Actor Matthew McConaughey made news this week by indicating during an interview that he was open to the possibility of running for political office in Texas one day in the future.
News that McConaughey could be interested in running for office came out during an interview that he had with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
The two had the following interaction:
HEWITT: … you’re kind of center-right in the view of people, you could be governor of Texas. Are you ever going to run for anything?
MCCONAUGHEY: I don’t know. I mean, that wouldn’t be up to me. It would be up to the people more than it would me. I would say this. Look, politics seems to be a broken business to me right now. And when politics redefines its purpose, I could be a hell of a lot more interested.
News that McConaughey may consider running for office in Texas, a Republican stronghold, was well received online as McConaughey is generally well liked by the public and has avoided making inflammatory remarks or getting involved in politics in the past.
Remarks that he made in 2018 about the Second Amendment, however, could be problematic for him if he ever tries to run for office in Texas.
Sounding like Beto O’Rourke, McConaughey said at a rally for the anti-gun March For Our Lives group in Austin, Texas, that law-abiding gun owners needed to “take one for the team” and give up some of their gun rights, including the ability to own semi-automatic long guns and magazines that have the ability to carry certain amounts of ammunition.
“One, let’s ban the assault weapons for civilians. This is a no-brainer,” he said. “And to my friends out there, that are responsible owners of these assault weapons that they use for recreation, please let’s take one for the team and set it down.”
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In 2018, actor Matthew McConaughey marched with the far-left March For Our Lives group where he called on law-abiding gun owners to “take one for the team” and give up some of their gun rights.
He has recently indicated he could be interested in running for office in Texas. pic.twitter.com/xCxm5GYPnm
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 21, 2020
In an interview the following month with The Associated Press, McConaughey said that what the March For Our Lives wanted was “very good.”
He did caution that a lot of people in the gun control movement wanted “no guns” and that if the movement went further left in its goals that it would not get anything done.
He said that wanting to ban semi-automatic rifles, which are very popular in the United States, and wanting to ban mythical “unlimited magazines” was “right on the money.”
McConaughey suggested that his views on guns were shaped by growing up hunting and learning to respect the tool.
The Second Amendment, however, “is about protecting yourself against tyranny—whether against a tyrannical government or for self-defense purposes,” The Resurgent noted. “Nowhere in the Constitution does it state the right for law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms applies to hunting. Nowhere. Talk about an illusory correlation.”
National Review Senior Writer David Harsanyi recently wrote:
The Second Amendment is predicated on the principle that people have the right defend themselves and their liberties. The right to bear arms, in fact, is older than the right to free speech or freedom of religion. The English Bill of Rights, a document cataloging the crimes of James II and codifying the “ancient and indubitable” rights of English citizens in 1689, includes the right to “arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” Well, for Protestants. By 1765, William Blackstone, whose writings helped define the English common-law legal system, wrote that “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.”
Not one Founder mentioned anything about “hunting” or “skeet shooting” during the debates over the drafting of the Constitution.
The founding generation believed that firearms should be used to guarantee the universal and inalienable liberties of the people laid out in the Constitution — whether they were in the government or not. Thankfully, there is no need of insurrection now. But the presence of armed citizenry is always a good bulwark against tyranny. Just in case.
After his interview with Hewitt, McConaughey appeared to slightly walk back his comments by saying that he does not have any plans to run for governor “right now.”