Matthew McConaughey: It’s time to act on gun responsibility
I am a father, the son of a kindergarten teacher, and an American. I was also born in Uvalde, Texas.
That’s why I’m writing this.
I believe that responsible, law-abiding Americans have a Second Amendment right, enshrined by our founders, to bear arms. I also believe we have a cultural obligation to take steps toward slowing down the senseless killing of our children. The debate about gun control has delivered nothing but status quo. It’s time we talk about gun responsibility.
There is a difference between control and responsibility. The first is a mandate that can infringe on our right; the second is a duty that will preserve it. There is no constitutional barrier to gun responsibility. Keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people is not only the responsible thing to do, it is the best way to protect the Second Amendment. We can do both.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
I am a father, the son of a kindergarten teacher, and an American. I was also born in Uvalde, Texas.
That’s why I’m writing this.
I believe that responsible, law-abiding Americans have a Second Amendment right, enshrined by our founders, to bear arms. I also believe we have a cultural obligation to take steps toward slowing down the senseless killing of our children. The debate about gun control has delivered nothing but status quo. It’s time we talk about gun responsibility.
There is a difference between control and responsibility. The first is a mandate that can infringe on our right; the second is a duty that will preserve it. There is no constitutional barrier to gun responsibility. Keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people is not only the responsible thing to do, it is the best way to protect the Second Amendment. We can do both.
Depraved acts of violence, with guns as the weapon of choice, are ripping apart families, tearing at people’s faith, and shredding the fabric of our society. We have an epidemic of indiscriminate mass shootings, of parents burying their children, of inaction, and buck-passing. Saving the unnecessary loss of lives is not a partisan issue.
The need for mental health care, school safety, the prevalence of sensationalized media coverage, and the decaying state of American values are all long-term societal factors that must be addressed, but right now, we don’t have the luxury of time. We need to focus on corrections and countermeasures that can also and immediately reduce the gun violence tragedies that have become too common in our country.
We need to make the lost lives matter. Our leaders must make bipartisan compromises on a few reasonable measures to restore responsible gun ownership in our country.
I believe:
1) All gun purchases should require a background check. Eighty-eight percent of Americans support this, including a lot of responsible gun owning Texans. … I’ve met them. Roof, who killed nine people in a black church in South Carolina in 2015, got his pistol without a completed background check due to a legal technicality. The system failed. Gun control activists call this a loophole. I call it incompetence.
2) Unless you are in the military, you should be 21 years old to purchase an assault rifle. I’m not talking about 12-gauge shotguns or lever-action hunting rifles. I’m talking about the weapon of choice for mass murderers, AR-15s. The killer in my hometown of Uvalde purchased two AR-15s for his eighteenth birthday, just days before he killed 19 students and two teachers. He obeyed the law. Had the law been different, perhaps I wouldn’t be writing this today.
3) Red Flag Laws should be the law of the land. These measures, which are already in effect in 19 states and Washington, D.C., empower loved ones or law enforcement to petition courts to temporarily prevent individuals who may be a threat to themselves or others from purchasing or accessing firearms. These laws must respect due process, judicial review, and hold account individuals who may abuse such laws.
4) We need to institute a national waiting period for assault rifles. Individuals often purchase weapons in a fit of rage, harming themselves or others. Studies show that mandatory waiting periods reduced homicides by 17 percent. Gun suicides account for the majority of U.S. gun deaths. A waiting period to purchase an assault rifle is an acceptable sacrifice for responsible gun owners when it can prevent a mass shooting crime of passion or suicide.
Integrating gun safety training, safe storage proposals, and bolstering school safety are also beneficial, but are not government-only solutions. Companies, private organizations, and responsible gun owners have a big role to play.
I want to be clear. I am not under the illusion that these policies will solve all of our problems, but if responsible solutions can stop some of these tragedies from striking another community without destroying the Second Amendment, they're worth it.
This is not a choice between guns or no guns. It’s the responsible choice. It’s the reasonable choice. It’s a quintessentially American choice: Where I have the right to be me, you have the freedom to be you, and we have the responsibility to be US.
To find common ground on this issue, both sides are going to have to answer the call and reach for the higher ground of our collective responsibility.
Business as usual isn’t working. “That’s just how it is” cannot be an excuse. The heinous bloodshed of innocent people cannot become bearable. If we continue to just stand by, we’re living a lie. With every right there comes a duty.
For ourselves, our children, and our fellow Americans—we have a duty to be responsible gun owners. Please do yours and protect the Second Amendment through gun responsibility. It’s time for real leaders to step up and do what’s right, so we can each and all just keep livin’.
The author is a native of Uvalde, an Austin resident, founder of the just keep livin Foundation, and a father of three.
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Matthew McConaughey says:
Good luck with that, talking about "responsibility" in a nation where the "responsible" thing was to follow guidelines such as wearing masks, social distancing and getting vaccinated or just fuck them all and kill a milllion people. MM spoke with a voice of common sense that's just going to blow in the wind when lawmakers are competing in a lying contest to be elected in the midterms. GET REAL. The gun manufacturers and NRA and their lobbyists are distributing MILLIONS of DOLLARS to the lawmakers to gain their support. Common sense and reasonableness and compromise are DREAMS.
