Actor Matthew McConaughey visited Congress shortly after the horrific school shooting in his home town of Uvalde, Texas, and he shared what he learned in a no-holds-barred op-ed that blistered both parties.
McConaughey explained in the article, which was published on Tuesday, that he had gone to Washington, D.C., hoping to find people there who wanted to see change and perhaps to be a part of bringing about that change. Instead, he said, he found a number who were unwilling to take risks because they feared it could impact their chances at being re-elected.
i hope i told it well https://t.co/Zm8bV9JUPI @esquire pic.twitter.com/AoF3zq2ztO
— Matthew McConaughey (@McConaughey) October 11, 2022
“Writing this story was hard. It’s personal—for me, but more so for the victims and their families, who have paid the ultimate cost. Which is why I’ve hesitated to write it,” McConaughey prefaced the article. “Observing from the front lines, then sharing what I saw—it makes me feel a bit like a fraud. Am I trespassing? Sharing sacred secrets that are not my stories to tell? I hope not.”
The Oscar-winning actor, who grew up in Uvalde, headed home as soon as he heard about the shooting. “This would be a journey with a one-way ticket. We had no sense of how long we’d go for, nor a plan beyond showing up. But we knew that if we did, purpose would intercept us,” he said — and when he arrived with his wife, model Camila Alves, they made a point to avoid media. Instead, they went from home to home — where they hugged, listened to, and spoke with the families who had just endured the unthinkable.
He then turned to the topic of gun control — and his own early experience with a father who taught him that firearms were to be treated with respect and used only in the proper fashion.
“I was nine, and I still remember the sober tone he assumed while presenting it. ‘This is a tool, son,’ he said. ‘It can feed you, and it can take a life. You must give it full respect,’” McConaughey wrote of receiving his first BB gun. “He instilled in me the rules of engagement: barrel management, muzzle control, safety catch, secure storage, the awareness of what’s behind your target.”
His belief that protecting the Second Amendment came along with a responsibility to protect children sent him to Washington, D.C., shortly thereafter. He said that he had initially intended to try to meet with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), but that he had eventually set up a number of meetings with members of both parties from all over the country.
“I arrived in Washington with such a reverence for our government and those who run it. While I’m not going to say that I lost that reverence, I did see the most powerful legislators in America playing an implicit political game, one they seemed to be handcuffed to, even systematically imprisoned by, as if it were the price of entry,” the actor continued, noting that one of the key takeaways from his trip to the nation’s capital was a crash course in just how frustrating politics can be for those in the middle of it.
“It sometimes feels like politicians don’t really want solutions, because solutions would put them out of a job. Optics are often prized over substance—who gets the credit often takes precedence over whom that credit is serving, or how well,” he wrote, adding, “With a disparity between belief and action, it’s hard to be in the make-a-difference business if you’re only in the reelection business.”
McConaughey’s conclusion was simple: the American people needed to take the power back from both party’s extremes.
“We are reasonable and responsible, and we share more values than we’re being told we do—and we believe that meeting each other in the middle is in service of the greater good. We have the majority. We have the numbers,” he explained. “That’s why it’s high time we take the megaphone back from the extremists who’ve been manufacturing these false fractures among us. They’ve been selling us soft porn at the pep rally for too long. It’s time to kick them off the port and starboard sides of the boat on which American democracy sails … or at least relegate them to mopping the deck.”