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Matthew McConaughey gave an emotional plea to challenge gun ownership laws during a White House press briefing on Tuesday afternoon following a private meeting with President Joe Biden.
The 52-year-old actor is a native of Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed by 18-year-old Salvador Ramos during a shooting at Robb Elementary on May 24.
McConaughey said gun ownership should be a “non-partisan” issue as he argued that “people in power have failed to act.”
“We need background checks,” he said from the lectern. “We need to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 rifle to 21. We need a waiting period for those rifles. We need red flag laws and consequences for those who abuse them.”
After meeting with President Joe Biden, actor Matthew McConaughey talks to reporters during the daily news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on June 07, 2022, in Washington, DC. McConaughey, a native of Uvalde, Texas, expressed his support for new legislation for more gun control in the wake of the elementary school shooting in his hometown that left 19 children and 2 adults dead.
(Win Macgee)
“How can the loss of these lives matter?” he reflected. “We need to recognize this time it seems something is different.”
At least 17 people were also wounded by the gunman, who used an assault rifle and was killed by responding police.
The shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is now the third most deadly school shooting in American history following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where 28 people were killed in 2012, and the Virginia Tech shooting, in 2007, where 33 people died.
