WASHINGTON — The actor Matthew McConaughey, a local son of Uvalde, Texas, took the lectern within the White Home briefing room on Tuesday and spoke of studying, in his boyhood, “to revere the facility and the aptitude” of a gun. He then instructed of the horror he felt at shedding 19 college kids in his hometown to a person with a rifle so high-powered that it disfigured lots of their our bodies past recognition.
Contemporary off a gathering with President Biden, Mr. McConaughey echoed the president’s name for expanded background checks on gun consumers, new “purple flag” legal guidelines and extra restrictions on the acquisition of AR-15 rifles just like the one used to kill 19 kids and two academics at an elementary college in Uvalde final month. He forged himself as a voice for accountable gun homeowners and described, in graphic element, the horrors of gun violence.
“Kids had been left not solely lifeless, however hole,” Mr. McConaughey stated, as he described assembly with the dad and mom of slain kids in Uvalde whose our bodies had been “so mutilated that solely DNA exams” or inexperienced Converse sneakers may very well be used to establish them.
“Sure, counselors are going to be wanted in Uvalde for a very long time,” he stated.
The taking pictures is without doubt one of the deadliest college assaults on document and one among greater than 200 mass shootings recorded in america to this point this yr. Simply 10 days earlier than the Uvalde taking pictures, a gunman fatally shot 10 individuals at a Buffalo grocery retailer.
Mr. McConaughey’s look on the White Home got here as a bipartisan group of senators tries to barter new laws to reply to gun violence. Senators concerned within the talks expressed muted optimism that they may produce some kind of laws that may clear the evenly divided chamber, although it was sure to fall in need of some measures, like a ban on assault weapons, that Mr. Biden has known as for.
Mr. McConaughey, who additionally met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, stated that he and his spouse, Camilla, had gone to Uvalde the day after the taking pictures.
“You can really feel the shock within the city,” he stated. “You can really feel the ache, the denial, disillusion, anger, blame, unhappiness. Lack of lives, goals halting.”
He choked up as he spoke of assembly the dad and mom of Alithia Ramirez, 10, who dreamed of going to artwork college in Paris, and the way Alithia’s father, Ryan, had just lately secured a higher-paying job, promising it meant that he would spoil her by taking her to Sea World.
Mr. McConaughey requested his spouse to carry up the inexperienced hightop Converse sneakers worn day-after-day by 10-year-old Maite Rodriguez, who hoped to check sooner or later to be a marine biologist, and who had drawn a coronary heart on the best toe to represent her love of nature. “These are the identical inexperienced Converse on her ft,” Mr. McConaughey stated, “that turned out to be the one clear proof that would establish her after the taking pictures.”
He slapped the lectern. “How about that?”
He additionally described assembly with a cosmetologist who was skilled in making use of mortuary make-up for open-coffin viewings. “These our bodies had been very totally different,” Mr. McConaughey stated. “They wanted rather more than make-up to be presentable. They wanted intensive restoration. Why? As a result of exceptionally giant exit wounds of an AR-15 rifle.”
After a couple of minutes, Mr. McConaughey turned to politics. He known as on the information media to scale back its sensational protection of mass shootings. He repeatedly invoked a necessity for “accountable gun possession,” together with new rules that Democrats have pushed in response to the shootings.
“We have to elevate the minimal age to buy an AR-15 rifle to 21,” he stated. “We want a ready interval for these rifles. We want purple flag legal guidelines and penalties for many who abuse them. These are cheap, sensible, tactical rules.”
Mr. McConaughey, the star of movies similar to “Dazed and Confused” and “Dallas Patrons Membership” and the “True Detective” tv collection, thought of working for governor of Texas final yr however dominated it out in November, calling politics “a path that I’m selecting to not take at this second.”
Emily Cochrane and Annie Karni contributed reporting.
