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Matthew McConaughey avoids being labeled 'anti-gun' during tense moment on 'The View'

"His response is exactly what we need in politics today."

All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia/ Wikipedia

That was not alright, alright , alright

People are applauding the way Matthew McConaughey refused to be reduced down to the partisan label of “anti-gun” during a recent guest appearance on “The View.”

McConaughey had initially been brought on the show to discuss his new children’s book, “Just Because,” but host Sunny Hostin later praised the actor for being “so outspoken against violence, and gun violence in particular,” referencing his previous impassioned speech in the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School shooting.

Hostin then asked McConaughey if he had given any more thought to holding a political office. Previously in 2021 the actor publicly announced considering running for governor of the state of Texas, but then decided to focus on his family.

“If it’s where I would deem myself most useful, yes,” he responded. “Right now, I want to be most useful as a father.”

Co-host Joy Behar then followed up with “Do you think you could get elected in Texas being anti-gun?”


Fully processing the question by repeating it to himself, “Do I think I could get elected in Texas being anti-gun?” McConaughey then delivers a tactful response.

“One thing about me and politics,” he said, pointing a finger at Behar, “to give you a direct statement right there, is me playing a game I’m not interested in playing.”

Behar has no choice but to surrender the conversation. “Ok, don’t do it.”

The moment happened towards the tail end of the video. Watch below.

Most of us would probably agree that in general, politicians and their media cohorts focus too much on stirring up controversy and not enough on having solution oriented conversations. So hearing someone actually put their foot down against it was refreshing, to say the least.

Here’s what other viewers had to say:

“The trap was there and he didn't play. Very well done. Matthew is smarter than most people realize. And I highly respect the focus on his children and family... because that's where mine is.”

“His response to Joy is exactly what we need in politics today.”

“Way to go Matthew so much turmoil in our media everyday.”

“I loved the way this man disagreed with Joy, respectfully, staying authentically himself. He's not into being pushed into anything and will speak when he's ready.”

It was such a brief exchange, but really spoke volumes to how systems are put in place to keep up in cycles of animosity. It takes consciousness and will power to not play “the game.” But it might be the very thing we need to create lasting change.

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In just two sentences, Corey Hixon made a moving case for gun control in Parkland trial

"I miss him."

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Corey Hixon's father was killed in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in 2018.

When we debate guns and gun violence in this country, we tend to get bogged down in statistics and often argue over semantics.

There is zero question that the U.S. is a complete outlier among developed nations when it comes to gun deaths, and even more of an outlier when it comes to mass shootings. No other high-income nation puts their children through active shooter drills at school. None of our peer countries have firearms as the leading cause of death for children and teens like we do. (In fact, it's not even in the top five causes of death in any other high-income nation.)

And yet, no matter how many times we experience gunmen massacring schoolchildren, no matter how many shocking or sobering stats we see, a not-insignificant portion of our country either denies that there's a problem or denies that there's anything we can do about it.

Because our debates over this issue can get unnecessarily complicated, it's good to be reminded of the simple truth that guns cause unnecessary loss, grief and pain. And nowhere has that been made more clear than in Corey Hixon's brief testimony at the trial for Nikolas Cruz, the murderer who shot and killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14, 2018.

One of those killed was Corey Hixon's father, Chris Hixon. He was the athletic director at the school and was shot and killed while trying to disarm the gunman. According to Florida ABC affiliate Local 10, Hixon was one of the last to speak before the court. Rather than have him read a victim impact statement, the judge asked Hixon, who lives with Kabuki syndrome, what he wanted to share about his father.

In just two sentences—each of which was followed up by an emotional hug with his mom—Hixon distilled the emotional reality of our nation's gun problem and brought home what gets lost when we keep doing nothing.

Watch:

The whole room felt that "I miss him!" But the simple description of walking to get donuts together and walking back home every Saturday is just gut-wrenching. It's those little things, the everyday connections and joys and time spent together, that gun violence rips away.

This isn't the first time Corey Hixon has touched people's hearts. A video of him giving Joe Biden a hug at his father's funeral when Biden was vice president went viral during the 2020 election season.

People try to say that gun control won't stop mass shootings, but can't we at least try? Nikolas Cruz legally purchased the AR-15-style rifle he used to terrorize and slaughter students and faculty at that high school. He was a legal gun owner, right up until he wasn't. Though he had no criminal record, red flag laws—which Florida enacted in the wake of the Parkland shooting—could have prevented him from being able to legally purchase or own a firearm.

We have plenty of statistical evidence that gun laws do work. But unfortunately, statistics aren't likely to change people's minds. At this point, if appealing to emotion by sharing the grief families have to live with is more effective to persuade, fine. The emotions are real and the stats are sound, so if that's what it takes to get people to accept reality and do something about it, so be it.

No child should have to go through what Corey Hixon has. And no American should look away from his pain when he truly could be any of us.

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Trevor Noah nails the bizarre attitude toward stopping mass shootings in the US

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah/Facebook

Trevor Noah has his finger on the pulse of American culture.

Trevor Noah's scripted comedy is great, but his off-the-cuff commentary during commercial breaks is often where he truly shines. The comedian has a way of sensibly framing hot topics and getting to the heart of important issues. For someone who didn't grow up in the U.S., he also seems to have his finger directly on the pulse of American culture and is able to accurately describe us to ourselves.

