I’ve been having an internal debate about whether I should keep HBO after Game of Thrones finishes in a few weeks, mostly because I am really curious about the second season of True Detective. I liked TD Season 1, although it wasn’t as life-changing as I thought it would be, and I’ve lowered my expectations for Season 2 accordingly. I hope Rachel McAdams is good. I hope Colin Farrell is good. But I worry that Vince Vaughn is going to be the scene-stealer, this season’s out-of-nowhere performance, a la Matthew McConaughey. Vince dramatically slimmed down for the role and he’s quite honestly looking better than he has in a decade or more. Too bad that Vince is basically like an attractive version of Wayne LaPierre. Vince covers the new issue of British GQ and some his views are… not appropriately thought out.

On getting stuck making “assembly-line comedies”: “I’m not blaming anyone else but myself here. The machine can make you idle. You read a script and then you agree to a role, then soon enough you’re on set looking at a scene that has had all the juice and the life sucked right out of it. You become a hired gun doing a very inoffensive PG-13 movie and, well, you kind of just go along with it. Like anything in life you’re either growing or you’re dying. When you get too comfortable you start to decline.”

On the American government: “Edward Snowden is a hero. I like what he did. My idea of treason is that you sell secrets to the enemy. He gave information to the American people. Snowden didn’t take information for money or dogmas. Governments claim to write endless laws to protect us, a law for this, a law for that, but are they working? I don’t think so. The consequences are that there is a staggering loss of freedom for the individual. I look at the drug wars and they are absolutely f***ing ridiculous. There is a black market and the prisons are overcrowded and it’s not preventing drug use. There’s a corruption that goes all the way to the top.”

On the American right to own a gun: “I support people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home. We don’t have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government. It’s not about duck hunting; it’s about the ability of the individual. It’s the same reason we have freedom of speech. It’s well known that the greatest defence against an intruder is the sound of a gun hammer being pulled back. All these gun shootings that have gone down in America since 1950, only one or maybe two have happened in non-gun-free zones. Take mass shootings. They’ve only happened in places that don’t allow guns. These people are sick in the head and are going to kill innocent people. They are looking to slaughter defenceless human beings. They do not want confrontation. In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these f***ing schools because they know there are no guns there. They are monsters killing six-year-olds.”

On whether guns should be allowed in schools: “Of course. You think the politicians that run my country and your country don’t have guns in the schools their kids go to? They do. And we should be allowed the same rights. Banning guns is like banning forks in an attempt to stop making people fat. Taking away guns, taking away drugs, the booze, it won’t rid the world of criminality.”

[From British GQ]

I have never, ever understood the “more guns = more freedom” equation. It never made any sense to me, and Vince Vaughn’s gun rant left me utterly unmoved. Why would those poor Sandy Hook children be blamed for their own deaths, because of course we should be arming 6-year-olds to take down armed psychopaths? That’s the logical conclusion of Vince’s stance. Am I the crazy one, or is he? Here’s the thing: I believe in legal gun ownership AND I believe people should have to register their guns AND I also believe in gun-free zones (schools, churches, mosques, community centers, public buildings). I loathe open-carry laws – because there is truly something unsettling about seeing an armed rando at a Chinese buffet – and I believe that the fastest way to escalate a mundane disagreement is to have every single person armed to the teeth. I’m sure that makes me a communist in Vince’s eyes.

Photos courtesy of British GQ.