Have you heard what Amber Heard said? Johnny Depp’s next wife said “when it comes to choosing roles, she’d rather tote a shotgun than wear a wedding dress.” I’m thinking that tells us sweet FA about her position on Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, and something about her ambivalence to her betrothed. Ms. Heard could love her some shotgun-wielding badass babe role (and the money and adulation that comes with it) and still support civilian disarmament. Anyway, who cares? Who cares what the 27-year-old co-star of The Rum Diary, or her future husband, or Ice-T or any Hollywood star thinks about firearms freedom? Their fans? Do celebrities influence any gun rights fence straddlers? Should The People of the Gun boycott their “work” or simply ignore them (a.k.a., living death for the Kardashians)?

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

110 COMMENTS

  1. If you’re going to worry about what people with tiny brains think you should start with the politicians.

  2. The fastest way a celebrity can get me to stop buying their work is to speak out politically. They can read and play a part or sing, so what. Most are uneducated idiot who should stick with what they do.

    • Agreed,

      The best way for Hollywood types to keep me paying for their stuff is to STFU about politics. The only thing that an actor gets from me after making anti-gun remarks is a trip to google to search for the torrents of their movies.

      • Amber Heard is from Texas and is apparently a fan of guns. I don’t think this comments of hers was supposed to be anti-gun in any way. I don’t think we’ll see that coming from her. Maybe she likes wedding dresses 9 but likes guns 10. Who knows. BUT… this Top Gear interview from a couple years ago makes her stance on guns (or it’s at least the only thing I’ve ever heard of her stating publicly on the subject) known. If you watch the whole interview, she expands on what guns she has had or currently owns, but if you watch the first 20 seconds you’ll see Clarkson introduce her as gun loving and muscle car loving: http://www.vidivodo.com/video/amber-heard-on-top-gear-promoting-drive-angry/538861

    • I may be a bit old school,
      But John Wayne was a huge idol of mine when I was a kid.. and everything I loved about him on screen was who he was as a person.. He never served in the Military, But he carried their traditions high and with Honor on Screen and supported them in Reality,in a sort of Toby Kieth way….
      I think there are people that are influenced by celebrities..

      • +1 for The Duke

        As much as I admire John Wayne, though, I really doubt that were he alive today that I’d follow a political ideal JUST because he said so….

  3. I wish we had the option to ignore them.

    However, our government is at least marginally influenced by the passions of the common man and woman. Madison warned against the influence of runaway popular passions all the way back in the Federalist papers, and it’s still a danger to our rights now. One politcian is a mouthpiece. A team of Hollywood celebs with the firm attention of the young and impressionable constitutes a cause.

    We may not like the sad fact that millions view Hollywood celebs in great esteem, but it doesn’t change the fact being true .The next step for us as a movement is to get Hollywood to portray gun ownership in a positive way. If teams of celebs make a collaborative song celebrating civil rights instead of gun control, it reaches people in a way no speech or dry politicial show can accomplish.

    • Exactly. Personally, I use celebrities as a reverse moral compass, but it’s an unfortunate fact that politics are influenced by pop culture. It’s best for us when we can somehow influence that culture. High turnout elections are won by getting the votes of the Low Infos, who base their votes on vibes they get from the overall culture. That culture portrays gun owners, business people, flyover country residents, etc as uncool, vaguely icky, or even downright evil.

  5. I think they can influence their young fans. For example, imagine you have some hip rocker who is beloved by many teenagers, but said rocker comes out as a supporter of gun rights and says that doing drugs is not cool and can wreck your life, etc…that he purposely stayed away from drugs and that is part of the reason why he is now a super successful rocker, etc…I think that kind of stuff influences the youth big-time.

    • I don’t think there is much argument that certain “famous” people (be it actors, athletes, politicians, singers, etc) influence people. The people influenced are usually people that are very impressionable and hold these people in a ‘god-like’ category. Usually that says more about the person being influenced than the person doing the influencing. My wife was in a Performing Arts program in her earlier college days and the majority of her peers were extremely self-absorbed, overly critical of others, yet terrified of being criticized by others. I really don’t put too much stock in the opinions of Hollyweird types because the majority of them are exactly like those Performing Arts students except the Hollyweirds were more talented and cut throat enough to make it all the way to top. The same can be said for most others that seek recognition, notoriety and power.

