Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney

by Morgan, Piers

  Lott snorted with indignant defiance. ‘I’m upset because I worry that the gun control laws that you are pushing have killed people.’

  ‘Oh, what a load of nonsense!’ I snapped back. ‘I’ve been debating this for months, if not years. I am so frustrated. I’m so furious for these kids who have been blown away again with legally acquired weapons. Some boy who has problems takes his mother’s weapons, including this ridiculous assault rifle, and goes in the school and kills these kids. And you guys still want to tell me the answer is more guns? It is madness!’

  Lott replied: ‘How else can you stop someone from shooting people?’

  And there, right there, was the utter insanity of the pro-gun lobby laid bare. They genuinely have no idea how you stop someone shooting people unless everyone else has a gun too.

  It’s like the Wild West has been beamed into modern-day America.

  And it’s as terrifying as it’s stupid.

  I ended the show by looking directly at the camera and saying: ‘It’s time for action. It’s time that America’s politicians just did something. Stop worrying about the gun lobby, which makes billions of dollars out of this trade, in what often leads to appalling death. It is time for some moral conviction and some moral courage.’

  Then I stormed off home, feeling drained and furious. And so unbelievably sad for those poor children.

  The final thing I read before going to sleep was an email from Barbra Streisand: ‘Keep up your fight for sanity! Go get ’em.’

  SATURDAY, 15 DECEMBER 2012

  My exchange with Lott is attracting a lot of attention on social media.

  But Jonathan is a bit concerned I went too far.

  ‘All your passion will get lost and seen as personal grandstanding if you aren’t careful about how you frame all this,’ he emailed this morning. ‘As an American television viewer, I can tell you there’s a fine line between seeking truth by fighting with people you invite on your show, and simply being rude.’

  I’m tired, still angry and not in the mood to listen to reason.

  ‘You’re entitled to your opinion, I’m entitled to mine,’ I wrote back. ‘The segment in which you accused me of “yelling” and now “being rude” is one of our most talked about since we went on air – with the vast majority of people who’ve seen it totally agreeing with me. If you don’t want me to continue berating these gun nut morons, then don’t put me on the air. Because I’m going to.’

  ‘You did yell, it’s not an accusation,’ he pointed out, entirely accurately. ‘I didn’t say you were rude, I said it’s a fine line between seeking truth and being passionate and seeming rude. Again, that’s a fact not an opinion. I want you to beat them at the debate, not berate them. Berating gets tired. Aren’t you better than that?’

  ‘I’m not going to curb my passion over this issue,’ I emailed back. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Again, I didn’t ask you to. I never would,’ Jonathan wrote. ‘But you can’t just go off half-cocked at these guys and sound sane yourself. Just trying to help you. Not everyone is against you! I think it was riveting TV and that you showed true passion at the end of an emotional day. But everyone, even editors, needs editors from time to time.’

  He’s right about the editing. But I don’t agree about calming down.

  ‘Now is not the time to rein things in,’ I replied. ‘But I’m not oblivious to the dangers of going too far. I actually feel completely distraught for these poor parents. I see my little girl in front of me now, and it enrages me that another wacko’s ruined so many little kids’ lives. I want to make this slaughter stop, and we are in a very good position to influence this debate. Doing it quietly isn’t going to do anything.’

  ‘I think you were on the finest of lines,’ Jonathan responded, ‘and you ended up getting the benefit of the doubt because it was the day it happened and you captured a frustration many people share. If you keep having that same conversation in that way it will seem rude to many.

  ‘I think you can own this issue, but it’s a lot harder to do if you are seen as a Johnny-one-note than if you acknowledge the uphill battle and why it’s different here than England, etc. That has nothing to do with how you carry yourself in an interview. If you invite someone on, let them speak. Disagree all you want but be civil. It doesn’t make your case stronger to simply disagree. I would like to see you win at intellectual not emotional combat, which will make for better TV because it will be sustainable. You’ll save more lives in the long run (including that of your show) if you will at least have a discussion about having a discussion. You can be right and still not win. I want you to have both.’

  Everything he was saying was eminently sensible, and this is a guy who’s worked with everyone in serious TV journalism from Matt Lauer and Katie Couric to Brian Williams. So he knows what he’s talking about.

  But I think I was perfectly justified to shout last night, given the hideous circumstances.

  ‘So, to be clear, you don’t ever want me raising my voice?’ I persisted.

  ‘I think the first person to raise his voice in an argument loses,’ he replied. ‘That’s what I teach my children and try to live by, sometimes successfully. Average, everyday gestures and sayings get hugely exaggerated on TV. It’s why Nixon lost to Kennedy on TV but won their debate on radio. You can raise your voice, but if you drown out the other guy you defeat the purpose of having him on.’

  ‘But by that yardstick, I’d have never done what I did last night. And it demonstrably worked. Just read all the reaction.’

  There was a pause of twenty minutes in our correspondence.

  Then Jonathan emailed again: ‘Guy at the gym just said, unsolicited, “Tell your boy he’s going to have a coronary.” People want you to live!’

  I laughed.

