How Dare You': Conservative Author Confronts Piers Morgan on Exploiting Newtown, Hands Him a Constitution in Tense Interview

CNN

Conservative author and Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro on Thursday accused CNN's Piers Morgan of "standing on the graves of the children" who died in Newtown, Conn. in his opposition to guns.

"Honestly Piers, you've kind of been a bully on this issue," Shapiro said on "Piers Morgan Tonight." "You tend to demonize people who differ from you politically by standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, saying they don't seem to care enough about the dead kids, if they cared more about the dead kids they would agree with you on policy."

Morgan, who has been at the forefront of the anti-gun argument on his show, reacted with outrage, repeatedly asking Shapiro, "How dare you?"

"How dare you accuse me of standing on the graves of children that died there, how dare you?” he asked.

"I’ve seen you do it repeatedly, Piers,” Shapiro said.

“Like I say, how dare you,” Morgan repeated.

"Well, I mean, you can keep saying that, but you’ve done it repeatedly," Shapiro replied. "What you do, and I’ve seen you do it on your program, is you keep saying to folks if they disagree with you politically, then somehow this is a violation of what happened in Sandy Hook."

Then, taking out a pocket-sized Constitution, Shapiro handed it to Morgan and said he'd like to hear his policy ideas for guns.

"I've brought this here for you so you can read it,” he said. "I would really like for you to explain to me what you would do about guns that would have prevented what happened at Sandy Hook."

Morgan responded that he would like to do the same thing that Mark Kelly, husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, would like to do, which is take away assault weapons. Shapiro pointed out that the majority of gun deaths in United States are caused by handguns, prompting Morgan to run down the recent shootings in Newtown, the Aurora movie theater, the Oregon shopping mall and in New York with the firefighters around Christmas, asking which weapons were used.

"The last four mass shootings in America were with assault rifles...that's the reason, Mr. Shapiro," Morgan said. "You can smirk at me and you can laugh at me, and you can accuse me of standing on the graves of dead children, but that’s the reason that people like me and Mark Kelly and Gabrielle Giffords want to have assault weapons like that removed from civilian hands.”

Shapiro responded that Morgan's "passion on the issue doesn't really justify the rationale for why you want to ban assault weapons."

Watch the full 14-minute interaction below:

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