    • beloved by many teenagers, but said rocker comes out as a supporter of gun rights and says that doing drugs is not cool and can wreck your life

      The Nuge….

  6. She specifically said when it comes to choosing roles, not real life. She’s trying not to be thought of as just another Hollywood bimbo, because she’s mostly named as Johnny Depp’s girlfriend. I will bet that she’s all for severe gun control.

        • BS on both counts. Feinstein doesn’t own any guns (that anyone knows about), although she did own one for a while back in the dark days of the late ’70s. She pays other people to carry guns for her.

          She doesn’t love guns, she loves power. Thus her gun control obsession: she doesn’t want guns, she wants to dictate who can and can’t have them, because guns confer power, and controlling the people who have them confers even more power.

      • Really? Interesting. I’m four friggin’ seasons behind. The last episode I watched was 17×03, and they this week will be 21×03. I really need to get on that.

  7. She’s one of the handful of women in Hollywood that can stop me in my tracks. But as far as her opinion on guns goes, or anyone else’s in Hollywood, their opinion is worth no more than anyone else’s. Their opinions shouldn’t get special weight because of money or fame. In fact, for most of them, their opinions should carry less weight, because your opinion should have impact based on your familiarity with the subject, and most of them just don’t have much familiarity at all.

    • Stunning girl, but I doubt this hookup with Depp is going to work out. Six months ago Amber was batting from the other side of the plate (which is fine by me), and now she’s engaged to a superhetero who’s scored more than Derek Jeter. I just don’t see it happening.

      • “Six months ago Amber was batting from the other side of the plate”

        Maybe she was just letting the film honchos (both male and female) know that she’s multi-talented on the casting couch?

      • Could just be the generation of girls I meet, but EVERY ex girlfriend ive ever had batted for “the other team” on at least a temporary basis at some point.

        Previous history means nothing in terms of future relationship stability.

        • When it’s history like that I think it says a good deal about stability, or utter lack thereof. I don’t follow Hollywood, but if someone I met on the street had some of these characteristics, I would start putting little “complete flake” tabs in my mental file.

          To be fair to Hollywood celebs, most of them fall under the “complete flake” category, and the majority of these are the ones who support gun control. And if their assumptions that everyone was just like them happened to be true, I might agree.

    • When you stop living in the real world, your opinions shouldn’t matter anymore. It is crazy scary to me sometimes that actors, athletes and politicians words are weighed so heavily when they no longer live in the same world as you and I.

    • It’s not really that their opinions do or do not hold more validity, only that for anti-gun celebs the MSM gives them a huge paly and that influences low-information voters. For pro-gun celebs the MSM excoriates them and this also influences low-info folks. Too many people get their political and social information from Hollywood media and this gives unequal weight to the opinions of these generally uninformed celebrities.

      I can take all of this with a grain of salt, although celebs that are willing to take a pro-2A stand (not just a pro-guns, but… stand) are high on my list of entertainment options. People who use their celebrity status to propagandize against my natural, civil and Constitutionally protected RKBA will never see a dime from my pocket.

  8. Unfortunately some people do care about what celebrities think(gossip magazine/blogs.) And admit it, we people of the gun almost always give kudos to any celeb that espouses our position.

  9. Of course we care! Personally, before I do anything, I first ask myself, “what would Ice-T do?” Because we all need a strong moral compass.

  10. There is a reason firms hire celebrities to endorse their products. Movie personalities, sports figures etc all have influences on their fans and sell product. Political views are no different and should be of concern.

  11. I care about celebrities’ thoughts on politics about as much as I do strippers’…

    I don’t pay you for your brain, now, shut up and entertain me!

  12. I have to say I didn’t know who she was before I saw this.

    Now that I have, I’m struggling to find a reason to care.

  13. Only Dimwitted fans who don’t have enough of a life would follow what some of these HYPOCRITES say about anything especially when it has to do with VIOLENCE of any kind. SEX, DRUGS, and VIOLENCE are the key reasons movies make money. How many actors have been buried because of the a fore mentioned?

