Piers Morgan, CNN's rabid crusader for stricter gun control laws, didn't always think firearms were such a bad thing. While living in his native England, the liberal host joked about shooting his professional rivals and said that homeowners who kill burglars should not be prosecuted.
As revealed in an article posted on Thursday by Daily Caller reporter Charles C. Johnson, the host of “Piers Morgan Tonight” also described himself as a “rabid fascist” who wants burglars to be tortured.
Well, at least he didn't want them to be shot.
Morgan’s comments came in an interview with England’s Daily Mail newspaper. They concerned his dismissal as editor of the Daily Mirror, a rival British tabloid, after he was fired for publishing fake photos supposedly showing British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.
Daily Mail reporter Frances Hardy said the liberal crusader “ruminate[d] merrily” about things he imagined doing to such enemies as “Top Gear” host Jeremy Clarkson, writer A.A. Gill and editor Ian Hislop.
“So the real question is, if I had a gun with just two bullets, who would I shoot?” Morgan asked during the May 2006 interview.
“In the end,” wrote Hardy, “he can’t choose between them, so he opts for a clean shot to take out Hislop and a ricocheting hit to mortally wound both Clarkson and Gill.”
Two years earlier, Morgan wrote an op-ed for the Evening Standard headlined “I can’t be liberal on burglars,” in which he said a series of home invasions and robberies made him wish for a gun.
At that time, Britain -- which had banned all guns -- had seen a rash of break-in burglaries, one of which took the life of financier John Monckton.
If Monckton had killed one of those burglars while defending himself … then he would now be facing a jail sentence for manslaughter or even murder. No part of my liberalism allows me to deem this fair.
The liberal activist continued that “when it comes to burglars, I turn into a rabid fascist. I want them erased from life, all of them. Preferably after a decent period of cattle-prodding, testicle electrode treatment, and slow gentle skewering over hot coals.”
Margan's attitude was the result of his experience after purchasing his first home in London, which he said “seemed the most exciting thing in the world.”
“Then we got burgled three times in six months, and our lives became consumed by fear and fury,” he stated.
The criminals “nick [steal] everything, and always did it in a repulsive manner -- trashing the house each time, crapping on the stairs, urinating on the beds,” Morgan explained. “It wasn’t enough that they wanted our possessions, they wanted us to feel really violated as well. And we did.”
Now we were confident, physically robust young men. But it really shook us up. Add a bit of violence to the mix, and I think we’d have gone racing back to our mummies.
Morgan added that he would have no compunction about killing a burglar who posed a threat to him or his family.
“I wouldn’t shoot anyone because, like most people in this country, I’m not licensed to carry a gun,” he said.
“But if I woke up to find a thug in my house at 2 a.m. stealing my hard-earned things and posing a clear and present threat to my well-being and perhaps that of my children, then I wouldn’t hesitate to grab the hardest thing I could find and defend myself,” he noted.
And if I killed a burglar in that situation, I would expect the law to be on my side, not the despicable little toerag defiling my life.
As NewsBusters previously reported, Morgan's attitude on firearms seemed to change dramatically once he moved to America and became the host of a low-rated weeknight television talk show.
After the mass shooting in a theater in Aurora, Colo., on July 20 and the attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on December 14, the liberal host has praised gun-control advocates and hammered supporters of gun rights as “unbelievably stupid” and “dangerous.”
Not surprisingly, Morgan has never mentioned his experiences in England during the current debate, instead focusing on demands for strict gun-control legislation.
However, as support for draconian gun control has waned over the past few weeks, Morgan has bashed critics of his anti-gun crusade and begun to discuss other topics, such as the scandal regarding athlete Lance Armstrong's admission that he used performance-enhancing drugs to win professional bicycle races.
Despite his misfire on gun control, Morgan celebrated his program's second anniversary on Thursday, when he promised “another year of fascinating guests and extraordinary stories” featuring his “unabashed candor and explosive passion.”
Just do not involve any guns in that explosive passion.
