Liam Neeson's Taken 3 press conference in Dubai took an unexpected turn Monday when the actor linked the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks to Americans owning too many guns.
Neeson offered his thoughts and prayers to the deceased and to all of France, but continued with some expletive-laden statements:
There's too many f--king guns out there. Especially in America. I think the population is like, 320 million? There's over 300 million guns. Privately owned, in America. I think it's a f--king disgrace. Every week now we're picking up a newspaper and seeing, "Yet another few kids have been killed in schools." [Gulf News]
Neeson was promoting the third installment of the Taken trilogy, in which the 62-year-old Irishman plays Bryan Mills, a gun-toting father seeking revenge for his daughter. Yet Neeson defended the movies' violent tone, saying "it's fantasy."
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"It's in the movies, you know?" he continued. "I think it can give people a great release from stresses in life and all the rest of it, you know what I mean? It doesn't mean they're all going to go out and go, 'Yeah, let's get a gun!'"
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