CNNPiers Morgan is responding to the wave of ticked-off gun owners who have signed a petition seeking to deport him.
After his rants calling for increased gun control following the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. earlier this month and taking on pro-gun advocates like Larry Pratt on his show, the 47-year-old CNN host is defending his crusade and suggesting that as a father of four, he'd consider moving back to his native Britain if little change came about to stop the senseless killings.
"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," Morgan concluded in a lengthy op-ed in the U.K.'s Daily Mail.
He added: "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."
The former British tabloid editor laid out in great detail how his views on gun control evolved over the years.
After recounting the terror he felt as a young journalist covering a similar mass shooting in Scotland in 1996 and the horror that hit him after the bloodbath that occurred at Sandy Hook, Morgan said, "my anger turned to blind rage when I saw the reaction to this hideous massacre in America."
Particularly when he confronted members of the gun lobby whose only response to the murders was to arm everyone—what Morgan called a "warped twisted logic that bears not statistical analysis and makes no sense."
As a result of Morgan's outspoken views, pro-gun folks launched a petition on the official White House website seeking to deport the former America's Got Talent judge on the grounds that he's "engaged in a hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution by targeting the Second Amendment."
But Morgan said he remains unperturbed.
"The concerted effort to get me thrown out of the country—which has so far gathered more than 90,000 signatures—struck me as rather ironic, given that by expressing my opinion I was merely exercising my rights, as a legal U.S. resident, under the 1st Amendment, which protects free speech," he opined. "But no matter."
Noting that he's no pacifist, sees the necessity for guns to fight tyrannical regimes like the Nazis and respects America's "right to bear arms," he nevertheless challenged the gun lobby's position that there shouldn't be any controls on assault weapons whose sole purpose is mass slaughter.
"Where I have a big problem is when the unfortunately ambiguous wording of the 2nd Amendment is twisted to mean that anyone in America can have any firearm they want, however powerful, and in whatever quantity they want," he wrote. "This has led to the absurd scenario where I can't legally buy six packets of Sudafed in an American supermarket, or a chocolate Kinder egg, or various French cheeses, because they are all deemed a health risk. Yet I can saunter into Walmart…and help myself to an armful of AR-15 assault rifles and magazines that can carry up to 100 bullets at a time. "
Morgan pointed to sensible gun laws in other countries including his own that have shown progress in reducing the number of gun deaths and argued that the Newtown shooting will serve as a "tipping point" as 58 percent of Americans support stricter gun-control laws.