  14. The problem isn’t so much that celebrities espouse their opinions or use their fame to shill products. The problem is that so many people out there mistake celebrity for intelligence, or are so vapid that they want to emulate these people.

  15. Remember, it was the celebrities that gave us Obama. The numbskulls do care what they think.

  16. I care in as much as I generally carry a very low opinion of my fellow man so when one of their television gods shares an opinion I suffer images of zombie herds falling in line to not just down some celeb endorsed gutter water or fill their homes with reality star designed garbage or adopt the political position they were told to and repeating it to their dullard friends, family and coworkers.

    Some solace comes from knowing most wont bother to ever make it to the polls.

    So yea I care. Or at least I react with a sigh and a cringe.

  17. I have yet to seek out entertainment because of the opinions of the creators, but I’ve sure as hell avoided certain movies, tv shows, and albums because of it.

    • Yut. If Pink or Pitbull or Bruno Freakin’ Mars spouts off about gun control, you can probably count on a few million young minds grabbing it and taking it to the polls. Goes the other way, too, of course.

      • Oh Pitbull… Man, I look at the guy and want to hate him for his style, and his machismo (I guess that’s what you call it), but I just can’t help but smile, and his music is so damn catchy.

        • I feel that way about more of the current pop stars than I care to admit. I try to dislike them by default, but then some weenie leaves my car radio on a pop station and the next thing you know. I’m cranking it up and bopping along. It’s just sad. And fun! But mostly sad.

        • Pitbull’s name doesn’t fit him…

          Pits have muscular physiques, look aggressive, and walk around with that you don’t want to mess with me look…

          Pitbull, the performer, is short and kind of chubby, not physically intimidating in the least. He should change his name to Pug, it’s more fitting.

  19. Okay, we’re discussing whether we care what celebrities think, and it’s kind of pointless. WE already know how we feel about 2A. I think the bigger point is the effect these megastars have on the others – the fence sitters and undecided. A good chunk of the population is, for better or for worse, influenced a great deal by what their heroes say and how they conduct themselves. Every time Johnny Depp say something about his love of guns, I see 40 million swooning women (and 10 or 12 million swooning men) saying “Well, if Johnny likes guns, they must be just swell.” It’s utterly sad, but utterly true.

  20. They will influence the same people who listen to them for the choice of a political candidate: low information voters. People who can’t be bothered to watch an actual news report to find out what is going on with the world and who get all their news from E! or TMZ.

    The only upside to this is that they are also not willing (most of the time) to stand up for their “beliefs” and call, write or visit their representatives.

    Of course, they still get to vote…..

  21. I don’t watch TV (and not in the smug hipster way – I don’t have cable/sat, and live in an air-broadcast dead zone), so not only did I have no idea who the hell Amber Heard is, but no, I hadn’t heard what she said, either. In other words – no, I really don’t give a shit what celebrities think about hot-button issues. Would you care what members of your college drama club thought about geopolitics? That’s all these people are.

    • Norwegian weddings just have tons of booze, so I’m guessing I need to go to more Bosnian weddings. 😀

        • ??

          No. You just fill up a couple of mags (with your own ammo), point the gun in the air and let loose. Personally I would recommend ear pro and using blanks.

          I never was fan of the practice but it is fun.

        • Open bar = unlimited free booze for guests. Yay language barriers!

          Also, d’oh, shooting the air isn’t as much fun as shooting paper, much less steel. 🙁 Not as fun as I thought.

        • I may not be Bosnian, but a blank firing adapter for my AKs was the best five bux I’ve spent. A few hundred blanks makes for a great & safe 4th of July/New Year’s

  24. To be an actor it helps to have Borderline Personality Disorder. (Consult Wikipedia for a description.) And if you look for BPD in the behavior of many well-known actresses, you’ll find it jumps off the news page at you. Hollywood loves guns, sex, and rock-n-roll. However, they hate being blamed for copy-cat gun use by madmen, and they find that being labelled a boring conservative in their private life lessens their popularity among those who sit and watch oodles of movies. Ideally they would like to be granted a monopoly on guns, on and off screen. Heard’s beloved pet poodle is named Pistol.

