Tuesday, June 21, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Kudos to actor Matthew McConaughey for his great speech about reasonable gun control in light of the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas. It reminded me of his role as attorney Jake Brigance in the movie “A Time to Kill” about the savage beating, rape and defecation thereon of a Black child by two white men in the Deep South.
In Brigance’s final argument to the all-white Southern jury, he asked the jurors to close their eyes and imagine the crime. At the end of the argument, Brigance asked the jurors to “then imagine that the female child was white.”
While McConaughey’s speech was great, and patent and infringement laws may have restricted him from using a similar line to the movie script, why is it that tragedies never resonate unless they’re personal? Why must members of Congress be asked to close their eyes and imagine that the children in Uvalde, which included those decapitated by the shells of an AR-15 rifle and the 8 year-old “angel-face” boy described as “the sweetest little boy,” were their children or grandchildren?
Many members of Congress have sold their souls lock, stock and barrel to the National Rifle Association. What is unreasonable about background checks, red-flag laws, increasing the age of gun ownership to 21 and banning high-profile rifles used only for carnage?