  ‘I’ll be fine, relax! Look, it’s important we debate these things, I get that. Just understand that I’m at my best when I don’t feel restricted by “what anchors usually do” convention, and go with my gut in the moment.’

  ‘Of course I get that,’ he responded immediately.

  SUNDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2012

  My music booker, Susan Durrwachter, revealed an extraordinary thing this morning on her social media.

  ‘Covering these stories, we develop a hardened shell, but sometimes personal emotions seep in. Can’t help but think of my vibrant brother who was taken because of a gun. Our family had twelve great years with Michael and for that I am grateful. RIP to all the kids gone too soon.’

  I knew absolutely nothing about this, and was completely stunned.

  I emailed her immediately.

  ‘Susan, I never knew this. I’m so sorry. What happened?’

  ‘It was a hunting accident,’ she replied. ‘My dad took my brother hunting for the first time with another father–son duo. While hunting for turkeys, the other kid (fourteen years old) accidentally shot and killed my brother. My father told me my brother was shot in the chest and killed instantly. I’ve never ever gotten over it and actually hate guns. My father grew up hunting and has since been a safety advocate at his hunting club. This shooting has hit me hard.’

  There must be so many American families whose lives have been affected like this by gun violence – quite literally, millions.

  More and more details have emerged about Adam Lanza. A picture is building of a misfit loner, living with his mother, suffering mental health issues, addicted to violent games and obsessed with guns.

  In other words, a human bomb waiting to explode.

  The gun rights argument is always that you need guns at home to protect yourself. Yet Lanza’s mother, Nancy, had six, precisely for that purpose. Her deranged son then stole them, shot her in the head as she lay in bed and went on a rampage at Sandy Hook.

  Nick Kristof has written another superb piece for the New York Times, pointing out a report by Harvard public health specialist David Hemenway that showed children aged five to fourteen in America are thirteen times as likely to be murdered with g
uns as children of the same age in other industrialised countries.

  As Kristof said, America’s children are protected by myriad health and safety rules with regard to school stairways, windows, school buses and cafeteria food.

  ‘There are five pages of regulations about ladders,’ he wrote, ‘which kill around three hundred Americans a year. We even regulate toy guns by requiring orange tips. It is more difficult to adopt a pet than to buy a gun.’

  Kristof ended his article by reminding us that the history of automobile safety in America should be the inspiration for how to tackle gun safety.

  ‘Some auto deaths are caused by people who break laws or behave irresponsibly. But we don’t shrug and say, “Cars don’t kill people, drunks do.”

  ‘Instead, we have required seat belts, air bags, child seats, and crash safety standards. We have introduced limited licences for young drivers and tried to curb the use of mobile phones while driving. All this has reduced America’s traffic fatality rate per mile driven by nearly 90 per cent since the 1950s.’

  The logic is inarguable.

  But I don’t think the gun rights activists want to hear logic. It interferes with gun sales.

  What is an undeniable fact is that five of the eleven worst US mass shootings in history have occurred since 2007.

  People keep asking me what I would do to curb the slaughter. My immediate suggestions would include:

  1) A national gun law policy. Same rules for everyone.

  2) A new ban on all assault weapons and magazines over ten bullets.

  3) A universal 100 per cent background check on all gun sales.

  4) Mandatory safety/training courses, minimum of three references and detailed vetting over six to eight weeks for all gun applications.

  5) A ban on all convicted felons and anyone with a documented history of mental illness from owning a gun. Period.

  6) A ban on all guns for anyone under twenty-five, with the exception of those who secure special licences to hunt, or shoot for sport.

  7) A nationwide, incentivised gun amnesty to reduce the volume of guns in circulation – like the one that worked well in Australia.

  8) Far higher sums invested in federal and state research into mental illness, and advice to teachers and parents on how, why and when to raise a red flag over their concerns.

  9) Make Hollywood and video game manufacturers come to the table and acknowledge that to a disturbed mind, their more violent material can act as a trigger.

  None of these measures will stop gun violence. What they would do collectively is reduce it.

  Tonight I read a fascinating piece in the New Yorker about the Second Amendment and the NRA by Jeffrey Toobin, CNN’s top legal analyst.

  For most of America’s history, he revealed, the courts ruled that the amendment conferred on state militias the right to bear arms, but did not give individuals the right to own or carry a weapon.

  Thus confirming what I’ve always assumed the Founding Fathers actually meant by their clumsily, ambiguously worded amendment.

  Enter the NRA. Before the seventies, Toobin wrote, the NRA was predominantly a non-political organisation. But, in 1977, there was a coup d’état at the group’s annual convention that brought a group of committed political conservatives to power. And, Toobin claims, they pushed for a new interpretation of the Second Amendment – one that gave individuals, not just the militias, the right to bear arms.

  That view was widely scorned, Toobin says. US Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, who was no liberal, even mocked it as ‘fraud’.

  But the NRA kept pushing, and they were helped by Ronald Reagan’s ascendency to the presidency in 1980. He was a gun-rights enthusiast and NRA member.

  The NRA, says Toobin, commissioned endless academic studies to ‘prove’ their new theory until it eventually evolved, by sheer force of pressure, into conservative conventional wisdom.

