More than a year after a shooter murdered two teachers and 19 students at Robb Elementary School in Matthew McConaughey’s hometown of Uvalde, Texas, the actor still works to make schools throughout the United States safer.
After becoming an outspoken champion for the community in the wake of the tragedy, McConaughey and his wife Camila have started the Greenlights Grant Initiative to assist schools in gaining access to financing to create safer learning environments.
McConaughey told ABC News that his wife was out of the country around the time of the Uvalde incident, and she read the headlines and wrote to him right away saying, ‘We got to go down there.'”
She shortened her trip and arrived by plane; they got everything together, packed, and left.
Funding for mental health care and school security crisis intervention programs was authorized under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), enacted by Congress in 2022.
McConaughey claims that three months after the Uvalde massacre, he inquired about money for local schools and was informed that none of the 12 schools in the region had been granted any.
As for progress, McConaughey says that is a zero percent success rate.
He said the government recognizes that things shouldn’t be that difficult. There are “14,000 or so schools,” he noted. To ensure the safety of our children, “this grant initiative will link those districts to those billions of dollars that are there, available, and wants to be used.”
McConaughey is not pro-gun control. He is “pro-gun responsibility.”
“No one wants to be controlled,” he noted. But he added that proponents of the Second Amendment might discuss accountability. They’d be able to give you eye contact and have a serious conversation about responsibility with someone on the opposite side of the aisle.
