CNN host Piers Morgan harangued Gun Owners of America’s executive director Larry Pratt Tuesday, calling Pratt “unbelievably stupid” and “dangerous” for stating basic facts. Video at the link, but here’s a taste of Morgan’s rant.
PIERS MORGAN, HOST: The AR-15, as we’ve now seen from the last three mass shootings in America, Aurora, the shopping mall in Oregon, and now at Sandy Hook school, is the preferred choice of weapon for disturbed young men who want to commit mass atrocity, can fire hundreds of bullets at rapid speed, if you have the right magazines.
The president of the United States has indicated he wants to ban assault weapons like this. What is your view?
LARRY PRATT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA: I think we need to ban gun control laws that keep people from being able to protect themselves. The problem is not going to go away if we ban this or that gun. We’ve tried that. That doesn’t work. Doesn’t even work in England. You have mass murders there all over Europe. There have been mass murderers.
MORGAN: You’re talking complete and utter — you are talking complete and utter nonsense.
PRATT: The solution is for people to be able to defend themselves at the point of the crime and not wait for 20 minutes for the police come after everybody is dead.
MORGAN: What you’ve just said, Mr. Pratt, was an absolute lie. The gun murder rate in countries like Britain or Germany or Australia, we’ve all suffered massacres many years ago, similar nature, have — there are 35 people killed a year. Your country has 12,000.
PRATT: Your murder rate has — your murder rate is lower than ours, that is true. Your violent –
MORGAN: Lower? It’s 75 against 12,000 in Australia.
PRATT: Your violent crime rate –
MORGAN: They had a massacre. And they got rid of the assault weapons.
PRATT: Your violent crime rate is higher than ours as is the violent crime rate in Australia. America is not the Wild West that you are depicting. We only have the problems in our cities, and unhappily, in our schools where people like you have been able to get laws put on the books that keep people from being able to defend themselves.
I honestly don’t understand why you would rather have people be victims of a crime than be able to defend themselves. It’s incomprehensible.
MORGAN: You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?
PRATT: It seems to me that you’re morally obtuse. You seem to prefer being a victim to being able to prevail over the criminal element. And I don’t know why you want to be the criminal’s friend.
MORGAN: What a ridiculous argument. You have absolutely no coherent argument whatsoever. You don’t — you don’t actually give –
PRATT: You have no –
MORGAN: You don’t give a damn, do you, about the gun murder rate in America? You don’t actually care. All you care about –
PRATT: It seems to me that facts don’t bother you, do they, Mr. Morgan?
It is a fact that Britain has banned handguns, and as of 2009 has the highest violent crime rate in the EU.
It’s also a fact that shows of force stopped the Sandy Hooks killing, the shooting in San Antonio over the weekend and the Oregon mall shooting. An earlier show of force could have stopped the Sandy Hooks tragedy before so many lives were lost.
Why have the networks resorted to importing clowns from other countries? Aren’t there enough domestic clowns to fill the air time?
They think it conveys gravitas.
Since the standard of men such as Mr. Morgan is that any misuse of a freedom by one is excuse to ban it for all, I think that is the standard we should embrace.
Any abuse of a freedom by one means denying that freedom for all. The new American way for the new America, of which Barack Obama is the beneficiary and author.
PRATT: It seems to me that facts don’t bother you, do they, Mr. Morgan?
And therein lies the crux of the matter.
– the Ploughman.
There’s never been a shortage of Americans who are easily awed by anything English or European. I suspect that propensity toward awe is comprised of a varying mix of unself-assuredness, unfamiliarity with English and European history*, and a childish yearning for real or imaginary social stratification and pagentry.
* Most of our ancestors abandoned the old world for a long list of compelling good reasons. I believe if large numbers of us were familiar with those reasons, we’d be considerably less impressed by descendants of the people who didn’t leave. Well, the first lesson of history seems to be very few people trouble themselves to learn the lessons of history.
Indeed…
“Many of you have in your veins Geman and Italian blood. But remember that these ancestors of yours so loved freedom that they gave up home and country to cross the ocean in search of liberty. The ancestors of the people we shall kill lacked the courage to make such a sacrifice and remained slaves.”
— George S. Patton
Love your Patton quote. Well said / repeated.
