Gingrich Schools Gun-Grabbing Piers Morgan: 'Isn't Your Real View That You Would Ban Pistols?'

Townhall.com ^ | January 25, 2013 | Scott Whitlock

[Kaslin]

Newt Gingrich on Thursday night interrogated the gun-grabbing Piers Morgan, pushing the CNN host as to what his real motives are. An aggressive Gingrich insisted, "So, why don't you share your real view?...Isn't your real view that you would ban pistols if you could?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.] The Republican also told the British anchor why the Founding Fathers were able to defeat "your army."

Morgan swore that his concern was "the high-powered guns of any variety which can fire 30 or 40 or more rounds in less than a minute." He added, "...That would be my primary concern right now." The former Speaker pounced, "Right now? Okay, right now." Gingrich lectured, "The reason you find so many of us very reluctant to go down this road is we believe each step down this road leads to the next step and the next step and the next step."

Gingrich Schools Gun-Grabbing Piers Morgan: 'Isn't Your Real View That You Would Ban Pistols?'

The ex-presidential candidate grilled:

NEWT GINGRICH: And we actually think the Second Amendment is central to our liberties, not just something there for hunters, not something there for target practice, but actually there because the founding fathers remembered that when your army tried to defeat us, luckily, our peasants weren't peasants. They were citizens. And as citizens, they were in fact armed. And that's the only reason we were able to win the Revolutionary War.

On January 10, Morgan sneered at another conservative guest who cited the Constitution: "You brandish your little book." 

On January 16, he mocked a female gun rights activist: "Do you want the right to have a tank?"

A partial transcript of the January 24 segment can be found below:

NEWT GINGRICH: So where -- so where are you -- so where are you on pistols that have fairly large capacity? Where are you on the pistols that killed most of the people in Chicago, Piers?

PIERS MORGAN: My position --

GINGRICH: It's okay if we kill them individually?

MORGAN: No. Let me make my position.

GINGRICH: Are you saying three, four, five, and that's okay?

MORGAN: Let my position very, very clear. What is happening in Chicago is completely outrageous, completely unacceptable. I think there's been a total breakdown in the effectiveness of the law enforcement. Because when you compare it to New York, they have solved a lot of the gun problems in New York with very stringent gun control and they've enforced it properly. There are -- it's like the Wild West situation in parts of Chicago. I've been there, I think it's outrageous. And I think the fact that 11,000 or 12,000 people die a year in America from gun fire and a lot of that is from handguns used by criminals and gangsters is disgraceful.

GINGRICH: Right.

MORGAN: And I think many of the other --

GINGRICH: So why -- right. So why don't you share your real view?

MORGAN: Many of the other proposals --

GINGRICH: Isn't it --

MORGAN: It's all wrong to me.

GINGRICH: Isn't your real view that you would ban pistols if you could?

MORGAN: No, it wouldn't. What --

GINGRICH: Wouldn't you ban pistols if you could?

MORGAN: Let me -- let me explain what I would do. I would agree with Diane Feinstein. It is the high-powered guns of any variety which can fire 30 or 40 or more rounds in less than a minute that can cause mass murder that would be my primary concern right now. And the AR-15 is a prime example of that.

GINGRICH: Okay, right now, and the reason you find so many of us, and by the way, it's a substantial majority, I think the last time I saw, 63 percent of the American people agree that the Second Amendment is actually there to protect us from tyranny. The reason you find so many of us very reluctant to go down this road is we believe each step down this road leads to the next step and the next step and the next step. And we actually think the Second Amendment is central to our liberties, not just something there for hunters, not something there for target practice, but actually there because the founding fathers remembered that when your army tried to defeat us, luckily, our peasants weren't peasants. They were citizens. And as citizens, they were in fact armed. And that's the only reason we were able to win the Revolutionary War.

