On Tuesday night, CNN’s Piers Morgan interviewed Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America. Anyone who has watched Morgan knows he has an obsessive dislike for America’s gun culture. He’s a fierce advocate for gun control, so it didn’t take a genius to predict the interview would be confrontational. But it turned out to be much more, and much uglier, than that.
Mr. Morgan was furious, insulting, and childish during the interview. He called Pratt “an unbelievably stupid man,” “dangerous,” accused Pratt of being a liar, said, “You shame your country,” and for good measure added, “You don’t give a damn, do you, about the gun murder rate in America.”
On Morgan v. Pratt, I have three observations to make. The first is that you would think that if Mr. Pratt was as stupid as Morgan said, Morgan could easily best him in a debate. But he didn’t. And I say that as someone who has disagreements with Pratt on gun control.
Second, Morgan embodies an attitude that we’re seeing more and more on the left. It’s a nasty combination of supreme self-righteousness and reflexive demonization. Piers Morgan can’t accept that people of good will and decency might hold views that are very different than he does on gun control. And so it’s not enough to say Pratt is wrong; he has to be portrayed by Morgan as moronic and a moral monster. This act is lovely coming from those who from time to time, and when it’s convenient, lecture the rest of us on the importance of civility in public discourse.
Point three is that Morgan and his CNN colleagues Don Lemon and Soledad O’Brien have become vocal and emotional (but not particularly well-informed) advocates for gun control since the Newtown massacre. There is not the slightest pretense of objectivity. They and their network have a story to tell, a cause to advance, an ideology to champion. And they will use their posts as journalists, including (in the case of Lemon and O’Brien) as anchors, to make their case.
Now the liberalism of these three individuals–and CNN more broadly–is hardly a state secret. Their bias is evident to anyone who watches them. That’s true of someone like Anderson Cooper, whose show I generally like. But since the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, CNN’s cast of characters (Cooper excluded) has begun to resemble the prime-time line-up at MSNBC. And for all of MSNBC’s problems–and they are very nearly endless–at least there is no play acting. They are left and they are proud of it. Which is better in some respects than CNN, which is liberal but pretends not to be.
Piers Morgan made a fool of himself and embarrassed his network on Tuesday night. And while I don’t share Larry Pratt’s views on guns, he did the country a bit of a service in revealing the ugly politics of Piers Morgan.
It appears that the Republicans, and conservatives in general, will make no substantial progress in this country until we have a more, and tremendously more, balanced news media. A 'free' press should not mean an insanely biased medium. It does here. The status is not far from a dictatorial controlled press in many other parts of the world, which includes the west – e.g. Britain.
And we certainly won't get a more balanced press as long as conservatives voluntarily allow themselves to be used as props for the MSM. Why any conservative watches this crap is beyond me, but why any conservative would go on one of these shows is beyond stupid. Often, folks, we are our own worst enemies.
Blaming guns for gun crime is like blaming Boeing for 9/11.
Pretty stupid analogy as guns are designed to kill that is their primary purpose. nPlanes are designed to transport people, that is their primary purpose. nBTW, it takes years of training to become licensed to be a pilot and the aviation industry is heavily regulated. Anyone can walk into a gun show and buy all the weapons they want including terrorists.
Can you name a single instance of a terrorist walking into a gun show and buying all the weapons he wants?
The design intent of guns or aircraft (including F15s, F16s, B52s, etc.) or anything else is irrelevant compared with the lawful or unlawful intent behind their use.
Again, absurd Mr Rogue! Guns intended purpose is to kill whereas the aircraft flown into the WTC were never designed for any purpose other than transportation. Now tell me how many times in history were commercial aircraft flown by commercial airlines used to kill people? Now tell me how many times guns were used to kill people? n nDo you finally get how utterly absurd you previous assertion ("Blaming guns for gun crime is like blaming Boeing for 9/11.") was ? BTW, no one is blaming Bushmaster for the slaughter of 20 children, are they or did you not know that?
There are 270,000,000 civilian guns in the US (Karp, Aaron. 2007. ‘Completing the Count: Civilian firearms.’ Small Arms Survey 2007: Guns and the City, p. 67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 27 August). With 9,000 firearms homicides in 2009 (‘Homicide in 207 Countries – United States.’ Global Study on Homicide 2011: Trends, Context, Data; Statistical Annex [with online datasets], pp. 103-125. Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. 6 October), that means 99.9967% of civilian firearms were not used for murder. n nTed Kennedy's car killed more people than my guns (Kathy Schaidle). n nRational people focus on the killer, not the weapon unlawfully used to kill, whatever that weapon is, be it gun, blunt instrument, bread knife or passenger airliner.
M. Atta and company did not take years of training or obtain licenses before perpetrating their crimes using Boeing's products.
Leaving aside the fact that this is prima facie an unpersuasive analogy, it doesn't address the possibility – read: possibility; i.e., merits inquiry – that guns, or some kinds of guns, exacerbate an independent problem. n nIn other words: Yes, guns don't kill people; people kill people. But maybe guns make killers capable of more easily killing more people more quickly.
Guns make free citizens more easily capable of defending themselves effectively against those who seek to harm them .
According the the statistics, more people are killed with their own weapons (as was the shooter's mother!!!) than by intruders. Why the need for assault weapons and yes, the semiautomatic Bushmaster version of the venerable AR-25 is indeed an assault rifle. Why the need for extended clips, high velocity ammunition. If it was your kid or wife that was killed for the simple act of sitting in a classroom you might feel differently.
