Right-Wing Media Finds Truly Lame Way to Dismiss McConaughey’s Gun Reform Plea

Matthew McConaughey received praise this week for a heart-wrenching eulogy he delivered for the Uvalde shooting victims, recounting the horror inflicted on school children while calling for basic gun reforms.

And while even some Fox News hosts were moved by his pleas, other right-wing pundits immediately fired back with what they saw as a foolproof reason to ignore the actor’s message: McConaughey has been in movies with guns.

Speaking from the White House podium on Tuesday, McConaughey—who was born in Uvalde—delivered a fiery sermon aimed at spurring some legislative action to address the uniquely American crisis of mass shootings. While describing the damage an AR-15’s ammo does to a young child, McConaughey called for laws raising the legal age to purchase semi-automatic rifles.

“They needed much more than make-up to be presentable. They needed extensive restoration,” he said at one point of the victims’ bodies, recounting a conversation with a mortuary cosmetician. “Why? Due to the exceptionally large exit wounds of an AR-15 rifle. Most of the bodies were so mutilated that only DNA tests or green Converse could identify them.”

The Oscar-winner’s gripping words “stopped viewers in their tracks,” according to CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy. Additionally, Fox News anchors heaped praise on the actor, calling it the “best presentation that we’ve seen” from the White House “in a very long time” while applauding him for “calling to restore family values.” Even some Fox opinion hosts, despite disagreeing with McConaughey’s stance on assault-style weapons, commended the star for sounding “like he genuinely cares.”

And then there was Breitbart.

Following McConaughey’s moving speech, the pro-Trump propaganda outlet’s editor Joel Pollack posted a piece counting the number of guns the star has used in his movies, citing the Internet Movie Firearms Database.

Besides suggesting that McCounaghey was a hypocrite for using firearms in fictitious roles, Pollack also complained that the actor failed to make violence in “Hollywood movies” and “Silicon Valley video games”—rather than guns—a centerpiece of his Uvalde sermon.

This half-assed attempt at a gotcha quickly grew into a talking point among the America First crowd. MAGA memelord and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson, for instance, tweeted out a montage of images featuring McConaughey using guns in various films.

Hours later, conservative radio host and former Fox News troll Todd Starnes sarcastically asked on Twitter: “Is it true that Matthew McConaughey is going to give victims of gun violence all of the money he made as a result of starring in movies where he bore arms?”

Former UFC fighter and U.S. Army Special Forces soldier Tim Kennedy, who believes that waterboarding is not torture, also suggested that McConaughey and other actors had little room to talk considering their willingness to take on roles in violent action films.

“I love that he is passionate about this and his heart was so exposed on his sleeve here,” he said on Wednesday’s broadcast of Fox News’ Outnumbered. “But I can’t leave Hollywood out and not recognize a degree of hypocrisy where like the next Netflix movie where they do come to him with a few million dollar contract and be like, ‘Hey, will you play this action star that kills all these people?’ And he will absolutely do it!”

Texas radio host Ben Bradshaw, however, took it several steps further on Wednesday afternoon, suggesting McConaughey’s roles in violent films may actually be to blame for the Uvalde massacre.

“Matthew McConaughey is one of a countless number of movie stars that has glorified guns,” tweeted the Christian radio personality. “It's even possible that the 18-year-old murderer in Uvalde even saw one of his movies and was inspired by it. But yeah let’s have these hypocrites telling us law-abiding citizens what [to do].”

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