Piers Morgan’s outspokenness about gun control has brought about a petition seeking to deport him from the United States.
The petition, which has been submitted on a White House website, has received over 12,000 signatures. (It takes 25,000 before the White House is obligated to address the petition.) The petition was launched by writer Kurt Nimmo. The text reads:
British Citizen and CNN television host Piers Morgan is engaged in a hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution by targeting the Second Amendment. We demand that Mr. Morgan be deported immediately for his effort to undermine the Bill of Rights and for exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens.
Morgan has made several forceful attacks on pro-gun advocates in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary.
Apparently this group of 2A hobbyists has greater respect for 2A than 1A rights. Piers Morgan has just as much right to express his opinion as does an American citizen. His right will be protected as much as the free speech of any American citizen. The fact that over 12,000 people would sign to deport someone who simply doesn’t agree with them is rather outrageous and hard to believe.
It is behavior like this that gets the gun enthusiasts labeled extremist. It certainly turns the conversation into a binary one, instead of a discussion that looks at all possibilities. Where would some of this go if it went to a referendum?
An update from AFP says the signature count is well over the 25,000 that is required to get a response from the White House:
Just two days after the petition calling for Morgan’s deportation was posted, it had already garnered more than 28,500 signatures late Sunday, far and beyond the 25,000 required to get a response from the White House.
The outspoken former British tabloid editor has launched something of a personal crusade for greater gun control measures in the wake of the December 14 massacre at Sandy Hook elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.
On Tuesday, Morgan held an especially contentious interview with Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt, appearing to become incensed and incredulous when Pratt suggested more, not fewer, weapons as the solution.
“You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?” Morgan asked during the heated debate. “You have absolutely no coherent argument. You don’t actually give a damn about the gun murder rate in America.”
Piers certainly isn’t going to win any friends from the gun crowd with talk like that but deportation? That seems a little extreme. We don’t like what you say so 28,000 of us want you out of the country? How drastic.
so much for our dedication to a healthy policy discussion.
@Scout
First amendment shoved to last place position.
Sometime in the night I woke up and listened to Wayne Lapierre on Meet the Press.
I have never been so unimpressed with an organization. There was no room for any discussion. Lapierre said “it won’t work.” to ever single suggestion made by Dave Gregory was met with negativity. He name called. Monsters, crazies, loons. No wonder there is such resistance to mental health treatment. All “nuts” don’t go out and gun down people. His verbal treatment of the subject was horrible.
I now despise the NRA. It needs to go back to being a sports enthusiast organization or get rid of the loonie that represents them. He truly was horrible.
The NRA is a defender of the gun industry, not individual gun owners. They all are delighted that gun sales are going through the roof after Newtown. Mass murder is good fir business. The NRA wants to put armed officers at every classroom, shopping mall, theatre and bathroom in America and keep a registry of all pele deemed crazy. They want to live in a fascist, totalitarian state. The gun industry will make tons of money from the government purchases of arms to supply their Blackwater mercenaries, feeding like hogs with their snouts in the troughs. And they have plenty of unpaid shills in their members who will gladly stroke them.
@Starryflights
You really have lost your everloving mind, haven’t you?
@Moon-howler
The deportation petitions are silly and will result in nothing. This is not a 1st amendment thing. This is private citizens showing displeasure to a TV talking head who does not know a thing about what he was talking about and was insulting.
@Cargo
Disagree. It is a first amendment thing. Those who signed the petition want to silence Piers Morgan. He can say what he wants. They can turn off their TVS. I didnt even want to deport Rush Limbaugh. No one would have taken him.
He thinks he knows what he is talking about. I haven’t heard him other than what is shown here. Its just a silly thing to do….have battling rights.
Oy Vey!!!!!!!!!!!! Someone get the haldol and start putting it in the food supply!
Oh, he thinks he knows….but his experience comes from living in a country that has even forbidden self defense. He’s a foreigner that is attempting to advance an agenda that removes rights. If he wants to get involved…let him become a naturalized citizen.
But, really, the petitions do nothing.
But all people, even guests have free speech.
He doesn’t have to become a naturalized citizen. Let’s not invent an alternative constitution just for Piers.
@Cargosquid
The petitions indeed will do nothing. But it points out the hypocrisy of those sound-bite mouthing /Constitution-spouting defenders of the second amendment. One amendment be damned. The other is okay.
Let me get out my three cornered hat and fife on that note. @Censored
@Censored bybvbl
Really? Where’s your outrage about the actual violence wished upon LaPierre and gun owners in general, by the gun banning crowd?
I could fill a page with links to those.
