Steven Spielberg and Johnny Depp are just Two Celebrities on this List who are Pro-Gun
elebrities and guns. It seems you either have the Vince Vaughn’s – who vehemently support the Second Amendment – or you have, well, the Piers Morgan’s and everyone else who doesn’t understand America.
Here’s a few celebs – many of them with liberal views – who are pro-gun. So, you have to give credit where it’s due.
From The Blaze via Raw Story:
1. Brad Pitt
Though Pitt is one half of a Hollywood couple that consistently raises conservative ire, pro-gun types would likely be pleasantly surprised by his attitude on guns. In a 2012 interview with the Daily Mail, the actor spoke about growing up with guns as a kid in Missouri, keeping a weapon around the house now, and the notion that guns are inextricable to American identity.
“America is a country founded on guns,” Pitt said. “It’s in our DNA. It’s very strange, but I feel better having a gun. I really do. I don’t feel safe, I don’t feel the house is completely safe, if I don’t have one hidden somewhere. That’s my thinking, right or wrong… I got my first BB gun when I was in nursery school. I got my first shotgun by first grade, I had shot a handgun by third grade and I grew up in a pretty sane environment.”
2. Steven Spielberg
This one’s a bit of a doozy, since for many conservative types, Spielberg’s name is synonomous with “Hollywood liberal.” But a piece titled “Hollywood Liberal Gun Nuts” by Steve Sailer could have some ammosexuals reconsidering their dartboard choices. Sailer points out that Spielberg isn’t just a gun owner, he’s a man in possession of an arsenal that would make Ted Nugent proud. Quoting from Joseph McBride’s 1997 biography of Spielberg, Sailer discusses Spielberg’s love of skeet shooting. In the 1970s, Spielberg often took recreational shots with his buddy John Milius, screenwriter of Apocalypse Now and a man who in a 1975 interview with Daily Variety stated, “I just absolutely hate liberals and people who are civilized.”
“Milius…introduced Spielberg to the sport of skeet shooting, a male-bonding ritual for Milius and his fellow Hollywood gun enthusiasts…Spielberg, who had learned to shoot from his father while growing up in Arizona, still visits the Oak Tree Gun Club. ‘He’s a darn good shot,’ says club member [and late actor] Robert Stack, himself a world-class target shooter. ‘He has terrific reactions. Clay target shooting is a very subtle, highly sophisticated sport; it takes a lot of nerve. He shot some very good scores.’
3. Johnny Depp
The man underneath all those bandanas, scarves and bracelets isn’t a collector of guns or even much of a proponent of them. Still, if the number of times this quote appears on pro-gun sites is any measure, conservatives were all too happy to learn that the actor plans to teach his kids about the art of shooting. Per the Huffington Post via a 2009 interview:
“We would just go out and line up a bunch of cans and shoot with rifles, handguns and at times, submachine guns,” the actor said, speaking about his childhood. “When I was a kid it was a controlled atmosphere, we weren’t shooting at humans—we were shooting at cans and bottles mostly. I will most certainly take my kids out for target practice.”
4. Eric Clapton
If you know much of anything about Eric Clapton—and here, I’m talking less about the blues musician than the man behind the music (check #9 here if you don’t)—the idea that he would have guns coming out of his ears seems nothing short of fitting. A man who admittedly beat and raped his wife (he blamed years of alcohol and drug abuse for his behavior after getting clean), and who in 1976 delivered a speech so racist and xenophobic it spawned a countermovement called “Rock Against Racism” (which he has never recanted, while also continuing to voice support for one of the UK’s most notoriously racist politicians as recently as 2004 and 2007), Clapton has a long history of acting belligerently in both private and public life. In fact, if he lived in America, and we made even the tiniest effort toward gun control, a background check would likely rule Clapton out for gun ownership. (Though his millions and celebrity would probably rule him right back in.)
5. Bruce Willis
Though he called Mitt Romney a “disappointment” back around the 2012 general election, Bruce Willis has pretty consistently supported Republican candidates for president over the past few decades. It’s a fact that makes his stance on guns only slightly less surprising than some of the more “liberal” celebs who appear on this list. In 2000, speaking to USA Weekend about his own gun ownership, Willis trotted out two of the most oft-repeated lines of gun enthusiasts: “Everyone has a right to bear arms. If you take guns away from legal gun owners, then the only people who have guns are the bad guys.”
Even right after the Sandy Hook school shooting, as the country overwhelmingly supported some form of gun control, Willis spoke against any change in gun laws, suggesting that something as mundane as background checks might turn the Constitution into so much dust in the wind. “I think that you can’t start to pick apart anything out of the Bill of Rights without thinking that it’s all going to become undone,” Willis said. “If you take one out or change one law, then why wouldn’t they take all your rights away from you?”
6. James Earl Jones
There’s a little confusion around what precisely James Earl Jones, iconic voice of both Darth Vader and CNN and one of the most accomplished and revered actors of stage and screen, has said pro-gun wise. Conservative sites often quote Jones as stating: “The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise, they will win, and the decent people will lose.” The only problem is, Snopes can’t find an original source for the quote, which means it could just as easily be misattributed or wholesale made up—this is the Internet, after all.
That said, Jones is on record as a member of the NRA, and included the fact in his 2004 autobiography, Voices and Silences. The actor wrote, “I am a member of the National Rifle Association, but not a political member. I just throw the political mail from the NRA into the trash. Charlton Heston campaigns on behalf of the NRA. He says, ‘Here I stand.’ When it comes to the right-wing politics of the NRA, I don’t get into that. I just believe in my right to have a gun in my house.”
Though not everyone on this list may be a Ted Cruz-conservative, at least they have some sense about them – I’ll give them that.