Jim Carrey Mocks Gun Fanatics, Kinda Loses His Shit When Gun Fanatics Respond

Everybody! A very important actor named Jim Carrey has an announcement: He never wanted to take your guns away. So please could everyone calm down and leave him alone? He’s getting really stressed about it.

Jim Carrey, like many Americans, has been outraged with the state of gun control in the wake of Newtown. But instead of channeling his frustration into a celebrity PSA, Carrey took to Funny or Die to make a country music video called “Cold Dead Hand” to poke fun at gun fanatics, ultimately alluding that dudes that are obsessed with guns probably don’t have big penises. In the video, he plays both lead singer of the fictional band called Lonesome Earl and the Clutterbusters as well as the late Charlton Heston, one of the biggest celebrity faces of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Here’s one of the most biting parts of the song:

“Charlton Heston movies are no longer in demand
And his immortal soul may lay forever in the sand
The angels wouldn’t take him up to heaven like he planned
Because they couldn’t pry that gun from his cold, dead hand.”

Naturally, people freaked out. The Internet trolls came out in droves, but instead of giving them the middle finger as he did at the end of his Funny or Die music video, Carrey got really defensive. As in, got in multiple Twitter shit fights and probably stayed up all night sending defensive direct messages to trolls.

Finally, Carrey wanted to be “totally clear” with his message about guns, as if countless tweets and a music video didn’t get his point across. His Huffington Post column on the subject, eloquently titled “I Never Wanted to Take Your Guns Away,” explains in so many words exactly what Carrey has been saying from the very beginning: We probably shouldn’t be so into guns.

But instead of creating a well-researched argument that would cause even the biggest fans of guns to pause and question their fundamental beliefs, Carrey’s column reads like a sixth grader’s first attempt at a persuasive essay. Never shy of the caps lock key, Carrey proclaimed, “NO ONE IS ASKING ANYONE TO GIVE UP THEIR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.” He ended the column, which I’m sure hangs on his refrigerator as his magnum opus, with “LET YOUR HEART BE HEARD.”

The thing is, Carrey was right on in using his celebrity to create a scathing, anti-gun music video. The Ace Ventura star thrusted his hips, made a joke about balls, and flicked the camera off. That’s what Jim Carrey does.

What he doesn’t do, or doesn’t do well, at least, is enter a more serious realm of the gun policy debate. Did he expect unanimous support in roasting Charlton Heston and calling hardcore gun activists “heartless motherf%ckers”? “Cold Dead Hand” was the perfect contribution a comedian with Carrey’s celebrity could’ve added to the gun debate. So stick to music videos, dude, and maybe lay off the caps lock.