    I don’t care what actors say. I was a bit miffed to reach adulthood only to find that democracy means living, as Mencken put it, under the will of a voter pool that that consists of “Jackals worshiped by Jackasses.” He had hope, though, that mass opinion would win out in the end, and that “on some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” I leave it to others to declare whether such a messiah-of-democracy has or has yet to appear.

  25. I care insomuch as it is a litmus test I get to administer to determine if I spend money on their movies. Bruce Willis gets my money, and Michael Douglas does not. Unfortunately, Daniel Craig is a gun phobe, which puts me in an difficult position as I’ve always been a big James Bond fan.

  26. Most celebrities have neither the intellect nor the education to back up their opinions, so I DGAF what they feel as a result. I don’t like that they have a bully pulpit to project them from, and willing audiences for them though.

    That said, I do respect Bruce Willis’s and the Pitts’ healthily pro-2A views, if only because they’re not cliché Hollywood.

  27. Celebrity equals role model for many, but they are NOT synonymous. I can appreciate a great vocal talent or acting performance without agreeing with their politics or point of view. I am capable of thinking for myself, and I have no publicist to keep my opinions popular. Furthermore, the problems of the masses are simply not the problems of the wealthy. They are, frequently not through their own fault, detached from certain realities. Some are essentially socially disabled by their status. However, while they have the greater chance to be heard and seen, we each get one vote.

  28. A celebrity’s opinion is about as two dimensional, petty, and insignificant as many of the people who post comments on this site. A celebrity’s stance on guns holds about as much weight with me as some of the ignorant hateful babble of some of the posters here, not a f’ing bit.

  29. yes i care what they say about gun rights. not because i think what they say is all that important, but because they are influential. a person who doesn’t care one way or another about guns would probably lean to the anti gun side of an argument if their idol was anti gun.

    also if a celebrity speaks anti gun, then when it comes time for a tax write-off, their wallets will spend anti gun money.

  30. I ditched cable and satellite many years ago. I’ve been to theaters twice in the last 10 years. Once was a gree coupon and the second was an escape from a hen party my wife was having.

    When I buy dvd’s I hit used shops. Basically hollywood gets sweet fuck all from me. 1a gives them the right to spout off. But I have the right to not support them financially while they do it.

    For the record. I have no idea who this girl is. But johnny depp, I actually like some of his stuff. But I’m not paying to support him either. Hollywood is to incestous, inbred and twisted to seperate the sheep from the wolves from the retarded. Like the old royal houses of europe.

    • I hope I don’t sound condescending but have you heard about Netflix? You can watch movies and stuff without paying the people who make them. That and you can find some good stand up comedians (Bill Burr and Russel Petters I would recommend right of the bat).

      Hope that didn’t sound like an advertisement.

      • Yes, I’ve heard of them. As long as the bucks aren’t going to support the lavish lifestyles of those that are trying to put a boot on our necks I’m fine with it. I just have a tv/gun room that’s bulging with dvd’s. Stacks everywhere. Big quake comes and it’ll take a week to dig me out from under the movies.

      • You do know that by using Netflix they are still getting paid? Not as much as a movie ticket but they still get something.

  33. Celebrity opinions wouldn’t be so annoying if they were generally well thought out. Unfortunately, talking monkeys get a bully pulpit for any hare brained electrical impulse that passes between their ears.

  35. Here’s an interesting twist: I’m mildly interested in what celebrities have to say about guns, not because of how they might influence culture, but because of how they mightreflect it.

    Celebrities need our attention to survive, and they thrive when they stay relevant. They tend to get noticed (via the press, outside of their main gigs) in a couple different ways: first, by projecting what they feel to be popular in order to be liked; second, by being “edgy” in order to drum up cheap exposure.

