Writing this story was hard. It’s personal—for me, but more so for the victims and their families, who have paid the ultimate cost. Which is why I’ve hesitated to write it. Observing from the front lines, then sharing what I saw—it makes me feel a bit like a fraud. Am I trespassing? Sharing sacred secrets that are not my stories to tell? I hope not.
It was 9:00 on a humid night in May, a Tuesday, and I had just finished a full day’s work at a studio in Austin. I checked my phone for the first time since early that morning and found it flooded with emails, texts, and voicemails.
“So sorry.”
“Oh my God, Matthew, it’s so sickening what happened.”
“Baby, I read the news, call me.”
The last message was from my wife, Camila.
I checked my newsfeed. Shit. Not again. Mass shooting. This time in Uvalde, Texas, my hometown. At Robb Elementary, less than a mile from where I went to school and my mom taught kindergarten. Twenty-one confirmed deaths, all but two of them children.
I called Camila. She was in London, where it was three in the morning, but she picked up on the first ring. “We need to go down there,” she said. She wasn’t asking or suggesting. “Yes,” I said, still in shock. “We do.”
With a tragedy this immense, you may not know what to do or how to do it, but the where, the when, and the why are clear. This would be a journey with a one-way ticket. We had no sense of how long we’d go for, nor a plan beyond showing up. But we knew that if we did, purpose would intercept us.
Camila caught the next flight to Texas. Early on Thursday morning, we dropped the kids off with friends, then made our way south.
I was heading home.
I spent the first decade of my life in Uvalde. I was born there; rode my bicycle to school there; saw my first movie there, at El Lasso Theatre; and spent the first allowance I ever earned there, to buy a grilled cheese sandwich at the Rexall Drugs. It’s where I had my first lemonade stand, on the corner of North Getty Street. It’s where I dug my bare toes deep into the St. Augustine roots on our front lawn to cool off on hot summer days; where, in the dirt alley behind our house, I got bitten by enough red ants to pass out; where I learned to join hands before meals and share my gratitude.
I’m sickened by the spate of mass shootings in America—especially those at schools, which are supposed to be some of the safest of spaces for our children and the closest extensions of our own homes. But this time felt different, more personal. Now, for the first time, my innocent childhood memories of Uvalde felt naive—more like dreams than memories, slightly hazy and suddenly overly sacred. Times like these make us all feel a bit more foolish. We hug our kids a little longer, knowing their innocence won’t last as long as ours did, hoping their children won’t know the same.
We arrived in Uvalde in the late morning. The streets were packed with slow-moving cars and news trucks, the sidewalks jammed with people—some wandering without compass; others striding deliberately, with task intention; just a few others rubbernecking, there to watch the show. Despite the crowds, the town was eerily quiet and intensely civil. We were all in shock.
Earlier that morning, we’d reached out to Republican congressman Tony Gonzales, who represents Uvalde and who’d been on the ground since shortly after the shooting. He agreed to meet us, brief us, and accompany us around town to assess the challenges so we could best see where, how, and whom we could help. Everyone, it seemed, knew I’d grown up here. We were welcomed as members of the community wherever we went.
We visited Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home; spent time at the Fairplex, where town members were gathering; met with mental-health counselors and first responders; and attended a roundtable at City Hall.
At Rushing-Estes-Knowles Mortuary, which was now doubling as a makeshift response center, we gathered with families who’d lost their child the day prior. In pain, shock, and denial, a number of parents knelt in prayer. Fathers stood sturdily, tearlessly, doing their best to hold it together, their hands resting on their weeping wives’ shoulders. Many asked to meet with us again.
Camila and I agreed on a strict no-media policy; we’d meet with whoever wanted to speak with us in private. Uvalde had become a media circus, and many families were having trouble avoiding the cameras, let alone finding the space to mourn. When meeting each family, mostly in their homes, we did our best to enter softly and slowly, to hold their gaze, and to let each family member turn our open hands into a hug only if they chose to. They all did. Some hugs lasted minutes.
It quickly became clear that instead of hearing yet another version of “I’m sorry for your loss,” what they really wanted was to be asked and to answer two simple questions: “What was your child like, and what was your favorite thing about them?” That’s when smiles began to appear alongside their tears. Fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters reveled in sharing the passions, dreams, and affections of their loved ones who were alive just days earlier. Even laughter filled the room when family members shared mischievous secrets about their lost loved ones—secrets that now, in death, were finally fair to be shared and forgiven.
