He’s starring in the upcoming crime drama “True Detective” on HBO, so maybe that’s why Vince Vaughn feels he has the expertise to say that having more guns in schools will prevent Sandy Hook-style school shootings.
Or maybe he’s just another celebrity with a platform to spout off his opinions on complex and highly divisive issues — in this case, school safety and gun rights.
Vaughn found himself in the middle of the contentious gun-rights debate when he told GQ magazine’s UK edition that mass shootings only happen in places, such as schools, that don’t allow guns, USA Today reported. He says that people who are sick in the head are looking to “slaughter” innocent people and they don’t want a 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 (expletive) schools because they know there are no guns there. They are monsters killing six-year-olds.”
The actor has spoken in the past of his libertarians views and his support for the Second Amendment. In this interview, he restates his support for people’s right to carry guns in public.
To the issue of bringing more guns in schools, Vaughn apparently doesn’t explain who should be armed to deter or scare off mass shooters who venture onto school campuses. Teachers? Students? He believes that regular school kids should have the same protections as politicians’ kids, who, he says, send their kids to schools that have guns in them.
He then makes an interesting fork and gun analogy: “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.”
Martha Ross provides celebrity commentary for the Bay Area News Group. Follow her at twitter.com/marthajross.
