Matthew McConaughey is urging a “call to action” after a school shooting in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas, saying the country cannot “accept these tragic realities as the status quo.”
The “Dallas Buyers Club” actor issued a statement on Instagram on Tuesday, just hours after reports that a gunman killed at least 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in the Lone Star State.
“Once again, we have tragically proven that we are failing to be responsible for the rights our freedoms grant us,” McConaughey, 52, said.
The Academy Award-winner said Americans should ask themselves, “What is it that we truly value? How do we repair the problem? What small sacrifices can we individually take today, to preserve a healthier and safer nation, state, and neighborhood tomorrow?”
It’s time, McConaughey said, to “re-evaluate, and renegotiate our wants from our needs.”
“This is an epidemic we can control, and whichever said of the aisle we may stand on, we all know we can do better. We must do better,” the “Greenlights” author, who last year flirted with a potential Texas gubernatorial run, said in his statement.
“Action must be taken so that no parent has to experience what the parents in Uvalde and the others before them have endured,” McConaughey wrote.
“And to those who dropped off their loved ones today not knowing it was goodbye,” the father of three added, “no words can comprehend or heal your loss, but if prayers can provide comfort, we will keep them coming.”