Recalling these memories of life and light at this time of darkness seemed to renew their strength, as if sharing the love helped them deal with the pain. In these moments, the families were not mourning the death of their child so much as they were honoring the love of their child’s life. Less of a sadness for their loss, more like a striving to keep that love alive. There’s a difference.
The shooting in Uvalde raised in my mind thousands of questions.
What causes someone to carry out such a destructive act?
Do we acknowledge the human capacity for evil?
How do a family and a community survive a tragedy of this magnitude?
Why does this keep happening so frequently in America?
What can we do to prevent this from happening again?
The last question seemed to be the most practical place to start. So I began to think about my own relationship with guns.
Uvalde is also where my dad introduced me to my first firearm, a Daisy BB gun. I was nine, and I still remember the sober tone he assumed while presenting it. “This is a tool, son,” he said. “It can feed you, and it can take a life. You must give it full respect.” He instilled in me the rules of engagement: barrel management, muzzle control, safety catch, secure storage, the awareness of what’s behind your target.
He didn’t allow me to go out on my own until he knew I could be trusted to properly handle the Daisy. In time, I graduated to a .410 shotgun, then a rifle. With each new firearm came another initiation from my father—him patiently educating his youngest son about gun responsibility. He taught me to revere this tool in all its power. He taught me responsible gun ownership.
I support the Second Amendment. I believe we should have access to guns for hunting, sport, and self-defense. I believe all firearm purchases should be subject to an extensive background check, and unless you’re in the military, you should be twenty-one to purchase an assault rifle. I believe that extreme risk protection orders, or “red-flag laws,” that respect due process should be the law of the land and that firearm-safety courses should be mandatory. Most of my friends and neighbors in Texas agree with these positions, and many of them also agree that our Second Amendment rights have been getting hijacked by troubled men with bad intent. It seems we have forgotten that our rights come with obligations—what’s more, that our rights depend on our fulfillment of those obligations. To do nothing is more than irresponsible; it’s un-American. Our firearm policy is failing us, and we are failing it.
This article appeared in the Oct/Nov 2022 issue of Esquire
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But you’ve heard all this before. Parkland. Buffalo. El Paso. Pittsburgh. Aurora. So many others. In the wake of each tragic shooting, a groundswell of support for gun reform. Yet nothing had ever changed at the national level. Nothing. Would this time be different?
It sure felt different to me. Because this time it was personal? Maybe. But also, there seemed to be momentum building in D. C. and in statehouses across the country to enact new legislation that would make it harder for the wrong people to acquire guns, especially semiautomatic weapons like the ones used in the worst mass shootings. If such a bill passed, it would be the first federal gun reform in twenty-eight years.
I’m not a politician. I do not speak their language. Yet the push and pull between gun-rights supporters on one side and gun-control supporters on the other is vicious, uniquely American, and, yes, very political. What I did have at that moment were the raw, firsthand accounts of the Uvalde families we’d spent time with. I recalled one constant from those conversations, a wish each and every parent expressed to us: “I just want my child’s death to matter.” Each time, the emphasis had been on the last word.
“Make their lives matter.”
I figured that if I talked to our leaders, those with the power to bring about large-scale change, about what we’d seen and heard in Uvalde, while also pushing for practical progress—well, then I might be able to honor the parents’ requests. And soon. A tragedy like Uvalde can fall from the front page overnight. Attention turns elsewhere; the public moves on. Whatever I could do, I’d need to do it now. My heart was heavy, and so was Camila’s. We were emotionally exhausted and needed rest, but we had no time to step out of what we had already stepped into. Our fatigue and raw experience were our greatest assets. Purpose had intercepted us.
It was time to talk to the politicians.
I started at the state level, in Texas. All I heard back was a lot of buck passing: “My hands are tied.” “I don’t have as much power as you think I do.” My best chance to help, I was told, would be by going to D. C.
Camila and I weren’t thinking, What’s our next play? or engineering some complex policy campaign. We didn’t need to. The families in Uvalde had penetrated us to our core, and that was enough to know we weren’t done yet. Remember what I said about that one-way ticket?
With no concrete plan other than to knock on Senator Mitch McConnell’s door and hopefully land a meeting, Camila and I started preparing for our trip to the nation’s capital. I figured the case for responsible gun regulations would need to come from one of the Second Amendment’s biggest defenders. Why not start with the most powerful Republican lawmaker in the country?
