Throughout his career, Bill Murray has often stayed clear from being overtly political. When he talks about politics, it's usually in broad strokes, avoiding any particular alignment. Some have even wondered if he could be a secret Republican.
But, today, in a striking op-ed for NBC, Murray took a strong anti-gun stance, comparing the Parkland students in America to Vietnam protesters. Murray wrote:
I was thinking, looking at the kids in Parkland, Florida who have started these anti-gun protests, that it really was the students that began the end of the Vietnam War. It was the students who made all the news, and that noise started, and then the movement wouldn't stop. I think, maybe, this noise that those students in Florida are making — here, today — will do something of the same nature.
He continued to explain that ending the Vietnam War required a widespread cooperated effort. "You've got to surround a deeply political issue like gun control or a war, to come at it from every single direction," Murray wrote. "You can't just focus on one thing, or aim for just the one goal."
Murray notes the terror of what's happening in American schools, and how the repeated carnage must stop.
"People will survive. If you can just stop shooting at them, they really do pretty well," he writes. "It's the right idea for a human to live in peace, and a peaceful nature is a proper thing. For children to be concerned about going to school, worried about what could happen to them at school, that makes for a horrible moment. It's just a horrible place for us to be at."
His message, overall, is largely hopeful. Let's hope he's right.
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
