Bam Margera took things too far when he posted a Twitter picture of himself holding a toy gun to his pet pit bull, Penny, on October 3.
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After receiving the fake weapon from a friend, the Jackass star, 33, "starting playing with the gun and taking pics," he tells E! News. "Well, Penny pooped in my bed, I said, 'If it happens again, she goes bye-byes!' What I didn't know is that there was an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about people in the area burning dogs in cages."
"That is terrible, and I didn't know that. If I did, I never would have posted it," Margera added. Calling himself an "animal lover," the MTV prankster admitted he likes "jokes and shock value. It was bad timing on me. And I should have said the gun was fake."
In addition to posting the heavily criticized picture with Penny (which he has not removed), Margera also shared several pictures of himself holding a gun up to four friends' heads.
Margera tells E! News Penny will be staying with a friend while he travels to L.A. and Florida on business for 10 days. "We'll see how that goes," he says. "[My friend] will get attached and try to keep it."
This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Bam Margera Apologizes for Putting a Toy Gun to Pet Pit Bull's Head