Matthew McConaughey – sincerely wrong

A Hollywood actor took an invitation to preach gun control to the masses from the White House bully pulpit yesterday. Matthew McConaughey probably has extra rights as a native of Uvalde, Texas, site of yet another mass shooting. But he offered typical arguments that not only break the Constitution but also fail to address why such things happen.

The Matthew McConaughey speech

Matthew McConaughey delivered this speech in the White House Briefing Room, with Karinne Jean-Pierre by his side.

His speech largely followed this essay he published in the Austin American-Statesman on Monday. He spoke of a perceived lack of mental health care in this country, schools that are less than safe, a media that gives a shooter far more attention than he deserves, and a loss of moral values in America. But then he made four specific recommendations, none of which would pass Constitutional muster:

1. A background check even for a private gun sale,
2. Raising the minimum age to buy certain rifles to 21 (except for active-duty military),
3. A national “red flag” law that requires a judge to enjoin temporarily any person from buying a gun on the say-so of his relatives or the local sheriff or chief of police, and
4. A national waiting period, the duration of which he never specified.

These proposals have three problems. First, he proposes these as matters of federal law. Nothing in the Constitution delegates that kind of power to the federal government. Therefore it is a State reserved power.

Second, no law-enforcement agency could enforce any of these things without breaking the Second Amendment.

Third, as usual, only law-abiding citizens would obey this kind of law, federal or State. This especially holds for waiting periods, but applies to his other proposals as well.

Reaction

At least one reporter accused Matthew McConaughey of grandstanding.

At issue are the many film and TV projects in which Matthew McConaughey has portrayed people who use various kinds of automatic or semi-automatic rifles.

At least one source cited this entry for the actor in the Internet Movie Firearms Database. According to that entry, he has used twenty different weapons in eleven movies. More recently he has used three different weapons in his current television show, True Detective.

Critics cite such statistics to question his sincerity. By that theory, one who criticizes others for using guns, should not portray such people except in a bad light. Of course he could remind people that most of the characters he has portrayed are protagonists, rather than antagonists. That might work – for characters who are active-duty military or law-enforcement officers.

Laying all that aside

But lay aside his acting career and use of guns during that career. Lay aside even that evidence emerges every week that certain individuals and agencies did not follow correct procedures in Uvalde. We hear of a door that a teacher did not latch properly, thus letting Salvador Rios gain entry. And why did the Uvalde police wait to enter, while children called 911 and begged for help? (The federal Department of Justice is investigating, by the way.) For that matter, why didn’t the local police or school district answer anyone’s telephone calls for two days?

Lay all that aside, and assume Matthew McConaughey was sincere. Well, then, he was sincerely wrong.

The safest schools in America stand in Utah, where concealed carry permit holders may enter with their guns. Utah hasn’t has a mass shooting in a school. Ever. Utah has seen only five mass shootings elsewhere than at school. That included an unauthorized mass summary execution in a prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War.

But more than that, we took God out of our schools. The spirit world abhors a vacuum, and so the Devil came in. That’s why we have people who have even a motive to shoot a bunch of people at a school or anywhere else. Matthew McConaughey mentioned a decline in values in passing, but even then didn’t give the reason for it.

It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.General Douglas MacArthur USA