Actor Matthew McConaughey said during an interview over the weekend that he thinks that gun control activists should use the term “gun responsibility” instead of “gun control” in order to win support from Second Amendment advocates.
McConaughey, who was vocal in advocating for change after the Uvalde, Texas, shooting, made the remarks during an interview on ABC News’ “This Week” with Jonathan Karl.
McConaughey announced his new Green Lights Grant Initiative that he founded with his wife Camilla to help schools access federal grant money for safety and security.
He said that despite Congress passing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) last year, which approved funding for mental health services and school security in response to the Uvalde shooting, the money has not gone out to the schools.
He said that 12 schools in the area had applied for the funding but none had received it.
“What are we doing?” McConaughey said. “That’s a zero percent success rate. One, way too few applications. Number two, the 12 applications, we went zero for twelve?”
“The government admits that it shouldn’t be this complicated. You got 14,000 something schools,” he continued. “This grant initiative is going to connect those districts to those billions of dollars that’s there, available, and wants to be used to make our kids safe.”
McConaughey said that the reason that more gun control has not been implemented after tragedies was because of the way that the debate was being framed.
“Well, one of the things — it was just one word,” he said. “I went in there and flipped, seemed to get those hard second amendment defenders’ ears to at least listen and that was — I changed the word from ‘control’ to ‘responsibility.'”
“Control sounds like a mandate and nobody wants a mandate,” he said. “No one wants to be controlled. But responsibility is still something that we can all go, yeah, ‘I’ll take responsibility’, and a lot of the far-right or the Republicans, they almost feel like responsibility is a value that they have ownership of and it’s a sense of almost pride and honor to be responsible.”
McConaughey said at a 2018 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.”
FLASHBACK: Here is Matthew McConaughey in 2018 calling for a total civilian ban on assault weapons
“Take one for the team and set them down” pic.twitter.com/uHVoGfvzDQ
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 7, 2022
Related: WATCH: Matthew McConaughey Gives Away The Political Left’s Game On Gun Control