There are no needs or reasonableness tests for gun ownership, any more than for Porches or Ferraris, notwithstanding the large number of people killed on the highways (which far outweighs the number of people killed with firearms, lawfully or unlawfully). n nThere are 270,000,000 civilian guns in the US (Karp, Aaron. 2007. ‘Completing the Count: Civilian firearms.’ Small Arms Survey 2007: Guns and the City, p. 67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 27 August). With 9,000 firearms homicides in 2009 (‘Homicide in 207 Countries – United States.’ Global Study on Homicide 2011: Trends, Context, Data; Statistical Annex [with online datasets], pp. 103-125. Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. 6 October), that means 99.9967% of civilian firearms were not used for murder. n nIf my child or wife was killed randomly, I would direct my feelings and ideally my intellect at the murderer, not at the tools he used to commit the crime. Murder, after all, is already illegal.
Your statement on gun shows is incorrect. Have you ever even been to a gun show? The people selling firearms are there as licensed FFL dealers who are still required by law to do a background check. And, as many guns as you want?? What are you a millionaire? Guns arent exactly cheap. r nRifles kill about 350 people a year…about 775 people are killed by someones bare hands. Handguns have admittedly higher statistics, but it includes guns owned illegally, and guns used in self defense.
Piers Morgan did the Second Amendment a favor in my view, by demonstrating his intellectual dishonesty and anti-Americanism. It isn't "gun violence" but their contempt for mainstream America that underpins progressives' gun-control crusade.
1. More that double the amount of people were killed by someones bare hands than with a rifle of any kind. (350 killed by all types of rifles, 775 killed by bare hands.) r n2. The 2nd Amendment was put in place to protect my right to own any firearm equivalent to those use by militaries around the world. The 2ndA is about every citizens right to own guns that can effectively fight tyranny from any threat, foreign and/or domestic. Self defense from the thug on the street, or the home intruder, is basically a perk. My rifle is for keeping government in check, my handgun, along with a CHL, is for personal self defense. Anyone who reads the 2nd Amendment, as well as quotes and information from our Fore Fathers, it becomes obvious why we need possession of guns. Both the UK and Australia have had gun crime going up despite illegalizing firearms, and all other types of violent crime has gone way up.
Morgan may be emotional and uncivil, but he certainly reflects the feelings of tens of millions of Americans who can no longer abide the reflexive and absolutist defense of any and all gun ownerhip by guys like Pratt (and Wehner?) who persist through the thick and thin of thousands of gun murders and higher body counts in spree killings to make three lame arguments:
– Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
– AR-15s and similar weapons are no big deal.
– Anyway, the Second Amendment bars any limits on my right to own 50 or 100 guns, so piss off.
Taking these in reverse order:
– The Second Amendment does no such thing. The obstacle to reasonable, effective gun regulation is not constitutional. It’s the political opposition to even common sense limitations from people like Pratt.
– Self-loading semi-automatic rifles fed by box magazines that can be loaded with 10, 20, 30 and more bullets (and enable fast reloading) — all types of such rifles, not just “military style” weapons like AR-15s — afford far more firepower than your father’s deer rifle. Significantly, most states have legal limits on the number of rounds that hunters can have in their rifles and shotguns, usually 3-5, to promote serious sport and enhance safety (its not sporting or humane to bang away at a deer and hit people in the process). So why the uncompromising opposition to restrictions on the types of rifles available or their design or their ammunition capacity? The M-1 rifle that won the world war employed eight-shot clips. Why isn’t that enough?
– People kill people. People with guns kill more people. People with rifles with which they can fire a hundred rounds in slightly more than a minute can kill even more people.
Piers Morgan sounds like Trent1
Piers Morgan was a purveyor of gutter journalism when he was editor of the Daily Mirror. He's a fundamentally unserious person who has, unaccountably, been given a bully pulpit (I was going to write 'prime time pulpit', but this is CNN – they don't have a prime time.) I can't see the shrillness and hysteria of the reaction to the Sandy Hook shootings as anything other than a sign that the opponents of gun ownership feel they do not have the best of the argument.
Pray tell, Mr. Wehner: What it is about Anderson Cooper that you like?
Violence and gun culture go hand in hand. Who said shoot first then ask questions?
"Second, Morgan embodies an attitude that we’re seeing more and more on the left. It’s a nasty combination of supreme self-righteousness and reflexive demonization." The same holds true for stalwarts of the right like Sean Hannity.
But of course the bottom line question is: will this "journalist" be fired over this disgusting, unethical, and frankly juvenile display? Answers tonight at 11:00… and tomorrow at 11:00… and every day after.
I agree with you Peter. I too believe in gun control and I consider Piers Morgan to be a first-class jerk. He is always insulting, chiddish, and rude to the guess with whom he disagrees. (I guess if Bill you know who could make as much money being that rude; then, Piers figures that he would give it a try.)
How do you argue in support of the second amendment with people who think if just one life could be saved it is worth sacrificing? For many gun control advocates this is a moral issue and we all have the blood of those children on our hands. n nAll I have to say is that the second amendment is about more then just guns (it has nothing to do with hunting) and it is worth protecting. Bad things happen, and every bad thing doesn't deserve a drastic reaction.
Here is my reason for owning an "assault" rifle: the Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King verdict. Police were nowhere to be found. Korean store owners protected their property with high capacity rifles from the roofs of their stores. Seraphic Secrets a blog by Robert Avrech, talks about his experience on that day. I don't own an assault rifle, but there are parts of L. A. where I would want to own one. And please don't tell me it can't happen again. It happened twice in Los Angeles.