[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
Mel Gibson‘s gun rights were restored last week. Was it because he had taken some extraordinary action? Because he needed a gun for some national security reason? Nope. He’s just a Donald Trump supporter.
The POTUS and his party make a big noise about how celebs should shut up about politics… until they get a Kid Rock or a Scott Baio. Then they invite them to political conferences and the White House. The truth is they LOOOOOVE a celebrity endorsement. And Mel is a great one… if you’re stuck in the ’90s when he was arguably the biggest movie star on the planet. If he’s willing to sing your praises to all the dads who still idolize him, why not scratch his back? Give him what he wants? Let him buy guns again?
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Well, we’ll tell you why not…
Federal law prohibits people from purchasing or possessing a firearm if they’ve been convicted of a few types of crimes. One of those is domestic violence. Why? Well, because an awful lot of damn domestic abusers murder their partners with guns, that’s why. Frankly it’s pretty simple. Really it shouldn’t even be that controversial. People get deprived of all kinds of freedoms for committing crimes — like hell, most convicted felons can’t vote for president. (Though they can, apparently, get elected.)
But we can see how Mel’s situation might be seen as a technicality. After all, he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor battery charge. Just a little thing, right? He got three years of probation, had to do a year of counseling, and paid a $600 fine. Didn’t even do a day in prison. Couldn’t have been that bad, right?
Well, here’s the thing. You know how plea deals work? The defendant will agree to plead guilty, giving the prosecutor an automatic win with no trial — and the defense attorney will make a deal for as little prison time as possible? And what ends up on the books doesn’t necessarily reflect the original allegations. And this was Mel Gibson. His movie money bought him some damn good lawyers, and his popularity already made this a scary case for prosecutors to put in front of a jury. He got a GOOD deal here, considering how bad the allegations were.
With this happening all the way back in 2010 and 2011, one could be forgiven for forgetting the actual scandal. But it was so much worse than a $600 fine.
In October 2009, after only a few months together, pianist Oksana Grigorieva gave birth to Mel’s baby, a daughter named Lucia. Less than a year later Oksana and Mel had already split. In June, she filed for a restraining order to keep him away from her AND from their child. In July, we learned why.
Audio tapes came out in which Oksana accuses Mel of punching her in the face twice during an altercation months earlier in January. And he admits to it. She demands on the infamous tapes:
“What kind of a man is that who would hit a woman when she is holding a child in her hands, hitting her twice in the face? What kind of a man is that?”
And he responds:
“You know what — you f**king deserved it.”
Oksana claimed the Lethal Weapon star hit her so hard in the face — while she was holding their 8-month-old baby, mind you — that he knocked out one of her teeth and chipped another.
That’s domestic violence AND child endangerment. And Mel not only seemed to admit it on the tapes, he at one point threatened to burn her house down with her inside it. He also suggested she deserved to get “raped by a pack of n****rs.” Yeah. Oof.
But those aren’t the only threats Mel was accused of. In maybe the most pertinent act to this whole gun thing, law enforcement sources spilled to TMZ at the time that Oksana told deputies the Braveheart filmmaker threatened her with a handgun at his home.
He went and grabbed a gun he was allowed to own, per her word, and threatened to shoot her.
Whatever your political leanings, you shouldn’t want a man who did that to be able to own a gun again, right? But as Russell Brand and others will attest, the parties are not the same when it comes to how men accused of violence against women are treated. According to an increasingly popular worldview, the women in all these cases are liars, and the men are always the ones being unfairly persecuted. No matter what.
Of course, by that logic, why shouldn’t Mel have access to weapons again, right? All he did was get victimized by some woman, right?
We’re sure there are many folks out there asking about forgiveness, about people changing. What do we have to say to that? We just wish Mel was a bit more like Desmond Doss, the main character of his 2016 film Hacksaw Ridge, who didn’t want to use a gun. We wish Mel had simply declined the right, saying he never wanted to touch a gun if possible. That’s what he could do to suggest to us he’d changed. But that’s just us.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Consider calling the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233, or text START to 88788, or go to https://www.thehotline.org/. For more information on violence against women, go to https://www.justice.gov/ovw/resources-for-survivors. To learn more about the impact of gun violence, visit https://www.apha.org/topics-and-issues/gun-violence.
[Image via Buena Vista/YouTube/Nikki Nelson/WENN.]
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