    I really could give a flying —- what any individual celebrity has to say about anything. A celebrity is just another person with an opinion who happens to have cameras and microphones following them around. What’s interesting to me is what are celebrities saying? When we hear more celebrities calling for standing up for freedoms and fewer appealing to ignorant knee-jerk policies like gun control, that will simply confirm that an important cultural shift has already taken place because it is now easier to appeal to emotion on the basis of celebrating freedom than it is on the basis of being in favor of saving theoretical children.

  36. I care the same as I care about anyone else. Glad to find out when someone cares about liberty, and pissed when I hear someone is opposed to it. Celeb or otherwise.

  37. I like it when celebs/athletes/businesses/organizations let their political beliefs be known. That makes it much easier for me to know who I will NOT be supporting with my time & money.

  38. Ignore them, or not. If you like their movies, songs or whatever, great.

    Someone particularly egregious I’ll only patronize through television, radio or other means by which my patronage in no way profits them. HBO or KCFX pays them no more if I tune in than if I do not.

    Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, including that 2A is as obsolete as Prohibition or apportionment.

    Personally, I see universal citizenship and suffrage as a failed experiment. My take is that we should require natives to know every bit as much as we require of immigrants about the Constitution, the workings of a Republic and so on before we let ’em tinker via the vote or claim the rights and privileges of citizenship.

    ‘Course, the Constitution says otherwise and I’ll honour that – but I respectfully disagree.

    If Johnny Depp supports a statist agenda, that is unfortunately his right and I respect it – if not him.

    Sometimes freedom sucks.

    • That depends on whether you think he’s the best guy for the job. Don’t vote for him because he’s Tom Selleck, vote for him because you like his ideas and the direction he’d take the NRA.

  40. Celebrities DO influence people, every day. There are millions of people in this country alone who live and die by what these overpaid fools say and do. It’s why Oprah Winfrey is one of the most powerful women on Earth–if she jsays “Jump”, half the women in America will ask “how high?”

    So yes, we DO need to pay attention to what they’re saying–because if they’re famous, lots and lots of other people are paying attention as well. People who look up to them as role models.

    • No doubt O.W. [one of the most powerful women since the fall of Babylon] has well-dressed, well-paid, well-trained, well-armed guards well-placed around her well-appointed city-state of a home.

  42. Celebrities are bought and paid for by the left. The media, esp the “gossip” media are all left.

    Therefore we should be surprised and pleased when one or two them are 2nd supporters.

    Not that what a celebrity says or does means diddly to me; I don’t watch TV or read the gossip junk.

  43. Meh. They go their way, I go mine. When they start caring about what I say, I may reciprocate. If they start sending cash my way I might GAS. Otherwise, Kim who?

  44. Since I have worked with celebrities, lived near a few, and probably will in the future, I like knowing where they stand.

  45. Unfortunately, people who know nothing about guns and care nothing about the Second Amendment are precisely the people who listen to what “celebrities” have to say about all things guns.

  46. It is my policy to ignore ANY and ALL celebrities when they are speaking, acting, or being involved in anything outside the context of their particular work/skillset.

  47. Our issue is not that we care or not about what celebrities think. Our issue as a cause is that celebrities fill a role in Psychological Operations known as influencers. Right or wrong it is a fact. If you cannot accept the fact, seek therapy. If you can get an influencer to sell your idea to the group they influence you exert effort to win over one person but get many others. A simplistic way of illustrating force multiplication. Or in business, maximizing your return on investment.

    We need to concentrate efforts on influencers in our culture. Even those we may not see eye to eye with on every subject. We may not even like them initially. But, as you get to know them, they may suprise you. Gain incremental ground in an organized fashion. United we can reverse the current course much faster than the opposition. Stand for freedom. Live values based lives without preaching. Accept others and their differences. Help others feel accepted. Go out your way to educate. Speak to values, not a specific religion or faith. Values are shared in society where religion cause derision. We need to help people think and reason for themselves. The rest will follow.

  48. Most of these “rubbery figures” only say what the studio approves, otherwise they’ll find themselves with a sudden lack of employment unless they are famous enough to say what they like without consequences.

    But when most celebrities comment on firearms issues, it not only shows how ignorant they are on the topic but also how ignorant they are in general.

    They receive their ridiculous pay packets. They certainly DON’T earn them.

Comments are closed.