Coming Home

The Uvalde tragedy set me down a path from my west Texas hometown to the hallowed halls of Washington, D.C., from political outsidercynic to inside broker on gun reform that changed me forever.

- By Matthew McConaughey

Writing this story was hard. It's personal-for me, but more so for the victims and their families, who have paid the ultimate cost. Which is why I've hesitated to write it. Observing from the front lines, then sharing what I saw-it makes me feel a bit like a fraud. Am I trespassing? Sharing sacred secrets that are not my stories to tell? I hope not.

IT WAS 9:00 ON A HUMID NIGHT IN MAY, A TUESDAY, AND I HAD JUST FINISHED A FULL DAY'S work at a studio in Austin. I checked my phone for the first time since early that morning and found it flooded with emails, texts, and voicemails.

"So sorry." "Oh my God, Matthew, it's so sickening what happened." "Baby, I read the news, call me." The last message was from my wife, Camila.

I checked my newsfeed. Shit. Not again. Mass shooting. This time in Uvalde, Texas, my hometown. At Robb Elementary, less than a mile from where I went to school and my mom taught kindergarten. Twenty-one confirmed deaths, all but two of them children.

I called Camila. She was in London, where it was three in the morning, but she picked up on the first ring. "We need to go down there," she said. She wasn't asking or suggesting. "Yes," I said, still in shock. "We do." With a tragedy this immense, you may not know what to do or how to do it, but the where, the when, and the why are clear. This would be a journey with a one-way ticket. We had no sense of how long we'd go for, nor a plan beyond showing up. But we knew that if we did, purpose would intercept us.

Camila caught the next flight to Texas. Early on Thursday morning, we dropped the kids off with friends, then made our way south.