Thankfully, my publicist connected us to a D. C.-based political advisory team. After a lengthy phone call with them, we realized that our approach in Washington needed to be different from the one for Uvalde. D. C. moves fast. The media would cover our presence. We couldn’t just show up and let purpose find us, no; this time, we needed to be deliberate, intentional, and organized. We needed a plan.
We got a crash course in congressional maneuvering, the inside baseball all politicians play, the slow wheels of incremental change on which the government runs, how things actually happen, why most things don’t. What we could hope to accomplish, what we couldn’t, and what we wouldn’t accomplish if we asked for too much of what we couldn’t. Everything, I learned, is a negotiation.
I also wrote an op-ed, “It’s Time to Act on Gun Responsibility,” in the Austin American-Statesman on the day we flew east. In it, I offered reasonable regulations that still protected 2A rights, and I proposed a new semantic framing of the issue: Instead of gun control, as it had been labeled, I maintained that the real matter in question was one of gun responsibility. I needed to let D. C. and the general public know where I stood.
By the time we landed at Washington Dulles, that “knock on McConnell’s door” had become thirty-odd scheduled meetings with senators and representatives from across the political spectrum.
As much homework as I’d done, I knew better than to present myself as some self-taught gun-policy guru. I reminded myself, “McConaughey, you’re not here to be an expert. You are here as a conduit for sharing stories from the front lines in Uvalde. Seek common ground in the opposing arguments presented to you, and use that to weave a strong case for sensible change.”
On our first night in town, Camila and I hosted a dinner at a Georgetown restaurant for a bipartisan group of members of the House and Senate, a number of whom were actively negotiating the proposed gun legislation. We had the private room to ourselves. Nice place. Good wine. Good food. Great conversation. No cameras. My advisors told me this type of across-the-aisle gathering to discuss such a controversial issue is rare.
We started with a gratitude circle, the same ritual I learned as a child in Uvalde and have maintained since. It’s simple: Everyone shares aloud something that they’re grateful for in their life. Each and every guest that night obliged, and as we went around the table, I could feel the ice starting to break. At least in this room, for this one meal, political enemies were listening to one another as human allies.
Then we moved on to the heart of the matter. For three hours, we discussed gun rights and the various proposals to better regulate them. Opinions were openly but civilly argued. More than once, I heard an attendee say to their colleague, “I had no idea that’s why you felt that way.” I was surprised: These conversations were happening for what seemed to be the first time. This group of lawmakers got to know one another in ways they never had before. Their apertures of understanding opened just a bit wider.
After dinner, Camila and I headed to our hotel to prepare for our big next day. The president had invited us to the White House and offered me the opportunity to speak at a press conference about Uvalde. I was scheduled to take the podium at 1:30 P.M.
While I prepared my speech, Camila reached out to some of the families we’d met in Uvalde to ask permission for me to speak to the nation on their behalf. To share their stories. I felt that I was walking a fine line between homage and exploitation, and I didn’t want to cross it. Thankfully, they all said yes.
I stayed up most of the night, writing and rewriting. As much as I like to speak off the cuff, I knew my words would be broadcast across the world and reprinted, and that they’d outlive me and the families I was representing. I had to tell Uvalde’s story well. I had to urge our leaders to act. I was happy with what I’d written—I believed it was honest, emotional, practical, and hopefully inspiring. I told myself, “Trust the words you wrote from your heart, the words the families in Uvalde inspired in you. Own what you know.” I was editing my remarks right up until I walked into the briefing room.
The next day, as Camila and I waited in the press secretary’s office at the White House, President Biden came by to meet us. We talked for just a few minutes, but we covered a lot of ground: our families, fatherhood, our values. We also talked about the gun legislation. I remember the clench in his molars as he said, “We cannot allow these mass shootings to become status quo in America.” Amen, Mr. President.
Obviously, I had butterflies before I went up to the podium. With nothing else to say or rehearse, I took Camila in my arms and we danced—slowly, for four full minutes, to a tune I hummed. Heart-to-heart with my wife, my best friend, the mother of our children, and the woman who, two weeks ago, had said over the phone from London, “I’m coming home on the next flight”—I felt regrounded. And just in time: I heard a whisper over my shoulder. It was the press secretary. “Mr. McConaughey, ready?”
