Hollywood star Vince Vaughn has insisted that guns should be allowed in US schools – saying that banning them is like banishing forks “to stop making people fat”.

The 45-year-old told GQ magazine that he supported the right to own a gun.

Despite a series of shootings in US schools, asked whether guns should be allowed, he said: “Of course. You think the politicians that run my country and your country don’t have guns in the schools their kids go to? They do.

“And we should be allowed the same rights. Banning guns is like banning forks in an attempt to stop making people fat. Taking away guns, taking away drugs, the booze, it won’t rid the world of criminality.”

Vince Vaughn
Vince Vaughn thinks guns should be allowed (Barry Brecheisen/Invision)

The True Detective actor added: “I support people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home. We don’t have the right to bear arms because of burglars.

“We have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government. It’s not about duck hunting, it’s about the ability of the individual. It’s the same reason we have freedom of speech. It’s well known that the greatest defence against an intruder is the sound of a gun hammer being pulled back.”

Vaughn went on: “All these gun shootings that have gone down in America since 1950, only one or maybe two have happened in non-gun-free zones. Take mass shootings. They’ve only happened in places that don’t allow guns. These people are sick in the head and are going to kill innocent people.

“They are looking to slaughter defenceless human beings … In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these … schools because they know there are no guns there. They are monsters killing six-year-olds.”

Vince Vaughn
Vince Vaughn has appeared in a string of comedy roles (Rob Latour/Invision)

The Internship star also admitted that he had got stuck making “assembly-line comedies”.

“I’m not blaming anyone else but myself here. The machine can make you idle,” he said.

“You read a script and then you agree to a role, then soon enough you’re on set looking at a scene that has had all the juice and the life sucked right out of it.

“You become a hired gun doing a very inoffensive PG-13 movie and, well, you kind of just go along with it. Like anything in life, you’re either growing or you’re dying. When you get too comfortable you start to decline.”