Matthew McConaughey still fighting To make American school safer for over a year after A gunman killed two teachers and 19 children at Rupp Elementary School in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas.
McConaughey, who was a A visual and vocal advocate for the community In the aftermath of the shooting, he, along with his wife, Camilla, launched a program Green Lights Scholarship Initiative To help schools across the country obtain funding to create safer learning environments.
McConaughey recalls Uvaldi tragedy ‘My wife was out of the country’ Interview with ABC News. “I heard the news, so she immediately wrote me and said, ‘We have to go there.’ She cut her flight short, flew. We packed up and headed off.”
The couple spent time with families in Uvalde and worked to raise awareness of the impact of gun violence.
Soon after, Congress passed Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) in 2022, which agreed to fund crisis intervention programs aimed at mental health services and school security.
McConaughey says he was told that three months after the Uvalde shooting, 12 schools in the area had applied for government funding, but none had been granted.
“What do we do?” McConaughey said. “That’s a zero percent success rate. One, way too few applications. Number two, 12 applications, we went zero for twelve?”
The government acknowledges that it shouldn’t be that complicated. It’s got 14,000 schools,” he said. “This grant initiative will connect those districts to the billions of dollars that are out there and available and that you want to use to make our children safe.”
McConaughey also has other ideas. He said, “I’m going to change the word from (weapon) ‘control’ to ‘responsibility.'”
He said, “Nobody wants to be controlled.” “But responsibility is still something we can all go, ‘Yeah, I’m going to take responsibility.'” “…Second Amendment advocates can talk about responsibility. They can look you in the eye and talk about responsibility with someone from the other side of the aisle.”
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