In the following days, Camila and I met with more lawmakers, dozens of them, including several whose votes were considered critical for any legislative movement. We kicked off each sit-down with a simple request: “Before we talk about the legislation, we wanna tell you what we heard in Uvalde.”
That grounded everyone in the room instantly and consistently, regardless of which side of the aisle they sat on. It framed the conversation around shared values, not political positions. These were not bleeding-heart, campfire-kumbaya-sing-along sessions. No, we were sharing deeply held beliefs about parenting and protection, as well as the duties toward our loved ones and our communities.
It was clear there was a bipartisan consensus around what the president had expressed through gritted teeth: Gun violence cannot be America’s status quo. The inaction of the past could not continue. Even the hardcore 2A defenders agreed something had to be done.
Senate negotiations on the proposed legislation were already under way, but nothing was guaranteed. Gun-reform advocates—the Dems—told us they were optimistic but admitted they’d been so before, only to end up disappointed. Gun-rights advocates—most, though not all, of them GOPers—expressed concern over losing their constituents’ support. It’s an election year, after all. Inevitably, for legislators on both sides, party preservation creeps into their considerations and influences their decisions, especially on such a hot-button topic. Would they too easily fall into old patterns, treating gun responsibility like a zero-sum game? “If one side offers one little slice of bread,” Representative James Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina, said by way of explaining the thinking of many of his colleagues, “the other side will demand the whole loaf.” While those on both sides readily testified about the truth and the practical merits of their respective positions, the challenge was to get them to admit that their argument needed a comma at the end of it, not a period. Yes, we need more regulations, and we need to invest in mental-health care.
So as Camila and I made our rounds, we paid particular attention to those who said they were still on the fence. Tried to nudge them in the right direction. Urged them to see they didn’t disagree with the opposition as much as they thought. Reminded them that compromise wasn’t another word for defeat. Explained that in this moment, the most courageous thing they could do was meet in the middle, where we protect our children, our communities, and the Second Amendment.
Our mission had taken new shape: to help bridge the gap. People kept telling me that whether or not I realized it, I was serving as a broker. In many of our meetings, I seemed to be getting traction. But would any of it carry outside the room? I was skeptical.
We left D. C. four days after we’d arrived, more exhausted than ever but more hopeful, too—despite my doubts.
Less than a week later, on June 12, a group of twenty senators led by Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, and John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, announced the framework for the negotiated gun legislation. On June 21, the bill’s text was publicly released. If passed, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act would incentivize red-flag laws; enhance background checks, especially for those under twenty-one; crack down on straw purchases; and close the “boyfriend loophole,” among other provisions. Now they just needed to pass it. That meant wrangling sixty votes. Even if all fifty members of the Democratic caucus voted in favor, ten Republicans would need to join them.
I started working the phones, reaching out to the lawmakers we’d met with. Everyone I talked to said the vote would be close, that nothing was guaranteed. I was no longer negotiating; now I was advocating. Being called, I kept calling.
On June 23, the Senate approved the legislation. The final tally was sixty-five in favor, including fifteen Republicans, and thirty-three against; the next day, the House passed it, too. On June 25, the president signed it into law. It was just twenty-four hours after the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, so the gun bill was quickly relegated to second-page news. No matter. For the first time in twenty-eight years, our leaders acted to improve our gun laws, thereby making our country safer.
Does the bill solve everything? Hell no. No law will heal Uvalde, or any community that suffered a similar tragedy. Does it move us in the right direction? Yes. When we spoke to the families in the wake of the bill’s passage, they expressed gratitude. It won’t bring their kids back, but it does make them feel like, to some extent, their government finally listened. That their kids’ dreams now have a better chance of inspiring others and helping keep our children safe.
Did our efforts make an impact? I’ve been told they did. Part of me hopes that’s true. But another part of me is frustrated that we could have an impact. We didn’t show up on the Hill with a new invention or a groundbreaking argument. We just helped frame the discussion in reasonable ways so that all sides could digest it. We tried to responsibly share the stories of Alithia, Maite, Ellie, Irma, Jose, and the other victims in Uvalde.
We’d done our best to make their lives matter.
I learned a lot from those four days in D. C.
