Since the White House was looking for yet another celebrity to cover for the administration in a press briefing, actor Matthew McConaughey seems like the perfect choice to boost President Joe Biden’s anti-gun agenda.
Not only is the “Dallas Buyers Club” star a gun-toting Texas icon, but he’s a Uvalde native who spent much of last week mourning with the community and families who lost 19 children and two adults to an 18-year-old school shooter in May.
On Monday, McConaughey met with several congressmen on both sides of the political aisle including Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin to discuss what McConaughey has dubbed “gun responsibility” in the U.S.
During his White House appearance on Tuesday afternoon, McConaughey made it clear that what he means by “gun responsibility” is really Democrat-led gun control.
“We need background checks. We need to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 rifle to 21. We need a waiting period for those rifles. We need red flag laws, and consequences for those who abuse them. These are reasonable practical tactical regulations,” he said from the administration’s bully pulpit.
There’s more than one problem with McConaughey’s approach to legislating guns out of Americans’ hands. For one, federal background checks are already required for anyone who buys a gun from a federally licensed firearm dealer. At the time of firearm purchase, buyers must divulge their personal information on an ATF form and pass a background check conducted via the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
McConaughey’s proposal to raise the minimum age to purchase a rifle is also a popular suggestion often touted by the same Democrats who want to lower the voting age to 16 and force young children to undergo irreversible genital mutilation if they are confused about their sex. The problem with that? The average age of mass shooters is 33. Even if Democrats successfully raise the gun purchasing age to a higher yet still arbitrary number, older shooters such as the 64-year-old who fired on a Las Vegas crowd attending a music festival will slip through the cracks.
In an op-ed published on Monday in the Austin American-Statesman, McConaughey wrote: “I believe that responsible, law-abiding Americans have a Second Amendment right, enshrined by our founders, to bear arms.” But his rhetoric from the White House podium suggested the opposite.
McConaughey promoted red flag laws as a solution to deadly shootings but someone who actually believes in letting law-abiding Americans keep their Second Amendment rights shouldn’t back faulty legislation that causes “nearly a third of such orders” to be “improperly issued against innocent people.”
Evidence also suggests that states that already have red flag laws in place have failed to enforce them well enough to stop mass shooters. The Buffalo shooter who opened fire in a grocery store last month wasn’t stopped by New York’s red flag legislation. What good are, in McConaughey’s words, “reasonable practical tactical regulations” worth if they aren’t working or being enforced?
McConaughey is a likable guy for many Texans and Americans, especially if you’re into fun accents, which is probably why he teased a gubernatorial run in the Lone Star State at one point. But his thoughts on guns are all wrong. They are just Democrat talking points (ahem, lies) that will sacrifice the gun rights of innocent, law-abiding Americans to an administration that is dramatically failing at everything it touches including the economy, the southern border, foreign policy, and more.