Hollywood Against Big Government: Vince Vaughn’s Prescient Words About Gun Ownership

Hollywood has long had a hypocritical relationship with guns. While strutting around with armed bodyguards, they staunchly oppose the right for ordinary Americans to enjoy the same security guns provide. While starring in blow-’em-up action movies and flashing guns in every scene, they speak out against the glorification of firearms.

Vince Vaughn isn’t buying it.

After the recent tragedy in a Charleston church, it’s time that all Americans — and yes, that means even those who live in Hollywood — think soberly about how the second amendment can provide protection against unimaginable evil. Vaughn’s interview in the British Gentlemen’s Quarterly, conveyed common sense not often found in Hollywood about the topic. Though he was interviewed before the Charleston shooting, his prescient interview resonates even more strongly today:

It’s well known that the greatest defense against an intruder is the sound of a gun hammer being pulled back. All these gun shootings that have gone down in America since 1950, only one or maybe two have happened in non-gun-free zones. Take mass shootings. They’ve only happened in places that don’t allow guns. These people 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 six-year-olds.

On whether guns should be allowed in schools:

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.

He also questioned the effectiveness of over-legislation:

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.

He even went delved more deeply into the heart of the 2^nd amendment:

I support people having a gun in public, full stop, not just in your home. 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.

Vaughn is not the only one who feels this way. Other Hollywood figures who support gun ownership as a basic American right include Charlie Sheen, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, James Earl Jones, Bruce Willis, Tom Selleck, and famously, the late Charlton Heston.

In a world that seems to be falling apart at the seams, we don’t need the word of a celebrity to know things need to change. However, it is refreshing to hear that even Hollywood is beginning to get serious about our freedom.

This article is also published at The American Spectator.