McConaughey gun-reg plea at W. House
Matthew McConaughey came to the White House Tuesday to make an impassioned plea for new gun restrictions after the school massacre in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas.
After meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the “Dallas Buyers Club” Oscar winner paid tribute to the victims of the mass shooting and demanded action to prevent future bloodbaths.
“We start by making the loss of these lives matter,” McConaughey said from the White House briefing room. “We need to recognize that something is different this time.”
Alternately choking back tears and beaming with joy, McConaghey recounted tales of the victims, including a child who loved to read from the Bible after Sunday school class and a slain teacher who would never get the chance to finish painting her house.
He held up a self-portrait of one girl who dreamed of going to art school and his wife, Camila, held up the pair of green Converse sneakers with a hand-drawn heart on one toe that another victim wore the day she was murdered.
“Those green Converse turned out to be the only clear evidence to identify her after the shooting,” McConaghey said, pounding the podium with anger. “How about that?”
The actor read the names of every victim — and vowed to make sure their lives would not be lost in vain.
“We want gun laws that won’t make it so easy for the bad guys to get these damn guns,”
McConaughey said.
He specifically backed proposals to raise the minimum age to buy assault weapons to 21, expanded background checks and red flag laws, along with GOP proposals to improve mental health care and school security.
“Responsible gun owners are fed up with the Second Amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals,” he said. “Is this a cure-all? Hell, no. But people are hurting.”
The actor who considered and rejected making a Democratic run for governor of Texas said he met with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
He came away hopeful that a compromise could be reached that would help at least make it more difficult for the next crazed killer to carry out the next mass killing in the next Uvalde.
“Can both sides rise above the political problem at hand and admit that we have a life preservation problem?” McConaughey asked. “Find a middle ground where most of us Americans live. We are not as divided as we are being told we are.”
A lifelong gun owner himself, McConaughey recalled getting his first shotgun while growing up in Uvalde and “was taught to revere the power and the capability of the tool that we call a gun.”
He recalled driving with his family into the familiar but heartbroken town the day after the attack.
“The reality of what had happened in the town that I was born in set in,” he said. “You could feel the shock in town. You could feel the pain, the denial, the disillusion, the sadness.”