Not all Hollywood types are ignorant. Kurt Russell, who boasts playing famed Sheriff Wyatt Earp in “Tombstone” in his filmography, set the record straight when a reporter tried to coax the typical Hollywood response from the actor on guns. After riffing on the scary “gun culture,” the reporter said, “Well, I think we all know … guns are a trope. Not a trope but a totem, a metaphor that disenfranchised white guys need … it makes them feel good about themselves.” In other words, it’s not an inalienable right, it’s a security blanket.

Russell was having none of it: “You can say what you want. I don’t agree with that. It’s not my thing…. If you think gun control is going to change the terrorists’ point of view, I think you’re out of your mind. I think anybody [who says that] is. I think it’s absolutely insane. The problem that we’re having right now to turn it around … ‘You may think you’ve got me worried about what you’re gonna do? Dude, you’re about to find out what I’m gonna do, and that’s gonna worry you a lot more.’ And that’s what we need. That will change the concept of ‘gun culture,’ as you call it, to something [like] reality. Which is, if I’m a hockey team and I’ve got some guy bearing down on me as a goal tender, I’m not concerned about what he’s gonna do — I’m gonna make him concerned about what I’m gonna do … to stop him. That’s when things change.”

He concluded, “You and I just disagree. I understand that you think you can control the behavior of people that are dead set on taking your way of life away from you. You think you can control that? And there’s only one thing you can do with that. And that’s [to say], ‘No, dude, that’s not gonna happen. That’s just not gonna happen.’”

Russell gets it. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.