrictive firearm guiding policy, with on ...

in Australia. On the show, he was interviewed by John Oliver, and said of gun control that "At the end of the day, none of it works." He went on to say that the United States only had such high gun crime rates because it had so many guns, to which Oliver replied "That's ''my'' point."

Sacha Baron Cohen interview

In 2018 Van Cleave appeared in a fake promotional pro-gun rights video advocating the arming of children and toddlers by Sacha Baron Cohen's Showtime spoof interview series, ''

'' Baron Cohen had disguised himself as an Israeli ex-Mossad agent and invited Van Cleave to Washington, DC to receive a "Friend of Israel" award in honor of Israel's 70th anniversary by a fictitious pro-Israel group created by Baron Cohen. In the segment Van Cleave endorses “Kinderguardians,” a phony program to teach and arm schoolchildren as young as three to protect themselves in the classroom. In the segment Van Cleave argued that, since children have not developed a

conscience Conscience is a cognitive process that elicits emotion and rational associations based on an individual's moral philosophy or value system. Conscience stands in contrast to elicited emotion or thought due to associations based on immediate sens ...

, "they would make very effective soldiers". Other notable pro-gun politicians were duped by the fake award into appearing in the segment, including former US Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, former US congressman Joe Walsh, and former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore.

References

External links

Who Is America? (2018)
at youtube.com, includes an interview between Van Cleave and Sacha Baron Cohen {{DEFAULTSORT:Van Cleave, Philip American gun rights activists Living people American computer programmers APL implementers 1952 births People from Kankakee, Illinois