Shooting Straight by Piers Morgan

Author:Piers Morgan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781448177592
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2013-10-16T18:30:00+00:00

The Dalai Lama blesses me with a Tibetan robe after our interview. An extraordinarily happy man.

CHAPTER 7

MONDAY, 27 FEBRUARY 2012

There was another horrific school shooting today.

A young man called Thomas Lane randomly shot six students at Chardon High School in Ohio.

Three died, three were wounded – one of them left paralysed.

My special guest tonight was political commentator and comedian Bill Maher, who tried to explain America’s relationship with guns.

‘We love guns. I’d love someone to make a speech and say, “OK, we’re never going to get rid of all the guns. But do we have to adore them, do we have to love them so much?”

‘I look at guns like antibiotics. Sometimes you need them, but I don’t kiss my antibiotics, I don’t polish them, I don’t worship my amoxicillin. If I need it, it’s there. You know? But this country just has a very bad relationship with guns.

‘Rick Santorum likes to talk about theology. This is a theology in this country. Guns are a religion. They’re next to godliness for a lot of people. And you wonder what they’re doing with them. I know they love to blow the brains out of innocent animals for fun, I guess that’s one thing. But they also have this fantasy in their head, if you talk to a lot of right-wingers, that somehow they read the Second Amendment as necessary because we might have a tyranny in this country. Some sort of alien totalitarian menace might take over, and they’re not saying who specifically, but then they will have to rise and take this country back.

‘They really have this fantasy in their head that they can take over the government. I mean this may have made sense when the Second Amendment was written, when maybe you could defeat the government when everybody had muskets.

‘But now the government has, you know, nuclear weapons, the F-22 and the Marine Corps, and it’s probably unlikely that Vern and Earl are going to be able to take over the government no matter how much they dislike it.’

I asked him how he countered the argument that many Americans see it as their constitutional right to have guns.

‘Well, of course, it’s in the Constitution – but where does that end? The Constitution could not foresee assault weapons, or bazookas. Should we be able to have those? What about a tank? What about a nuclear weapon if you could afford it?

‘I mean it’s ridiculous. No one is saying that we’re attempting to create a gun-free society. We know that’s impossible. Just reasonable limits. Make sure that the mentally ill people don’t get them. Make sure you can’t get them at these gun shows, these loopholes.

‘And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with saying we could rewrite the Constitution. The Constitution itself was rewritten. After all, it is the Second Amendment.’

Everything Maher said makes complete sense to me.

Why doesn’t it to so many Americans?

TUESDAY, 28 FEBRUARY 2012

Another live midnight show, after the Arizona/Michigan primaries.

Andrew Breitbart was on the panel again, this time in the studio with me in L.

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