During an interview with David Wallis posted in the New York Observer website on Thursday, Richard Dreyfuss -- best known for his starring roles in such movies as The Goodbye Girl, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Mr. Holland's Opus -- declared he thinks the Second Amendment should be changed because “it's obscurely written.”
The liberal actor claimed: “I would have made it clear. I would have said: 'This is for establishing militia, and everyone has the right to participate in that militia, and you can have a gun if you participate in that militia.'”
The recipient of two Emmy Awards continued:
We have actually divided on this issue so badly that we have two groups that absolutely hate each other. One group says no guns even if some guy has a knife to my child’s throat, and the NRA (National Rifle Association) people say: “Give me a semiautomatic missile, or I’ll kill you.”
The actor's comment followed a claim that the Founding Fathers' “biggest mistake” was “not [making] public education part of the Constitution.”
Wallis began the interview by asking Dreyfuss: “What do you remember about growing up in Bayside?” The liberal activist responded that this section of Queens “was a red enclave; they were all Socialists and Communists.”
“And I said to my mother once, 'Why were you a Socialist and not a Communist?' And she said 'Better doughnuts.'”
"Your father was an attorney,” Wallis noted. “Did his legal background rub off on you?”
Dreyfuss noted that his father actually hated the legal profession and “became a businessman” instead.
“He had a company that made gun shields for the Navy, so he had to get a security clearance,” the actor continued. “At one point, the FBI came to the house. My mom and I were there” when “an older guy and a younger guy came in,” and they asked: “Do you mind if we talk to your son?” She said: “Go ahead.”
The agent asked: “Your mother is a member of Mothers Against the War, for peace, against Vietnam, and she is a Socialist. And your father is making gun shields for the Navy. Does this breed any discontent in the home?”
“I said: 'No because my father helped the anti-war effort by making his gun shields badly.' The older FBI agent just turned to ice, and the younger one went: 'He’s kidding.'”
At that point in the interview, Wallis asked: “What was the Founding Fathers’ biggest mistake?” “They didn’t make public education part of the Constitution,” Dreyfuss replied.
“You have stated that a civics education can protect the country against ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria),” the interviewer noted.
“When you limit your learning process so that you take out of schools the teaching of clarity and thought,” the actor stated, “the teaching of the political miracle that this country represents in history, when you don’t teach that, you lose not only a knowledge of this country, but the concept of preparation.”
As NewsBusters reported in May, Dreyfuss wrote a surprisingly reasonable article for the PJ Media website that stated: “Western kids are reportedly trying to join ISIS; why? Perhaps because the only spiritual movement being discussed in public, however ugly its ideology, is extremist Islam.”
“Our values are not transmitted genetically; they must be taught. They’re not,” the actor continued. “Voting doesn’t make you a better citizen; comprehending the issues makes you better.”
On the same day, Dreyfuss defended American exceptionalism by stating:
We were responsible for the greatest revolution in the history of civilization.
Whenever you hear someone say American exceptionalism [doesn't exist], you should turn to that person and say: “If you don't prove that statement, I'm going to hit you right in the mouth” because they don't prove it, and they can't,
However, Dreyfuss is better known for his liberal view on things. When George Zimmerman was acquitted of any crimes in his shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin during June of 2013, the liberal responded:
It's 2013, and an American jury just acquitted a man who admitted to stalking and killing an unarmed child.
And just to make sure he was clearly defined as a liberal, the actor actually defended MSNBC's Ed Schultz's radio comment that the “enemy of the country,” former vice president Dick Cheney, should be taken by God to the “Promised Land.”
"No, that’s not uncivil,” Dreyfuss asserted. “That’s actually kind of a beautifully phrased way of saying something that could be uncivil.”
If the liberal activist continues his effort to alter the Second Amendment, he's likely to have a "close encounter" with the "jaws" of people defending gun rights before they say "goodbye" to catching his movies in theaters.