In a "Between the Scenes" segment, Noah expressed his bafflement at how America is the land of the possible when it comes to everything except stopping gun violence.

"One of the strangest things about conversations involving guns in America," he said, "is how quickly America goes from being the most hopeful and almost impossible-chasing nation to a nation that just believes nothing is possible all of a sudden."

Send a man to the moon? Let's do it. Go to Mars? Totally possible. Cure for cancer? Always working on it, and actually making some decent strides.

But mass shootings happening at an astronomical rate compared to other developed nations? Nope. Can't do anything about those.

He's right. It's a weird reaction for a people who are so "can do" about everything else. But as Noah points out, it's actually a small group of people who resist action on this issue and have convinced us that the situation is hopeless. Most Americans, including many gun owners, believe there should be more regulations on gun ownership.

Noah also pointed out that there's not one big solution that will solve all of our gun violence issues.

"What really frustrates me is how people try and make it a game of whack-a-mole when it comes to solving problems," he said. "You propose any type of solution and they go, 'Well that wouldn't have solved this one. This wouldn't have stopped that.' But that's not how solutions work. There is no problem that is going to be solved by one solution. A lot of the time big problems require a multitude of solutions, and what you do is you try to fix it incrementally, step by step."

He pointed out that people will pull the "slippery slope" argument and ask which guns to ban.

"Just start with the ones people seem to be using over and over again to go into schools to kill a bunch of children at one time," he said. (Then, if people start using other kinds of guns regularly for the same purpose, we can deal with those at that time.)

"It's a lot harder to commit these mass shootings when you don't have certain types of weapons," he said. "Nothing fixes everything, but you've got to start somewhere."

And, as he points out, we have to maintain hope that change is possible, just as agents of change have always done. So much good stuff here. Worth a watch:

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A man told me gun laws would create more 'soft targets.' He summed up the whole problem.

As far as I know, there are only two places in the world where people living their lives are referred to as 'soft targets.'

Photo by Taylor Wilcox on Unsplash

Only in America are kids in classrooms referred to as "soft targets."

On the Fourth of July, a gunman opened fire at a parade in quaint Highland Park, Illinois, killing at least six people, injuring dozens and traumatizing (once again) an entire nation.

My family member who was at the parade was able to flee to safety, but the trauma of what she experienced will linger. For the toddler with the blood-soaked sock, who was carried to safety by a stranger after being pulled from under his father's bullet-torn body and ended up losing both of his parents in the massacre, life will never be the same.

There's a phrase I keep seeing in debates over gun violence, one that I can't seem to shake from my mind. After the Uvalde school shooting, I shared my thoughts on why arming teachers is a bad idea, and a gentleman responded with this brief comment:

"Way to create more soft targets."

Soft targets. That phrase gets me every time.

As far as I know, there are only two places in the world where children in school or people gathering for enjoyment are referred to as "soft targets"—active war zones and the United States of America.

Never in a million years would I think to use the words "soft targets" to refer to schoolchildren—or parade-goers, or people enjoying a live concert, or grocery shoppers or people in a bible study. I wouldn't even use the term "unarmed civilians" unless I were in the military and actively involved in a military operation.

They're not targets, they're people. People just living life.

That's what freedom is supposed to be, isn't it? The ability to just live life?

Instead, we are being held hostage by a militarized monster of our own making, one that says the answer to America's gun violence is more guns. (The irony, of course, being the fact that we already have more guns than people.) We see it in the weird worshipping of weapons, the Christmas cards with the whole family carrying, the bizarre fetish with one interpretation of one constitutional amendment to the exclusion of all others. It's in the language being used not only in reference to guns, but in reference to people just going about their daily lives—that is, "soft targets."

The truth is we should be "soft targets." No, really. That's what freedom is. We should be able to go to school and the store and our houses of worship without fear of being shot. We should be able to peaceably assemble per our First Amendment right without being scattered and shattered by gunfire.

We shouldn't feel the need to arm ourselves simply to go about our daily lives. Feeling compelled to carry a gun at all times isn't freedom. Living like we're living right now, with mass shootings on the regular, isn't freedom. And adding more guns won't make us more free. It won't. It hasn't.

If the Highland Park parade shooting proved anything, it's that even an event with a police presence in an idyllic, upscale, objectively "safe" suburb isn't safe from mass gun violence. There were good guys with guns there. There were good guys with guns in Uvalde, too. There were good guys with guns in Buffalo. So many good guys with guns. And yet, here we are.

It's time to look in the mirror and recognize how ridiculous we've become. Other civilized nations don't refer to children as "soft targets." They just don't. While we're debating whether the U.S. is a gun violence outlier because of doors or video games or mental illness, which the rest of the world has as well, our peers in other developed countries live their daily lives with freedom that we do not have—the freedom to gather without worrying that a whack job with a weapon of war is going to open fire, the freedom to go to school without rehearsing for a mass shooting event, the freedom to not ever think about carrying a gun to defend themselves against other guns.

Gun violence can happen anywhere, yes. But it happens far, far more often here than in other developed nations. There's a reason for that. Perhaps when we finally accept that our culture's dysfunctional relationship with guns is the problem, the idea of referring to people simply living their lives as "soft targets" will be as disturbing here as it is everywhere else.

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