True Detective and Dodgeball star Vince Vaughn thinks American schools need more guns.
“[Mass shootings have] only happened in places that don’t allow guns,” the 45-year-old actor told the British edition of GQ magazine for its July cover story. “In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these fucking schools because they know there are no guns there…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.”
The actor’s comments put him at odds with much of Hollywood on the gun debate, including fellow Frat Pack member Judd Apatow.
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But Vaughn’s remarks aren’t surprising to anyone even remotely familiar with his politics: He’s Hollywood’s most visible—and vocal—libertarian. (In the same GQ interview, he calls Edward Snowden a “hero” and says the war on drugs is “absolutely fucking ridiculous.”)
Vaughn supported Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 presidential bids, and pops up at libertarian events now and then. “Ron and Vince are friends, with Vince not merely interested in Dr. Paul’s philosophy but he also graciously invited Dr. and Mrs. Paul to the premier[e] of his film Couples Retreat,” Paul adviser Jesse Benton said in a statement after Vaughn introduced the now former congressman at the Liberty Political Action Conference in 2011.
In an interview with Playboy that ran in February, the actor hit such favorite libertarian topics as gun rights, big government, the Patriot Act, corporatism, marriage equality, and war.
“The Patriot Act? Let’s get rid of it,” he told the magazine. “Undeclared wars, doing away with personal liberties—let’s understand how that has worked out historically to see that it has led to some horrible things. Once our personal liberties are gone, when an American citizen can be pulled out of his house and detained for six months without a trial, where is our country? Once those rights are gone, how do you get them back? Once the government is allowed to listen to you, how do you get that privacy back?”
So where does Vaughn stand on 2016? In April, he sounded like a fan of Rand Paul 2016. And given Paul’s stand against three major provisions in the Patriot Act this week, the Republican presidential hopeful’s odds at claiming Vaughn as a celebrity endorser would appear to have only increased.