MORGAN: And you think -- and you honestly think the founding fathers sat there and thought, okay, automatic weapons are banned because they are very dangerous. The semiautomatics that can fire 100 bullets in a minute are not dangerous and they should be lawful?

GINGRICH: I think the founding fathers would have found this entire debate strange because they actually believed in individual freedom and they were very suspicious of big government, and they would find the idea that you're going to permit, to use the word you kept using. You're going to permit us to have a few liberties right now, was the antithesis of the American experience.  

[jmacusa]

I hate this pansy-ass poncey Brit git who is recently arrived here and insists on spouting off his socialist clap-trap that has failed in his own homeland. His ass needs to be put on a plane out of our country.

[dubyajam]

How I wish Gingrich was Prez now.

[tsowellfan]

Oh how I wish he were President too. Imagine how much better things would be already if we had a President Gingrich.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

As I have posted many times, military style rifles are just a smokescreen. Their ultimate goal is the total abolition of the RIGHT to own firearms of any type.

It has always been about handguns. Assault rifles are just a decoy to try and get their anti-gun foot in the door.

Once they get a ban on AWs then they will use the same reasons to go after handguns.

John Kennedy killed with a 5 shot bolt action rifle.

Medgar Evers, shot with a 5 shot 1917 bolt action Enfield rifle.

Martin Luther King, shot with a 4 shot Remington 760 pump action Gamemaster rifle.

Bobby Kennedy with a .22 Iver Johnson Cadet revolver.

George Wallace wounded with a 5 shot Charter Arms .38spl revolver.

Howard Johnsons shooter killed nine, wounded thirteen with a 4 shot RUGER .44 mag Deerslayer rifle.

Gerald Ford attacked with a 7 shot 1911 semi auto.

Edmond OK post office with two National Guard 7 shot 1911 pistols.

Ronald Reagan and Jim Brady with an RG-14 .22 revolver.

What do they all have in common? NONE over 7 rounds, yet after each one came a cry of panic to ban all of them.

And if you still have doubts consider this by Nelson P Shields, founder of Handgun control Inc.

Nelson T. ‘Pete’ Shields
Founder of Handgun Control, Inc.

“I’m convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We’re going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest.

Of course, it’s true that politicians will then go home and say, ‘This is a great law. The problem is solved.’ And it’s also true that such statements will tend to defuse the gun-control issue for a time.

So then we’ll have to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen that law, and maybe again and again.

Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time.

My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered.

And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors — totally illegal.”

-Pete Shields, Chairman and founder, Handgun Control Inc., “A Reporter At Large: Handguns,” The New Yorker, July 26, 1976, 57-58

For those who may still doubt, back in the 1980s HCI decided to go after semi-auto military style rifles along with handguns.

[Uncle Miltie]

The government doesn’t “permit” me anything, including guns.

I permit them some small amount of resources that I yield up reluctantly.

They work for me. I own the rights. They are MY SLAVES.

[Monty22002]

He’d ban knives and everything, except for himself and his guards.

This true idiot.. I mean true. Dares to bring up ‘100 rounds a minute’ talk when asked if he’d ban pistols. Worthless POS.

[VRWCarea51]

So we have this Idiot who’s ancestors got their asses kicked back across the ocean Twice for that point of view,
back in this country utilizing everyones constitutionally protected free speech to attack another freedom we have.

I say this based on the blood of my Ancestors who fought and kicked their asses for those rights.

Piers Morgan deserves public stoning and then boxed up and sent home. Go back to your filth infested limey country and live in the “Utopia” your mindset created.

[Herodes]

Unhappily Uncle Milty, you are delusional. I would wager that the government is getting far more than a “small amount” of your resources.

[skinkinthegrass]

Oh how I wish he were President too.
Imagine how much better things would be already
if we had a President Gingrich.yeah..We had our chance, too many (GOP/e) drones were...
"concerned" questions about his "choices" &/ squeamish 'bout this or that...
Low Info/RINOs/Liberals mainly..We let them pick our candidate.
they would been screamin' bloody hell w/ Newt (as pres.)
he had the "wherewithal" to fight them with the truth..
facts / history, would've backed him up.

