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Matt Damon Told To Move To Australia Because He Does Not Approve Of U.S. Gun Laws — Is Jason Bourne a Hypocrite?

By Jacintha Webster
Published on: 12:34 PST, Jul 6, 2016

Matt Damon has been blasted by critics in the United States over positive comments he made over Australia’s strict firearm laws. The Jason Bourne actor has been labelled a hypocrite and called a string of names for making tens of millions of dollars from playing a gun-toting action hero in the Jason Bourne film franchise and other movies he has starred in.

It was a Bourne movie that brought Matt Damon to Australia where he is promoting the latest film in his blockbuster action series where he plays a former black ops agent, according to SBS.

The reign of fire came down on Matt Damon after the powerful National Rifle Association pro-gun lobby group re-tweeted one of the actor’s comments. News quickly spread from there about Matt Damon’s stance on guns laws and calls prompting people to boycott Damon’s films exploded from there.

Matt Damon made the comments about the U.S. and Australian gun laws when he was asked to comment on gun control while promoting his new film, Jason Bourne, in Sydney, according to Entertainment Weekly. Matt Damon told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that he wishes America would learn from Australia’s tough gun laws.

“You guys did it here in one fell swoop and I wish that could happen in my country, but it’s such a personal issue for people that we cannot talk about it sensibly. We just can’t,” he said.

“People get so emotional that even when you make a suggestion about not selling AK-47s to people on terror watch lists, that’s a non-starter. I don’t know what needs to happen.”

Emotional is exactly how people reacted to Matt Damon’s gun comments.

“Who cares what this jack**s thinks?” one critic wrote on the article re-tweeted by the NRA.

“He lives in a fantasy world. I will bet he has armed body guards.”

Another critic wrote, “Can we just get it over with and deport Matt Damon to Australia?”

Although Matt Damon did receive a lot of criticism for his comments from a lot of Americans, Australians are ready to accept him to their country with open arms. The SBS Facebook page posted an article about Matt Damon’s words of wisdom and the comment section has nothing but praise in it for the movie star.

“No worries we will happily take Matt Damon and the US can keep its gun toting rednecks!!” One Facebook user wrote.

“Matt Damon’s a good guy, and I agree with him. America is full of gun nuts, which need to go away. We need better gun laws (as in get rid of them all),” said another.

The Jason Bourne actor went on to point out the Australia has drastically reduced mass shootings since gun laws were introduced over 20 years ago. It only took one mass shooting in Australia, the Port Arthur Historic Site, to implement nationwide gun law reform, but Damon said that mass shootings are not enough to put Americans off their right to have guns.

“Obviously mass shootings aren’t going to do it. There have been so many of them at this point. Sandy Hook, when those children were murdered, if that didn’t do it, you know, I just don’t know. Maybe we just need to evolve further before we can have that conversation, I don’t know.”

Since the worst mass shooting America has seen in Orlando last month, the U.S. Senate has already rejected four new gun control proposals, leading many other actors to get fired up about the gun law debate. Bette Midler and Mia Farrow also took to social media to vent their frustrations, but neither received as much backlash as Damon. This could be due to him making millions of dollars by pretending to shoot guns.

Matt Damon’s latest Jason Bourne, the fifth film in the gun-heavy action series, is due to hit theaters later this month, and despite calls for gun lovers to boycott the film, it is sure to be a box office success.

[Photo by Hugh Peterswald/Getty Images]

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