Piers Morgan: I Don't Want All American Women Armed with Guns

CNN host Piers Morgan said he did not want to see all the women in America armed with guns in a spirited debate on Piers Morgan Tonight with Breitbart News author A.W.R. Hawkins on Tuesday.

Hawkins told Morgan that there were less violent crimes in America than in England and Wales per 100,000 people because women in American can defend themselves regardless of any inequality in physical strength. 

Morgan said he believed “where there are guns,” there is a “much higher incidence” of suicide and domestic violence with firearms.

Earlier in the segment, Hawkins told Morgan that in England and Wales, for every 100,000 people, there are 775 violent crimes, including sexual assaults–which primarily are perpetrated on women. Hawkins said that in America, there are 383 violent crimes for every 100,000 people. 

“The difference is here, women can shoot back,” Hawkins said. “You chase them into an attic, they are going to shoot at you to protect their own lives and the lives of their children.”

Hawkins was referring to a story he told earlier in the segment about a woman in Georgia who, in the first week of January, shot an intruder five times when he chased her and her two children into their attic. Hawkins said the woman’s husband urged her to shoot the intruder over the phone.   

Hawkins said, “I would like my wife to be armed were she in that position.” He then asked Morgan, “Wouldn’t you want your wife to be armed were she to be in that position?” The host did not reply to that question. 

Earlier in the segment, Morgan said it was disconcerting that there was a “spike in gun sales” in places like Newtown, where the Sandy Hook massacre took place. However, Hawkins replied that fewer guns through gun control would amount to a “war on women,” because “it makes women who are prone to attack more prone to attack and prone to more frequent attack.”

“When you or President Obama or whoever supports forcibly disarming the American citizenry, we make the vulnerable the more vulnerable we make the weak or those prone to attack more prone to attack, and that’s especially true to women,” Hawkins argued. “Gun control never makes the vulnerable less vulnerable, it always makes them more vulnerable. For me, I want to see not just men, but women to be able defend their lives with guns as needed, and that means they need access to them.”

Hawkins and Morgan debated whether an increase in guns reduced crime, and Hawkins pointed out that an increase in guns coincided with a drop in the percentage of violent crimes and the murder rate in states like Virginia. Hawkins then asked Morgan to look at place with stringent gun control laws like Chicago, asserting that nearly 10% of the 441 people killed in Chicago in 2011 were women.

“I would prefer that those women have guns to protect their lives,” Hawkins said. However, Morgan remained dismissive. 

“I would tell that to the families of the women who were killed at Sandy Hook,” he replied. “I’m not sure they would quite see it the same way.”