We wouldn't even need to be talking about "responsibility" if we followed the example of a nation where the 'responsible" thing was to follow one Party for 70-80 years. Individual responsibility isn't nearly as efficient as authoritative responsibility, where people understand and respect their place in the hierarchy. People respond to carrots and sticks, with responsible behavior. Technology and surveillance provides government big data to score citizens on their socially responsible behavior and then use those score to reward or punish accordingly. Instead of lawmakers competing four our votes, we need lawmakers competing within the Party and proving themselves at each rung, capable of exercising appropriate control to maintain authority within the Leninist-Xi doctrine. Until we understand that the proper social contract requires both individual and the state decisions are meant to serve one purpose stability and order, we are just dreaming in our unpredictable world.
If I might attempt to change the subject back to Texas and guns, I think Matthew McConaughey is making a helpful contribution to the national conversation. His emphasis on the word "responsibility" as opposed to "control" is interesting. The Democrats could learn a thing or two about marketing from him.
Yes, I was surprised when Buzz pivoted to COVID.
Agree on his contribution to a national conversation as well as your analysis.
I agree that MM made a sensible speech that was designed to not raise the ire of gun owners, but the key word in his speech, the one in which I drew a parallel, was "responsible/responsibility".
Exactly, how responsible has China been in helping the World understand the origin of COVID-19,m as a parallel to your previous point?
I was talking about individual responsibiity, not government policy.
Aren't they meant to be complementary, Yin and Yang, a dynamic system for social good and order?
Not necessarily, and your comment is bordering on trolling if not actually being so.
No, why not? Why shouldn't responsible individual behavior be complimentary with governmental behavior?
How so?
What are these IMPASSE (issuer) things?
It's a stern form of "Let's agree to disagree". Sometimes involving expletives.
How do they get applied?
In your reply, just type the word "IMPASSE" and nothing else. If you make any other reply, add any words, it will not work.
I have no respect for criticism of a nation from a person who has never been there and is bound to repeat propaganda circulated for nefarious purposes because that's all they fucking well know. I have spent a lot of time during my lifetime in and throughout the USA, maybe seen more of America than a lot of Americans, even spent time there when I owned a golf condominium in Florida for a number of years, I used to love America and it makes me sick to my stomach when I see this, especially when my son and his family live in Wisconsin...
22 Weeks Into The Year, America Has Already Seen At Least 246 Mass Shootings
However, I live a very peaceful life where I am, respected by police and government authorities, absolutely no concern that I will ever be shot, and guess what, being in a country that is not my own, I stay entirely out of trouble because I'm smart enough to not try to be an idiot and I'm not even a Communist. My wife and her extended family live very peaceful and happy lives no different than any law-abiding American. You don't see homeless people here, and the traditional culture here is to be more concerned about the good of the community and one's family than it is to be selfish self-centred irresponsible assholes who are only concerned about themselves.
[Deleted]
Modern China is a huge success story. In 2 centuries it has moved from a conquered, colonialized country, through a major civil war, starvation and poverty to be a world competitor. Ordinary people that lived through the Great Leap Forward, the Red Guard, Tiananmen Square, have gone from little opportunity to reasonable prosperity and stability They surley nod their heads while watching the TV talk show, Marx Got It Right.
I certainly did have personal feelings about it, but I didn't ever post them anywhere - that was before social media became everyone's mouthpiece.
It's never too late.
[deleted][,] and since you brought up COVID, what are your thoughts on "responsibility" in regards to China's recent response in Shanghai?
You have a really really bad habit of changing the subject or trying to change the subject on numerous seeds. This article is not about China. It is about Matthew Mc Conaughey's speech at the White House briefing room. I think Gulliver is too polite to say anything to you but I am not.
I am going to start IMPASSING him to stop him from trying to lead me around the mulberry bush. Maybe cutting him off every time he does it will teach him to fuck off.
I replied to 2.0 which linked US probable reaction to mass shootings to US COVID response. Did you have a problem changing discussion from firearm responsibility to COVID responsibility?
China hasn't done all that well in managing Covid recently. Their authoritarian approach had a lot of early success but eventually Covid evolved to the point that it was able to start infecting the largely non-immune Chinese population.
On the other hand they don't seem to have to worry about random gun shootings.
So I guess some things are better managed with an authoritarian approach than others are
Those are a couple of interesting things to notice when we look at America and see both a lot of unnecessary Covid damage and a lot of unnecessary gun damage. Maybe the American mentality fails at both.
But do we really need to turn this into a trolling match about China vs the USA?
Is MM on to something? Can people like him reach out to his own tribe and maybe get the needle to move on some modest gun reform?
I don't think I disagree with anything Matthew said. Also, he kept his shirt on, which is in his favor.
McConaughey speaks to reporters at the White House on a controversial topic while Biden does a puff piece interview with a swooning fanboy on a late night talk show.
Par for the Course for hidin Biden.