America is in mourning today after another mass shooting in a Texas elementary school. While some are offering the usual “thoughts and prayers” and others are calling for gun bans and confiscations, actor and activist Matthew McConaughey has some other ideas. He isn’t offering any party or ideological solutions, but rather calling on Americans to be Americans again — to drop the party and ideological chains and start working on solutions that we can all agree on. He doesn’t claim to have all the answers but knows the answers are out there — if everyone wants to drop the politics and actually speak to each other, find solutions, and compromise.
Read the statement Matthew McConaughey issued on Instagram below:
As you all are aware there was another mass shooting today, this time in my home town of Uvalde, Texas. Once again, we have tragically proven that we are failing to be responsible for the rights our freedoms grant us.
The true call to action now is for every American to take a longer and deeper look in the mirror, and ask ourselves ‘What is it that we truly value? How do we repair the problem? What small sacrifices can we individually take today, to preserve a healthier and safer nation, state, and neighborhood tomorrow? We cannot exhale once again, make excuses, and accept these tragic realities as the status quo.
As Americans, Texans, mothers and fathers, it’s time we re-evaluate, and renegotiate our wants from our needs. We have to rearrange our values and find a common ground above this devastating American reality that has tragically become our children’s issue.
This is an epidemic we can control, and whichever side of the aisle we may stand on, we all know we can do better. We must do better. Action must be taken so that no parent has to experience what the parents in Uvalde and the others before them have endured.
And to those who dropped their loved one off today not knowing it was goodbye, no words can comprehend or heal your loss, but if prayers provide comfort, we will keep them coming.”
Matthew McConaughey was born in the small city of Uvalde (about 85 miles west of San Antonio), and spent some of his childhood years there until his family moved to Longview. His mother was a teacher at a school about a mile from Robb Elementary where the shooting that took 21 innocent lives (19 children and 2 adults) happened.
McConaughey is right. This nation does need to “re-evaluate” what we value — Is it unfettered access to guns or the lives of our loved ones?
This isn’t about some paranoid delusion about “fighting tyranny” or such nonsense. You aren’t Rambo — Rambo was a fictional character and he doesn’t exist.
There are some things most Americans agree on. Better background checks and other common-sense measures like finally closing those “gun show loopholes” that allow shady people to obtain weapons without any scrutiny.
But it will take more.
It is way past time we have an actual sensible conversation about guns. What do we value? How do we better protect what and who we value? Do we really want the gun lobby and other radicals to dictate policy?
Those on one side have to be able to stomach the thought that people matter more than guns and the idea that unfettered access is akin to freedom. Those on the other side have to accept those mass confiscations and the like aren’t going to happen — that toothpaste is out of the tube. We need solutions, not platitudes or unrealistic solutions that simply aren’t going to happen. We need the adults in the room to start acting like adults and throw the politics out of it.
