Alex Jones is a well known nut! However, Piers Morgan is a condescending, effete, liberal ass. Morgan, as I am sure you know, is a former British tabloid editor who was fired, and escorted out of his own paper’s building by security, in 2004 for publishing faked photographs showing British troops torturing Iraqi prisoners. He is truly a cad undeserving of any respect or support. In the same period, Piers Morgan provoked the wrath of our hero Jeremy Clarkson by prying into Clarkson’s private life and insulting his wife. Clarkson evidently responded by tipping a glass of water into Morgan’s lap during the last flight of the Concorde, and finally by punching him in the face three times during a British Press Awards dinner in 2004. Clarkson has begged the US, via Twitter to not send Morgan back to the UK!
Morgan is using this debate to rocket his ratings – the whole thing started when he called, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, a guest on Morgan’s show “ an unbelievable idiot” after Pratt made a sane, well reasoned and very well mannered and respectful argument that made Morgan look like a fool on his own show. This prompted the petition to deport Morgan. What you are seeing here is a flare up of a battle that is essentially an internal Cold War within the US. While I am glad you own a shotgun; that is not what the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution is about. The 2nd Amendment is meant to be a check on tyranny. It is meant to ensure arms parity with our government. George Orwell wrote a wonderful article on rifles and freedom:

“It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance.” Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon–so long as there is no answer to it–gives claws to the weak.
The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle. After the invention of the flintlock, and before the invention of the percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and at the same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its combination of qualities made possible the success of the American and French revolutions, and made a popular insurrection a more serious business than it could be in our own day. After the musket came the breech-loading rifle. This was a comparatively complex thing, but it could still be produced in scores of countries, and it was cheap, easily smuggled and economical of ammunition. Even the most backward nation could always get hold of rifles from one source or another, so that Boers, Bulgars, Abyssinians, Moroccans–even Tibetans–could put up a fight for their independence, sometimes with success. But thereafter every development in military technique has favoured the State as against the individual, and the industrialised country as against the backward one. There are fewer and fewer foci of power. Already, in 1939, there were only five states capable of waging war on the grand scale, and now there are only three–ultimately, perhaps, only two. This trend has been obvious for years, and was pointed out by a few observers even before 1914. The one thing that might reverse it is the discovery of a weapon–or, to put it more broadly, of a method of fighting–not dependent on huge concentrations of industrial plant.

The idea was not original to Orwell. Aristotle noted that oligarchies prevailed where the land was adapted for cavalry or heavy infantry since only the rich could afford horses or cannon, while democracies existed in countries suitable for the light arms owned by most citizens. “Citizen soldiers” early became identified with democratic government and freedom. The Founders understood that – “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Of course, at the time, “militia” meant all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense” and “ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time,” together with a supply of ammunition therefor, a blanket, knapsack and canteen. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 179, 180-182 (1939). “Arms” therefore does not merely mean hunting rifles or shotguns- “arms” means the predominant military arms of the period – arms parity with the state. This fact is further born out when you think that the nuclear submarine of its day was a well equipped ship of the line and many private citizens owned these as well. Without arms parity you have tyranny. I observed this in Helmand – the idea being that the Afghan’s style of fighting and the uselessness of most modern implements of war in quelling that sort of rebellion may ultimately usher in a new era of liberty in the West. Hell, even the Russians get it! Another great subject of the Crown, that skinny lout Gandhi, understood this truth also: “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” Subjugation of the subcontinent could not have occurred with an armed populace. Of course, Hitler and Mussolini also understood this very well.

I am chilled to the bone to think of the terrible loss of freedom of Englishmen to bear arms and tell disbelieving Americans of the enormous and unreasonable restraints placed on owning something as militarily useless and neutered as a double barrel shotgun in England. Your nation too, once enshrined this right as a sacrosanct of free people – indeed, that is where the US derived the principle. Sadly, by 1953 the English were effectively disarmed — and compounding the insult, courts began prosecuting people for previously legal (and even encouraged) acts of violence in defense of persons and property. Now England lives in the grips of a sort of Anarcho-Totalitarianism wherein otherwise law abiding citizens are arrested and jailed for carrying something as innocuous as a pocket knife or exercising the most basic human right – self defense, while true criminals walk free and operate with impunity wherever and however the please. Lest you think I am picking on Britain, please know that the United States isn’t far behind. England is now a warning for us. Of course, those in favor of disarming us for our own good site dubious crime statistics (remember this is a screed about Morgan after all) but you and I know that you can choose your own crime statistics. As an aside, I have found a AR-15 you can legally own in the UK!

This debate is NOT about school children or making schools safer. This debate is about whether we shall have liberty. During our deployment ceremony for Afghanistan General Honore said something (he was quoting former POW BG Robby Risber, USAF) that has stayed with me: “to be born free is an accident – to live free is a privilege – to die free is a responsibility.”