Hollywood is eaten up with anti-gun celebrities. It's something of a meme about how the film industry's elite will say that we don't need guns while protected by people with guns around the clock.

The list of anti-gun celebrities looks almost like the complete actor database at IMDB.com. It's just that bad.

Which is why it's awesome when some famous and well-regarded actor steps up and says something pro-gun. It's unusual. It's like when we have a total solar eclipse here in the US--though the eclipse thing might be a tad more common.

Of course, with Vince Vaughn, it's not really surprising to see.

Vince Vaughn has doubled down on his belief that “people should have guns”.

In 2015, the Wedding Crashers actor made headlines when he advocated for firearms in schools, and said he “supports people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home”.

...

Now, in a new interview with The New York Times, he has said that he still feels the same way. “I definitely am a believer more in allowing individuals to make choices,” he said. “So I think that drugs should be legal and people should have guns.

“But I realised that you have different cultures that would feel strongly. Like the hippies would get high and say, We’re not hurting anyone, what’s the big deal? Then the hunters would say, We have these guns, and we have a right to defend ourselves, and what’s the big deal? And they were kind of the same.”

He said that the fear around people owning guns is that they might hurt somebody, but “sometimes they’re just hunting”.

I mean, he's not wrong.

While pot is far from the unmitigated good many marijuana advocates try to paint it as--there are definite downsides to using it--the argument has been that folks doing pot are only hurting themselves.

I'm not a big fan of invoking hunting and hunters into the gun debate, in part because of so many self-proclaimed hunters using that status to lend weight to their anti-gun arguments, the truth is that many gun owners, in general, are in the same camp. We have guns to protect ourselves, not hurt other people. The vast majority pray they never have to fire it anywhere but the range.

And we're not hurting anyone by having them...at least until someone tries to hurt us.

Vaughn, however, wasn't exactly enjoying the discussion.

The actor bristled a little at being asked about his position on gun ownership, saying: “It’s interesting. I don’t see other actors who say they believe in gun control getting asked [about] it every time they do an interview.

“I think if you’re someone who, like you said, can’t get your mind around it, I don’t know if I’ll satisfy your concept with it. But the basic idea is that the individual is free and has a right to protect themselves.”

Funny how he's the one who always gets asked. 

The simple answer is that his answer is outside of the norm for his chosen career, thus making it noteworthy for an interviewer to discuss. 

However, to me, the noteworthy thing isn't that Vaughn thinks differently from most of his peers but that he is such a unique specimen in Hollywood as a whole. If you look at the polls, regardless of which poll, there is a sizeable portion of Americans who support the Second Amendment. Yet in Hollywood, how many actors have actually come out in support of the right to keep and bear arms?

A handful have been open and honest about their support for our gun rights--Tom Selleck was famously on the NRA board of directors for years until just recently when he resigned. Vaughn is otherwise alone, at least with his public position, in many ways. Especially as it doesn't seem to have hurt his career all that much.

Frankly, I knew I liked him. Now I like him that much more as an actor, in part because he's good at his job but also because he doesn't take his privileged position for granted and just assume what works for the Hollywood elite will work for the rest of the nation.