Jon Voight has released a statement in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas elementary school mass shooting calling for stricter gun laws in the US.
“Oh, how my heard bleeds for all those lost,” he began the video posted to his Facebook page in front of an American flag. “My soul cries. We must do something about these horrors that are taken out on innocent beings. Humans who each have lives, and years of life that they’re supposed to live. They’ve been taken down by insanity.”
The outspoken Republican and father of Angelina Jolie later went on: “There should be proper qualifications for gun ownership. Proper testing. One should only own a gun if they’re qualified and schooled. It’s not about left, right, guns, no guns. This is about brains that are dysfunctioning. This is mental. This is not about healthy human beings serving the country with arms to bear or even the right of this constitution for bearing arms…We must identify every individual for their credentials, for their mental capacity to bear arms.”
Watch Voight’s full video statement below.
The statement is quite surprising coming from the actor, who is an ardent supporter of former president Donald Trump and has touted proven falsehoods in the past denying the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In 2020, Voight called Trump a “hero” for his disastrous bungling of the COVID-19 pandemic just six months after being the then-president’s first pick to receive the National Medal of the Arts.
In stark contrast, Trump himself appeared as a speaker at an NRA convention held in Houston days after the massacre at Robb Elementary School, even having the audacity to do an awkward, little dance onstage at the end of his speech. During his remarks, he read off the names of the 19 schoolchildren and two teachers who were killed in the shooting, mispronouncing several, and shot down calls for gun reform, instead suggesting that some teachers should bear the responsibility of carrying firearms in classrooms.
My soul cries for all lost (Part 1) pic.twitter.com/M19STgwOST
— Jon Voight (@jonvoight) May 28, 2022
My soul cries for all lost (Part 2) pic.twitter.com/7kvzu6j8hu
— Jon Voight (@jonvoight) May 28, 2022
