S.E. Cupp vs. Michael Moore on Guns: 'I Just Happen to Be Informed

HBO

TheBlaze's S.E. Cupp battled liberal filmmaker Michael Moore on the gun issue Friday, arguing against gun restrictions and schooling him on basic statistics on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher."

Cupp, contending with boos from the "Real Time" audience, said the problem with a gun registry is that "it treats law-abiding citizens as if they are guilty until proven innocent."

She went on, "The problem with background checks, five-day waiting periods, they assume that I have criminal intent to use my gun to pursue my Second Amendment rights...I go to get a background check, 'Prove to me you're not a criminal.' I go to get a gun, 'Prove to me you don't want to use it in the heat of passion right now, wait five days, you need to cool off.' That's not fair -- the government is not in the business of intimidating me away from my Second Amendment rights. It's an abuse of power, and it seeps into the culture -- it's why newspapers think they can publish gun owners' addresses, as if they are pariahs. It's not appropriate."

Moore countered, "You have a dangerous device that can kill 20 schoolchildren, I want to know where that device is. You can have it -- "

"You do not have that right," Cupp said.

Moore then said he wanted the Second Amendment altered to spell out the Founding Fathers' intention: that it covers muskets.

Maher pointed out that he is a gun owner himself and would never give his guns up. He said he goes to the shooting range a few times a year, which Moore said wasn't enough -- he wouldn't be effective against an intruder if he were just coming out of a deep sleep.

"As opposed to what, just getting mowed down?" Maher asked.

The conversation shifted to crime statistics, with Maher raising the question: Why have gun homicides gone down in an age of less gun control?

Moore made the point that all crime has gone down, and Cupp said mass shootings are also down -- causing Moore to throw up his hands in laughter.

"Less school shootings since Columbine, let me ponder that for a second," he said sarcastically.

"There have been fewer mass shootings over the past 30 years, that's just a fact," Cupp said. "It's an inconvenient truth I know, but it's a fact."

Moore referenced "the bubble" that gun owners live in.

"There's no bubble. I am a gun owner, I have lived and breathed this issue personally for a decade," Cupp shot back. "It's not a bubble, I just happen to be informed on gun issues, unlike those people who talk about them."

​Watch the discussi​on: