During a speech from the White House on Tuesday, actor Matthew McConaughey made an impassioned plea for “real change” on gun violence, sharing his experience on the ground following the recent school shooting in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.
“How can the loss of these lives matter?” McConaughey asked before highlighting the lives of several children who were killed in the shooting after he and his wife, Camila, met with their families in the days following the May attack.
Camila Alves McConaughey sat with a pair of green Converse shoes on her lap belonging to one of the victims, Maite Rodriguez. The 10-year-old girl had hand-drawn a heart on the shoes because it “represented her love of nature.”
McConaughey said the shoes were the “only clear evidence that could identify” Rodriguez following the massacre.
“We want secure and safe schools, and we want gun laws that won’t make it so easy for the bad guys to get these damn guns,” the “Dallas Buyers Club” star said.
McConaughey then urged lawmakers to pass several measures, including requiring background checks on all gun purchases, raising the legal age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21 and instituting national waiting periods for them, as well as implementing a national red flag system.
“Responsible gun owners are fed up with the Second Amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals,” he exclaimed.
“As divided as our country is, this gun responsibility issue is one we agree on more than we don’t. It really is. But this should be a non-partisan issue,” the 52-year-old performer, who last year publicly weighed a Texas gubernatorial run said, before turning his focus to Congress.
“There is not a Democratic or Republican value in one single act of these shooters. None. But people in power have failed to act.”
Republicans and Democrats, McConaughey said, need to see “beyond the political problem at hand and admit that we have a life preservation problem on our hands.”
Lawmakers can’t “truly be leaders” if they’re “only living for reelection,” he said.
“I promise you, America: You and me, we are not as divided as we are being told we are.”
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