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Monday, Dec 31, 2012 4:31 PM UTC

CNN’s Piers Morgan considers self-deporting

He's worried about American gun laws

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Topics: Piers Morgan, Newtown shooting, Sandy hook Shooting, CNN, Media, petition, ,

CNN's Piers Morgan considers self-deportingPiers Morgan, still here (AP/Jae C. Hong, File)

Everyone from President Barack Obama to reality show host Donald Trump roundly mocked Mitt Romney for suggesting that immigration reform could be achieved if  ndocumented immigrants would just self-deport. But Piers Morgan, the presumably documented immigrant who has a show on CNN, is considering self-deporting out for fear of America’s lax gun laws.

After 20 children were killed with legally purchased guns in the Newtown massacre, Morgan must have questioned this country’s laws. In response someone started a petition at the White House’s “We the People” site demanding that Morgan be deported “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.” In 10 days the petition has accumulated more than 96,000 signatures, far more than the 25,000 needed to guarantee a White House response.

The Obama administration’s opinion is still forthcoming but Morgan responded with a column in The Daily Mail:

The ‘more guns, less crime’ argument is utter nonsense. Britain, after Dunblane, introduced some of the toughest gun laws in Europe, and we average just 35 gun murders a year.

Japan, which has the toughest gun control in the world, had just TWO in 2006 and averages fewer than 20 a year. In Australia, they’ve not had a mass shooting since stringent new laws were brought in after 35 people were murdered in the country’s worst-ever mass shooting in Tasmania in 1996. Fewer guns equals less gun murder. This is not a ‘pinko liberal’ hypothesis. It’s a simple fact.

In conclusion, I can spare those Americans who want me deported a lot of effort by saying this: If you don’t change your gun laws to at least try to stop this relentless tidal wave of murderous carnage, then you don’t have to worry about deporting me.

Although I love the country as a second home and one that has treated me incredibly well, I would, as a concerned parent first – and latterly, of a one-year-old daughter who may attend an American elementary school like Sandy Hook in three years’ time – seriously consider deporting myself.

 

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Alex Halperin is news editor at Salon. You can follow him on Twitter @alexhalperin. More Alex Halperin.

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