Matthew McConaughey visits Uvalde, Texas hometown to pay respects for school shooting victims

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Matthew McConaughey traveled to Uvalde, Texas where the actor paid his respects to the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting.

The “Greenlights” author, 52, was born in the Texas town where his mother was a teacher at a school a mile away from the tragic scene where Salvador Ramos, 18, allegedly killed 19 children and two teachers before he was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent.

The “Dallas Buyers Club” star appeared with Rep. Tony Gonzales and did not answer Fox News Digital’s questions as they left the Uvalde Civic Center.

McConaughey was among one of the first high-profile celebrities to address the tragedy on Wednesday in a plea to “control” the “epidemic” of school shootings.

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Matthew McConaughey visited his hometown of Uvalde, Texas where the actor paid his respects to the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting. (Rick Kern/WireImage)

“Once again we have tragically proven that we are failing to be responsible for the rights our freedoms grant us,” the “Lincoln Lawyer” actor wrote in a statement on his social media pages.

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“As Americans, Texans, mother and fathers, it’s time we re-evaluate, and renegotiate our wants from our needs,” he continued in part. “We have to rearrange our values and find a common ground above this devastating American reality that has tragically become our children’s issue.”

Tuesday’s shooting is the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in 2012. 

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Meghan Markle also made a surprise visit to Texas on Thursday to pay her respects to the 21 victims killed.

Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, places flowers as she mourns at a memorial outside Uvalde County Courthouse in Uvalde, Texas, May 26, 2022. (Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The Duchess of Sussex, 40, who lives in California with her husband Prince Harry and their two children, was spotted placing a bouquet of white roses at a memorial for the victims gunned down Tuesday at Robb Elementary School. 

The former American actress also eschewed questions from reporters as she placed the roses tied with a purple ribbon for 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, one of the victims of the attack. Markle was accompanied by a bodyguard who was reported to be Alberto Alvarez. Alvarez was with Michael Jackson the night Jackson died in June 2009 at age 50.

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Meanwhile, in the days since the shooting, many celebrities have stated their opinions on the issue of guns and some notable musicians even pulled out of performing at the National Rifle Association (NRA) conference on Friday in Houston, Texas.

“American Pie” singer Don McLean, Lee Greenwood, Larry Gatlin and Larry Stewart all canceled performances at the NRA convention.

Greenwood told Fox News Digital that while he is a gun owner, he simply felt that playing at the conference would have been “in bad taste.”

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“My performance at the NRA would have been deemed [that] I’m endorsing the gun that killed the children,” Greenwood explained. “And I thought that was just in not only bad taste, but out of respect of the families that lost their children and the teachers that were killed, would just be in really bad taste. And so we did notify the NRA that we’re not going to play their convention.”