A conservative writer is offering former CNN host Piers Morgan $100,000 if he can prove his claim that there is no substantive difference between a semi-automatic weapon and an automatic weapon, because “both can kill 200+ people a minute.”
Morgan, who is now the Daily Mail’s U.S. editor-at-large, exposed himself to a storm of criticism on Thursday after he shared his site’s coverage of the UCLA shooting. He claimed in his tweet that the shooter “was angry over his grades, so he took a machine gun to campus & shot dead his teacher.”
A number of people familiar with guns disputed these assertions, and one tweeted that the incident was “not over grades,” did not involve a machine gun, and occurred “in state with laws [Morgan] wants.” More recent reports indicated the shooter accused the professor he murdered of stealing a computer code.
Morgan’s defense soon devolved into ad hominem attacks, including telling a stroke survivor who argued that not every gun owner is mentally unstable, “your face does not scream ‘safe to approach’.”
After claiming “more toddlers killed Americans with guns last year than terrorists,” Morgan wrote, “Gotta love U.S. gun nuts. Their twisted logic dictates the only way to stop toddlers killing with guns is to arm all toddlers.”
National Review correspondent Kevin Williamson said the gun control advocate’s misidentification of the weapon shows he “still doesn’t know what a machine gun is.”
Morgan admitted that updated reports show the shooter used a semi-automatic pistol. But he added, “I love how American gun nuts make such a distinction between automatic & semi-automatic guns. Both can kill 200+ people a minute.”
Williamson responded to what he described as Morgan’s “ridiculous 200-kills claim” with a wager.
“How about we bet on this Piers? Pick your shooter and see if he can hit 201 moving targets in 60 seconds. Say $100K?”
After another user said Williamson matched a “hyperbolic claim” with a “hyperbolic bet,” the writer confirmed his offer was “dead serious.”
