Actor, part-time Chicagoan and Polar Plunge alum Vince Vaughn is wading into hot water this time with outspoken remarks about guns and school shootings.
A rare conservative in Hollywood, he explained his views in an interview with British GQ, maintaining that killers choose schools for their rampages specifically because the people there aren’t armed.
“Take mass shootings,” he said. “They’ve only happened in places that don’t allow guns. These [gunmen] are sick in the head and are going to kill innocent people. They are looking to slaughter defenseless human beings. They do not want confrontation. In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these f—ing schools because they know there are no guns there. They are monsters killing 6-year-olds.”
Asked if guns should be allowed in schools, the Lake Forest High grad said, “Of course. You think the politicians that run my country and your country don’t have guns in the schools their kids go to? They do. And we should be allowed the same rights. Banning guns is like banning forks in an attempt to stop making people fat. Taking away guns, taking away drugs, the booze — it won’t rid the world of criminality.”
And his support of gun ownership doesn’t stop at the school grounds. “I support people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home,” he said. “We don’t have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government. It’s not about duck hunting; it’s about the ability of the individual. It’s the same reason we have freedom of speech. It’s well known that the greatest defense against an intruder is the sound of a gun hammer being pulled back.”
While uncommon in the showbiz crowd, Vaughn’s libertarian stance is unsurprising from an actor who has backed Ron Paul in the past and told Adam Carolla on his podcast that when people get older, “you just get less trust in the government running anything. And that you start to realize when you really go back and look at the Constitution and the principles of liberty, the real purpose of government is to protect the individual’s right to sort of think and pursue what they have interest in.”
In the GQ interview, Vaughn also sounded off on some other topics:
Surveillance leaker Edward Snowden
“Edward Snowden is a hero. I like what he did. My idea of treason is that you sell secrets to the enemy. He gave information to the American people. Snowden didn’t take information for money or dogmas. Governments claim to write endless laws to protect us — a law for this, a law for that — but are they working? I don’t think so. The consequences are that there is a staggering loss of freedom for the individual.”
Drugs
“I look at the drug wars and they are absolutely f—ing ridiculous. There is a black market and the prisons are overcrowded and it’s not preventing drug use. There’s a corruption that goes all the way to the top.”
His recent lackluster comedies
“I’m not blaming anyone else but myself here. The machine can make you idle. You read a script and then you agree to a role, then soon enough you’re on set looking at a scene that has had all the juice and the life sucked right out of it. You become a hired gun doing a very inoffensive PG-13 movie and, well, you kind of just go along with it. Like anything in life you’re either growing or you’re dying. When you get too comfortable you start to decline.”
Vaughn stars in the new season of “True Detective,” beginning June 21 on HBO>
