During Thursday night's edition of CNN's “Piers Morgan Tonight,” the musician previously known as Snoop Dogg told the leftist British host that guns have become a part of everyday life, a fact he laments in a new reggae song entitled “No Guns Allowed.”
“We are guilty as Americans of promoting the gun as one of the most highly touted things that you can have in your life,” Calvin Broadus, aka Snoop Lion, told Morgan. “And I felt like I got to the point of my career and my life when I didn't need guns in my life because I didn't project that energy, and I was positive and peaceful.”
But at the same time the musician was deciding to remove firearms from his life, “I kept hearing about all the school shootings and people, you know, getting guns in their hands and not knowing what to do with them and just going on a rampage.”
So it really touched me and affected me to where I wanted to say something and wanted to make some music to try to help the next person who was thinking about loading a gun, going to a school and shooting; maybe helping him put that gun down and think about what he was doing and what she was doing before they did that.
To attain that goal, Broadus produced a profanity-laden tune entitled “No Guns Allowed,” which chronicles the steps of a gang member's decision to stop carrying a firearm.
As the interview continued, the liberal host used the opportunity to advance his anti-gun crusade by noting: “The gun is to many people in America a symbol of power, maybe involving membership in a gang, maybe a crazed young mass shooter who wants to make a name for himself, whatever it may be.
At the center of it is the sense that it empowers you. You've felt that, and you've renounced that power. Why do so many people associate a gun with some form of self-esteem?
The former gangster rapper then used Morgan's softball question to claim that “we are guilty as Americans of promoting the gun as one of the most highly touted things that you can have in your life.”
Whether it's good or bad, we always did that from the time I was a kid. I would always see pictures and movies with my favorite guys with guns and you know them toting them around and doing whatever they did with them.
“And then when it got to the point where a gun became a part of your everyday life, people were getting killed and people were dying,” he said. “Then you really had to take into account: 'Is this gun really necessary for me, or is it better for me not to have a gun?”
They say it's better to be caught with a gun than without. But once you get older, it's better not to have one than to have one.
The discussion also focused on why Broadus changed his stage name from Snoop Dogg (which was based on Snoopy, the beagle in the “Peanuts” comic strip) to Snoop Lion.
"It's a transformation musically, spiritually, and mentally," he said. "I went to Jamaica on a journey to make some music and it -- eventually became, you know, engulfed with the spirit of Rastafari and the spirit of reggae music.
“Once I became a part of Jamaica and the music and the culture, it took me in as a brother,” the musician added.
That statement is not true, however, since quite a few members of the Rastafarian religion, including an original band member of reggae singer Bob Marley named Bunny Wailer, have denounced Broadus as a fraud who is using a pretend religious conversion as a means to sell music.
As NewsBusters has reported, Snoop is just the latest in a long parade of anti-gun activists to be a guest in Piers Morgan's low-rated program.
Other celebrities on the weeknight interview show have been Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former CBS anchor Dan Rather, New York Magazine columnist Frank Rich and controversial filmmaker Spike Lee.
On the other hand, he has tangled with such gun-rights activists as John Lott, National Rifle Associate Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, whom he called "America's most dangerous man;” Breitbart.com's Ben Shapiro, who gave Morgan a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution that the host described derisively as “your little brown book;”and Ted Nugent, a country singer who accused Morgan of promoting “things that make no sense.”
"No Guns Allowed" is one of the songs on Broadus's new album, which will be entitled "Reincarnated" after his revival experience in Jamaica. Other recordings on the Tuesday, April 23, release will be "Ashtrays and Heartaches" and "Harder Times."
