HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL: TV personalities who are licensed to carry firearms (left to right): Goldberg, Trump, Jones and Lowe. (
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Who says they can’t take the heat of stardom?
Several TV celebrities, including “Blue Bloods” star Tom Selleck, are licensed to carry guns, according to an eonline.com report pegged to the country’s ongoing gun-control debate in the wake of December’s elementary-school massacre in Newtown, Conn.
Selleck, a board member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), is a no-brainer on the gun front — but “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg and James Earl Jones?
Who knew?
Like Selleck, Goldberg and Jones — whose baritone “This is CNN” voiceover is back on the cable network after a long absence — are card-carrying members of the NRA.
Goldberg disclosed her NRA membership last year on “The View,” while Jones has been quoted as saying, “Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns.”
The eonline.com story also includes former “Nashville Star” finalist and occasional series guest star (“Law & Order: SVU”) Miranda Lambert — who estimates she owns between eight and 10 firearms to protect herself.
“I carry a weapon,” Lambert told Self magazine last June. “I got a death threat a few years ago and was really scared. But I don’t want bodyguards. I am my own security.”
Not included on the list, as far as TV celebs: “America’s Got Talent” judge Howard Stern — who, in 2010, was licensed to carry a firearm in New York City — and “Celebrity Apprentice” host Donald Trump, who’s also licensed to carry a firearm in the Big Apple.
Actor Rob Lowe, who recently portrayed Casey Anthony prosecutor Jeff Ashton in the Lifetime movie “Prosecuting Casey Anthony” — and also starred as convicted wife-killer Drew Peterson in Lifetime’s “Drew Peterson: Untouchable” — is also a gun owner.
Lowe says he would support the ban on assault weapons being put forth by President Obama.
“It’s in our Constitution. Look, I own guns. I’m gone a lot. I have a wife, I have two kids,” Lowe told Piers Morgan last month on CNN on “Piers Morgan Tonight.”
“I know how to keep them, they’re in a gun safe,” he said. “I’m a sportsman, you know, and I shoot skeet and I grew up in the Midwest, so that’s a part of my culture.
“So, I understand them in a way that perhaps people living in more urban areas [who] don’t have that history.”