[redhead]

Still pissed about losing the Revolution. And, if you could get a straight answer out of them, most of them would admit it. Man, I can’t stand sore losers.

[Jack of all Trades]

MORGAN: Let my position very, very clear. What is happening in Chicago is completely outrageous, completely unacceptable. I think there's been a total breakdown in the effectiveness of the law enforcement. Because when you compare it to New York, they have solved a lot of the gun problems in New York with very stringent gun control and they've enforced it properly. There are -- it's like the Wild West situation in parts of Chicago.

New York City is a May Issue area for concealed carry. In Chicago, and all of Illinois, concealed carry is prohibited. So I guess that Morgan agrees that concealed carry reduces violent crime.

[Toespi]

Yeah but just think we would have had a brilliant, conservative president who has been married three times and sat on a couch with Nancy, oh the humanity. Instead, we ran the “I can beat Obama guy”, because he was the only one who could win. Just ask Coulter, Malkin, Levin, Hume, Krauthammer, and the rest of the RMSM.

[mjp]

It's all wrong to me.

This libtard scum doesn't even know the history of the right to bear arms of his own country: In England, the right to keep and bear arms dates back to the laws of King Alfred the Great, whose reign began in A.D. 872, where all English citizens from the nobility to the peasants were obliged to privately purchase weapons and be available for military duty.The body of the Anglo-Saxon citizens were known as the "fyrd." This tradition continued after the Norman invasion through the Plantagenets and the Tudors and was in place when the American colonies were founded.Then the tradition was continued in the colonies.

[theBuckwheat]

While we begin stepping down this road, one step at a time by limiting magazine capacity from 30 to 10 to “five or six” to 3 to one to hopefully zero, let us also limit another magazine’s capacity. I wonder if Piers would support a proposal to limit vile Hustler Magazine to no more than 10 pages, then to “five or six” then to 3 pages, then hopefully zero pages.

[tsowellfan]

Yeah but just think after 4 more years of Obama Susan Collins will be seen as too far right to even think about running for President.

[Eva]

Philadelphia used to lead the country in gun related murders until they fixed the situation. Philadelphia changed the way they collect the statistics, they found that if they separated all the shootings that were committed by juveniles, listed them separately and refused to release those statistics, the murder rate was reduced significantly. The reason is that the gangs had figured out that if a juvenile committed the murder, he would get out in a year or two with a sealed record, so the gangs were assigning most of the killing to younger members.

[SparkyBass]

Y’know, the founding fathers also never imagined a British Blowhard’s moving image and sound being transmitted through the atmosphere.... better ban high capacity Television... NOW!

[theBuckwheat]

A little history of banned items is useful at this point:

During the Columbine massacre, in which 15 people were murdered and 21 injured, a total of four firearms were involved. The murderers also employed four knives and 99 explosive devices.

Of the firearms, only one qualified under the 1984 federal law as a banned “assault rifle”. One firearm was a doubled barreled shotgun with a shortened barrel. It has long been a federal felony to saw down the barrel of a shotgun and it was also a felony to possess such an altered weapon.

Every single explosive device was a federal and state felony to assemble, possess and use, and to use in the commission of a crime.

If the memory of Columbine is ever brought up today, the failure of the law to stop the use of explosives in a school massacre is never mentioned. It is never mentioned because it is a fact that gets in the way of a Gollum-like fixation on the Precious, the banning certain types of firearms and then eventually all firearms.

[BlueStateMadness]

Ar15 type rifles with standard m4 contour barrels will sustain a 30 round per minute fire rate without significantly heat stressing/throating/melting barrels

Good thing Morgan knows so much about what he covers. Journalistic excellence is a synonym for one who wears their ass as a hat.