Mark Wahlberg And Hollywood's Anti-Gun Hypocrisy

As an actor, I really enjoy Mark Wahlberg’s movies. He’s far better an actor than he was a rapper, that’s for sure. I kind of cringe when I think about how we were all listening to “Good Vibrations” back in the day. I really do.

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He has a new movie coming out that looks like a hell of a fun ride, too. “Mile 22” features Wahlberg, Ronda Rousey, and “The Walking Dead’s” Lauren Cohan (Maggie Green).

Looks fun. The description:

In this heart-racing action thriller, a CIA agent stationed in Indonesia is tasked with transporting an informant whose identity has been discovered, from the center of the city to an awaiting getaway plane at an airport 22 miles away. While en route, they must battle corrupt police, criminal overlords and heavily-armed locals, all hell-bent on taking them out before they reach their plane.

Not exactly the most original premise, but few are all that original these days. This one at least appears to be done pretty well.

Tactical Life took a look at all the guns and accessories shown on the screen, which is worth a look.

However, as the folks at Tactical Life point out, Wahlberg is a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to guns. Here are his comments down in Australia regarding firearms.

“I would love it if they could take all the guns away. Unfortunately, you can’t do that so you hope that good people in the world have them to protect the people who can’t protect themselves,” Mark Wahlberg bemoaned in the Herald Sun in 2007. “Certainly, I haven’t used a gun anywhere other than on a movie set and I’d like to see if we could take them all away. It would be a beautiful thing.

He says that then makes a movie like this.

Wahlberg is just one of many who have made their living handling firearms in their movies, being all kinds of bada** with weaponry. But when it comes to people who can’t afford private security, then tough. We should be slap out of luck when it comes to protecting ourselves.

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Meanwhile, they’ll still happily profit off of guns themselves. They know that they’ll still be able to make money with firearms regardless of what the rest of us are able to own. Screw the little guys so long as Mark Wahlberg can make another million by handling guns that are forbidden to little peons like us.

Don’t get me wrong. I still like Wahlberg as an actor. His comments weren’t the worst I’ve heard from a hypocritical actor. I mean, there are some ways to interpret the first part of his comment to be pro-gun, after all. Maybe he’d love it if we could make them all go away, but since we can’t, people have a right to defend themselves or something. You kind of have to squint to see it, but maybe.

However, Wahlberg isn’t the only anti-gun actor out there. Liam Neeson has been on my list for a while now after his comments.

The problem with all of these actors is that they make millions and millions of dollars making movies and can afford to live behind gates with private security and can hire bodyguards to follow them around everywhere they go, all to keep themselves safe. The rest of us can’t afford to outsource our protection. We don’t have the means by any stretch of the imagination.

We have to do it ourselves, and when they flap their gums about how horrible it is that there are so many guns in private hands, all they’re doing is telling all of us just how out of touch they are.

Yes, there are a lot of guns in private hands, but there aren’t nearly enough in private hands. Guns make us safer.

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So Wahlberg can afford to be a hypocrite because he’ll never face the consequences of it. However, he needs to think. You see, Wahlberg is a convicted felon. More than that, he’s a violent felon. A few years back, he tried to get pardoned for his crime. Maybe the reason Wahlberg wishes there weren’t any guns is that he knows that had his victim been armed, someone else would have starred in “Lone Survivor” and “Mile 22.”

Now, to be fair, Wahlberg has cleaned up his life and been an example of a rehabilitated criminal. In fact, it’s often easy to forget his violent past. I can’t help but remember it when he makes comments about how the best tool I have to protect myself and my family against a violent felon shouldn’t be, especially when he uses a whole pile of them in a movie.

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