I arrived in Washington with such a reverence for our government and those who run it. While I’m not going to say that I lost that reverence, I did see the most powerful legislators in America playing an implicit political game, one they seemed to be handcuffed to, even systematically imprisoned by, as if it were the price of entry.
I learned just how frustrating politics can be. There’s often more arguing about where, how, and who started a fire than working together to put the damn thing out. It sometimes feels like politicians don’t really want solutions, because solutions would put them out of a job. Optics are often prized over substance—who gets the credit often takes precedence over whom that credit is serving, or how well. With a disparity between belief and action, it’s hard to be in the make-a-difference business if you’re only in the reelection business. I was told on more than two occasions that the best way to remain in power is to vote no on everything—and while I understand that the wheels of government are constitutionally engineered to spin slowly in the mud, I learned that some consider their political purpose to be holding the hose over the dirt. Our government has deficits to repair, and not just the monetary kind.
Of course, we all can and should critique ourselves for similar shortcomings, but it’s worth reminding our elected officials that we hold them to a higher ethical standard because of their position.
It seems that each party is so harmfully consumed by despising the opposition that they’ve become little more than counterpunchers—so focused on the parry and the party defense that they’ve become reactive by default. They’ve lost sight of their own values and vision, thereby ceding their power to the fringes. That’s a problem.
Because most Americans, myself included, don’t stand on the political fringes. We are reasonable and responsible, and we share more values than we’re being told we do—and we believe that meeting each other in the middle is in service of the greater good. We have the majority. We have the numbers.
That’s why it’s high time we take the megaphone back from the extremists who’ve been manufacturing these false fractures among us. They’ve been selling us soft porn at the pep rally for too long. It’s time to kick them off the port and starboard sides of the boat on which American democracy sails . . . or at least relegate them to mopping the deck.
The new American gun responsibility legislation is, in many ways, a proof of concept for the call to meet in the middle. Our representatives succeeded because they compromised, not in spite of the fact. To heal our democracy—to save it—our elected officials must apply a similarly bipartisan approach to countless other issues. An approach that recognizes that no one party owns the particular values it poses to possess. Democrats don’t have a trademark on empathy, just as Republicans don’t have a patent on self-reliance. Values are free-trade assets, meant to be exchanged and adopted across party lines and amongst us all. America can thrive only when all sides answer the call and all arguments end in a comma. We’ll find common ground when we reach for higher ground.
We also must admit that while better policies, bills, and legislation are necessary in order to frame an optimal collective direction for our communities, states, and country—the amount of rights, security, and freedom they afford us cannot be achieved unless and until we shake hands with the personal responsibilities necessary for attaining them. A good law can help us choose responsibly, but we are responsible for the choices we make.
If we want safer communities, more freedom, and better leaders, we’re gonna have to build better people. As parents, parental figures, role models, and mentors, it’s on us to guide our children—to be more active in their lives—to show them we care, show them how to care for themselves and hence how to care for others: to teach them responsibility. From what I can tell, when a child has a healthy understanding that their own life matters, they have a healthier understanding that other lives matter as well.
So much of this teaching starts in the place where we have the most influence and can make the most difference—home—the place where we can best prevent a problem before it needs to be cured. Home is where the story starts. It’s where we can trace the stories told. The math adds up.
I’ve said before that sometimes you have to go back to actually move forward. To revisit where you came from, and where you have been, to see where you are going. Look after your roots, look after your family, look in the mirror. Ask yourself what you value, and answer.
Or, more simply, just come back home.
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photos by Robbie Fimmano
Styling by Bill Mullen
Production by Shawn Spillett at FX Group
Grooming by Johnny Hernandez
Tailoring by Mina Alcantara-Madrid
Casting by Randi Peck
FASHION CREDITS:
From top: (1.) Coat and trousers by the Row; T-shirt by ATM Anthony Thomas Melillo. Jewelry, McConaughey’s own, worn through-out. (2.) Shirt and trousers, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello. (3.) Shirt by Hermès. (4.) Jacket, trouser, and pocket square by Giorgio Armani; vintage shirt by Witty Brothers and Belt, available at Stock Vintace, N.Y.C.; stud set by Bergdorf Goodman. (5.) Jacket, vest, shirt, trousers, and pocket square by Ralph Lauren Purple Label. (6.) Coat by the Row, available at Bergdorf Goodman; suit and shirt by Hermès; vintage shoes, available at Stock Vintage, N.Y.C.
