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?" [MP3 audio here [1].] 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 House 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."
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 [2], Morgan sneered at another conservative guest who cited the Constitution: "You brandish your little book."
On January 16, [3] 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:
9:24
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.
-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here [4] to follow him on Twitter.