In an interview Saturday with the New York Times, actor Vince Vaughn expressed support for more individual freedom and said, “People should have guns.”
Vaughn spoke with the NYT about his background, noting that his grandfather on his mother’s side was an Italian immigrant whose formal education was extremely limited. “He was a pawn shop broker” and a jeweler, Vaughn said.
The actor described his grandfather on his father’s side as “a sharecropper and a steelworker [who] had a hundred-acre farm.”
Vaughn noted that his father was the first person in his family tree to go to college.
He said, “Then I kind of ascended from growing up in apartments and ended up in an upper-class suburb. So I had a lot of exposure to different things and different world views.”
The NYT asked Vaughn, “Do you think the extremes of your background influenced your politics?”
Vaughn responded by confirming that he is a Libertarian then said, “Yes, I definitely am a believer more in allowing individuals to make choices. So I think that drugs should be legal and people should have guns.”
He admitted that he understands that people have strong views on firearm ownership, but he explained that he views drugs and guns in a similar light: “Like the hippies would get high and say, We’re not hurting anyone, what’s the big deal? Then the hunters would say, we have these guns, and we have a right to defend ourselves, and what’s the big deal? And they were kind of the same.”
On June 4, 2015, Breitbart News pointed to a GQ interview in which Vaughn voiced support for having guns in schools so those guns could be used to defend children.
Vaughn said, “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.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