I sure haven’t seen them. I am sure there are invectives directed at people who think like I do also. yawn. Till they show up at the front door, I am not going to worry.
Besides, LaPierre and the gun owners own aenough firepower to stave off the wusses like me.
@Cargosquid
Your reply brings to mind a little ditty my mother used to tell us:
Sticks and stones (guns) will break my bones.
But words will never hurt me.
So, then why all the outrage about words against Piers Morgan?
Outrage? Why should anyone be outraged? Can’t we think people are absurd hypocrites without being accused of outrage? Usually when I am outraged, it is obvious.
Absurd hypocrites? You’ve got posts up worrying about some silly petition that expressed private displeasure, but no posts up about death threats by the anti-gunnies…..
Hmm…… ok, then
Boo Hoo. The President gets death threats daily. I am unaware of anti-gunni
e death threats. I am not even sure in this world now who the anti gunnies are. My guess would be legal gun owners who aren’t jumping off of cliffs over their rights. I think most people on this blog are gun owners.
I am curious how anti gunnies would be issuing death threats at someone unless that someone had big assed and shot off his or her mouth, drawing some sort of attention to themselves.
I would hope they would turn any threats over to the fBI.
Oh I am not worried. I don’t believe for one minute our government is going to take any action. I just want to see how many people will make jerks of themselves.
However, about those posts…laughing..not worrying.
I am worried about the fiscal cliff.
From http://onlygunsandmoney.blogspot.com/
Dave Hardy on the White House petition to deport Piers Morgan:
I wonder why the pitch for signing omits the strongest reason: “pontificating, underinformed, supercilious twit, whose arrival here was in violation of the legal prohibitions against importing foreign insect pests.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. As for deporting Morgan, that exile from Fleet Street, I say let him stay. He is a good reminder of what happens to a country when it has effectively banned most firearms and the right to self-defense.
_______________
I agree. I think that he should stay. He’s a great example of what not to be.
65,000 signatures. Very interesting. 65,000 people who would deny free speech. How unAmerican.
“Oh I am not worried. I don’t believe for one minute our government is going to take any action.”
@Moon-howler That’s been exactly my sense of this whole thing. People will do lots of huffing and moaning, but in the end nothing will change.
Exactly…Emma, people will huff and puff and nothing will change.
I saw that after the Tech massacre. Huffing and puffing over mental health services. If something has changed, I sure don’t know about it.
Heh…
Petitions and statements from England are emerging all saying the same thing, “Keep him! We don’t want him back!”
@Emma
If Obama was serious about guns, would he have put BIDEN in charge of the committee?
Morgan compared the Bible to the U.S. Constitution, saying the original document should be changed when it no longer suits the times. He called both works “inherently flawed.”
He is TRYING to tick people off for ratings. Now I see why many Brits don’t want him back.
I would like him to point out where he thinks the Constitution is inherently flawed.
I think we could all point out where the Constitution is inherently flawed. It was beaten out as a series of compromises in nearly all cases.
Luckily we have ways to fix it if it needs fixing.
One way it is flawed is the establishment clause is sort of tricky there. Perhaps a little more detail might be helpful. The 2A is a real mess. In 200+ years people can’t decide if it means the individual or the group. The high court finally called it for the individual. Maybe those dudes back then needed to spell things out more clearly…..
The Bible is flawed also. It starts off on the wrong foot and either Adam and Eve weren’t the first or incest was OK. The bible has been translated by man many times.
………………………………………..Have I pissed off enough people?
I don’t know why anyone would speak of the Constitution and the Bible in the same breath – they are inherently different documents. Both have anomalies and imperfections, but they serve very different purposes and came together in very different ways at very different times. The constitution was designed at the beginning to be changed, the same cannot be said of the Bible (although it has, of course, changed many, many times as new writings were accreted to the original Hebrew texts of the Pentateuch).
As CS suggests, this (i.e. Morgan’s statement, assuming it is correctly conveyed here) is one of those statements that, while obviously accurate, is nonetheless the kind of thing that gets under people’s skins, so one has to think that this is sort of like Huckabee’s attribution of Sandy Hook to the lack of school prayer – a ratings ploy.
Morgan is no doubt here legally. On what basis could he be deported? That his views on this or that subject are different from other people’s? Don’t think that cuts it. I can see an Immigration Judge furrowing his brow on that one.
@Scout
That’s just it. The petitions to deport him are just theater. Heck, he probably likes the publicity. And there are people in Britain that are writing petitions for us to keep him…they don’t want him back.
@Moon-howler
dam and Eve weren’t the first or incest was OK.
Actually, since Eve was literally from Adam…wouldn’t that be…how do I put this delicately, ,…..playing with himself?