On September 17, the Bisbane Times published a video interview with Richard Dean Anderson—star of the hit 1980’s show MacGyver—in which Anderson talked about how he is not proud of the USA when it comes to the country’s gun culture.
He also criticized the “despicable attitudes” he sees in the NRA.
Anderson told the Bisbane Times, “[There is] too much injury and death happening, especially in the states, I’m not so proud of that aspect of my country.”
Ironically, the day before this video interview was posted, Breitbart News reported that Panama plans to loosen gun restrictions because of the way crime plummeted in the U.S. once gun restrictions began to be loosened in the late 1980s. A 2012 report by the Congressional Research Service showed Americans went from having 192 million privately owned firearms in 1994 to 310 million privately owned firearms in 2009. At the same time, the murder rate of 6.6 Americans per 100,000 in 1993 fell to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2000 and finally to 3.2 per 100,000 by 2011.
But Anderson is not proud of his country when it comes to guns.
Anderson also cited “despicable attitudes” in the NRA and said that the group unknowingly helped his ratings by pushing a “boycott” of MacGyver in the late 1980s. He said the NRA put MacGyver “on their hit-list,” which he claims ended up expanding the show’s audience.
Anderson says MacGyver was a “thinking man’s hero who abhorred handguns and armaments,” and he admitted the character might not be able to make it to today’s television climate.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.