  Finally, in 2008, the Supreme Court, led by Justice Scalia, ruled that an individual had the right, under the Second Amendment, to own a handgun because ‘handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defence in their home’.

  But, and it’s a big but, it did allow the government to ban other weapons, acknowledging that there had to be limitations.

  Toobin writes: ‘In the eighteenth century, militias were proto-military operations and their members had to obtain the best military hardware of the day. But Scalia could not create, in the twenty-first century, an individual right to contemporary military weapons – like tanks and Stinger missiles.’

  So there we have it.

  The NRA hijacked the meaning of the Second Amendment to suit its agenda – to arm every American and sell millions of guns.

  MONDAY, 17 DECEMBER 2012

  A new CBS poll shows that support for stricter gun control laws has surged eighteen points since spring of this year.

  Fifty-seven per cent of Americans now want tougher laws, the highest number in ten years.

  But I won’t hold my breath. After Gabby Giffords was shot, 47 per cent backed stricter gun laws in a CBS poll, and that dropped to 39 per cent by April this year.

  I hosted a special town-hall-style debate tonight on guns.

  One of my guests was Dianne Feinstein, one of the few American senators actually prepared to do anything about this madness.

  ‘I’m going to do an assault weapons piece of legislation,’ she said. ‘It’s going to ban by name at least a hundred military-style semiautomatic assault weapons. And it’s going to ban big clips, drums or strips of more than ten bullets. And this particular category of weapon, the Bushmaster AR-15, which is a killer weapon. You can fire it very quickly. It has very little recoil, very little kick and it’s very high velocity. And it doesn’t belong on the streets of our cities. And it doesn’t belong in a place where a twenty-year-old like this particular twenty-year-old could get a hold of it and go in and do what he did. And this makes me very angry.’

  I wanted to stand and cheer.

  I asked her, ‘What do you say to those who say, “I have my Second Amendment rights, I’m entitled to bear arms, you are not entitled to take away that right by removing these kind of weapons from the streets and from the stores”?’

  ‘There is no Second Amendment right to bear every type of weapon that you know of. These are a certain class of weapons. They are designed to kill large numbers of people in close combat. I don’t believe the Second Amendment covers them. The Second Amendment was written a long time before this class of weapons was founded, merchandised and spread all over our country, where they fall into the hands of juveniles, grievance killers, people who go into our malls, our cinemas, our stores, our businesses and now our schools, and just kill people for no good reason. It’s got to stop. These children, this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. People have to respond. They have to understand that the rights of the many to remain safe are more important than any right you may think you have to have a military-style assault weapon.’

  ‘Senator Feinstein,’ I said, ‘I applaud what you’re doing and I wish you every success.’

  Another guest was Dan Gross, a very smart, eloquent guy who runs the Brady Campaign – a gun safety organisation set up after White House staffer Jim Brady was shot and paralysed in the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt in 1981.

  ‘One in three Americans knows somebody who has been shot,’ he said. ‘And the only place where this is a partisan political debate is in the halls of Congress. What this tragedy is doing is exposing that disconnect between what the American people want and the conversation we want to have and what our elected officials are doing about it.’

  The problem is that the conversation is being dominated by loud, angry and often offensively idiotic gun rights lobbyists.

  Take, for example, Philip Van Cleave, of the Virginia Citizen Defense League. He was my final guest tonight, and reiterated remarks he made to the Washington Post yesterday, when he was asked why anyone would need an AR-15:


  ‘I could ask you why anyone would want a Ferrari. Bushmasters are absolutely a blast to shoot with. They’re fast, they’re accurate. Guns are fun. Some of them are more cool than others. It’s just like we have television sets that look cool and others are more boxy.’

  Just like television sets.

  Unbelievable.

  TUESDAY, 18 DECEMBER 2012

  Watched a gun store owner on CNN this morning, smiling as he boasted how sales of AR-15s have been soaring since Sandy Hook.

  I was left steaming with anger again.

  What is wrong with these bloody people?

  We booked Larry Pratt, executive director of a group called Gun Owners of America. He was sneeringly arrogant and defiant.

  ‘America is not the Wild West you’re depicting,’ he smirked. ‘We only have problems in our cities and in our schools where people like you have been able to get laws on the books that keep people from being able to defend themselves.’

  This moron was actually blaming me for the Sandy Hook massacre.

  I stopped and stared at him for a second or two, trying to stay calm.

  Then I lost it.

  ‘YOU’RE AN UNBELIEVABLY STUPID MAN, AREN’T YOU?’

  This ignited a heated exchange, which ended with me saying: ‘You are a dangerous man espousing dangerous nonsense. You shame your country.’

  He didn’t bat an eyelid, and spat back: ‘Disarmament is dangerous.’

  Jonathan wasn’t happy afterwards.

  ‘You shouldn’t have called him stupid.’

  ‘Why not? He is.’

  ‘He’s got an opinion you don’t agree with, but one that many Americans do agree with. If you call him stupid, you’re calling every American that agrees with him stupid. That’s not smart.’

  But within minutes, the ‘stupid’ clip was blowing up on Twitter.