As for P.Morgan, he’s a vacuous and overpaid MassMedia twit of a Brit. He should be reminded that in the late 1770′s it was precisely our privately well armed and gun savvy Minuteman militias who beat the pants off his General George Gage’s Hessian mercenaries. Then, in 1812, we did it again. Then, a hundred years later, we were stupid enough, in 1917/1918, to actually help these pompous idiots in defending themselves, at great and unnecessary cost of our own lives and treasure, against a wannabe world leader German emperor. Then, because they and their French “friends” got a bit too greedy in Versailles, and Paris, and later the Rhineland, 25 years after that we had to help them again. As usual, they were unprepared. (Remind Morgan of Chamberlain!)
Somebody at CNN ought to pass Mr.Morgan a clue about the historical value of being well armed and ready in the face of aggression, and what WILL happen when one is not. On the other hand, a half century of having had to learn German or Russian might have presented the more memorable lesson to the likes of Morgan?
Personally, I usually find watching CNN a waste of time. Low information content, but much narrative bloviating by the likes of Piers. Somebody should “donate” him “back” to the BBC. What, they don’t want him back? What a schame!
In this, as in so many things, it is not the people that must conform to the state, but the state that must conform to the people. Whatever is to be done on the issue, it cannot deny the people the full rights they possess just because it is the seemingly easier path to implement, or because it is a freedom not particularly valued by influential voices.
It’s the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Allowances, not the Bill of Sufferences Subject to Revocation. A right dependent upon blessing of the establishment for continued existence is not a right at all; and if one right can be canceled because influential voices desire it, they all can.
“Piers Morgan Loses His Mind in Gun Control Segment.”
He could check “Lost and Found” but no one would bother returning anything so small.
One can ban the legal sale of weapons but what about the weapons already out there? Would Mr.Morgan like to take those guns away also, and how does he propose to do this? Me thinks his native Britain has enough problems of its own for him to worry about. It’s becoming more and more like Orwell’s Oceania every day.
A disarmed people cannot defend themselves from the predation of the Government. The Left knows that, seeks that, and will go to any length to get that: a total ban on weapons if possible, on long weapons next, and pistols of all types last. Your individual rights mean nothing to the Left. The “hive” has rights, the individual does/should not.
On the subject of murders here in America, there’s this interesting article (via InstaPundit) indicating that most of it is criminals murdering other criminals.
Understanding victims’ pasts is critical to driving crime back down, police and crime analysts say. “If you are trying to look at prevention, you need to look at the lives of the people involved,” says Mallory O’Brien, director of the Homicide Review Commission in Milwaukee.
In Baltimore, about 91% of murder victims this year had criminal records, up from 74% a decade ago, police reported.
…
Philadelphia police Capt. Ben Naish says the Baltimore numbers are “shocking.” Philadelphia also has seen the number of victims with criminal pasts inch up — to 75% this year from 71% in 2005.
In Milwaukee, local leaders created the homicide commission after a spike in violence led to a 39% increase in murders in 2005. The group compiled statistics on victims’ criminal histories for the first time and found that 77% of homicide victims in the past two years had an average of nearly 12 arrests.
…
In Newark, where three young friends with no apparent links to crime were executed Aug. 4, roughly 85% of victims killed in the first six months of this year had criminal records, on par with the percentage in 2005 but up from 81% last year, police statistics show.
Yep — the surest way to avoid being shot is to not engage in crime. Weird how that works, isn’t it?
The bottom line is that the gun banners track record leads those of us who want the civil right of self-defense to treat any of their proposals as a hudna, the truce Muslims propose with infidels to allow them to build up enough strength to win by outright force. Better not to play at all.
Piers Morgan Loses His Mind in Gun Control Segment
Impossible. One cannot lose what one never had to begin with.
Piers Morgan Loses His Mind in Gun Control Segment
Impossible. Can’t lose what one never had.
Piers Morgan makes his money the old fashioned way, he steals it.
He is a poor man’s version of Larry King, he needs a ratings boost. This is obviously a desperate attempt by CNN and Morgan.
Majority criminal predators hunt for easy prey, criminals know that unarmed citizens are easy prey. Piers Morgan and the Liberal anti-gun lobby wants law-abiding citizens disarmed and sitting ducks for the criminal element in society.
Piers Morgan and the Hollywood Liberal elite live in heavy guarded and gated communities, “I am alright Jack” is their motto.
Protecting citizens from crime is more important than protecting the civil liberties of criminals. How can Liberals claim empathy for victims of crime, when they defend the rights of criminals.
Piers Morgan must control his ridiculous exaggerated emotions. It is all about Piers Morgan. CNN must be desperate to improve the poor ratings of his show. Piers Morgan has a very selective memory, he shamed his own country as editor of the Daily Mirror. Don’t take this asshole seriously, Britain doesn’t either.