(Language alert in some of the cited works)
Mark Wahlberg, star of the current hit movie Lone Survivor, has a checkered past.
In fact, as a 16-year-old, Walberg pled guilty in 1988 to two counts of criminal contempt after beating a Vietnamese man badly enough that the victim of the attack lost an eye and was sentenced to two years in prison. The original charge was attempted murder.
(Model Minority) – At approximately 9:00 p.m. on April 8, 1988 Thanh Lam, a Vietnamese adult male who resides in Dorchester, traveled by car to 998 Dorchester Avenue, Dorchester, Massachusetts. At 998 Dorchester Avenue, Thanh Lam left his car carrying two cases of beer. As he crossed the sidewalk, Mark Wahlberg attacked Thanh Lam. Wahlberg was carrying a large wooden stick, approximately five feet long and two to three inches in diameter. Wahlberg approached Thanh Lam calling him a “Vietnam fucking shit,” then hit him over the head with the stick. Thanh Lam was knocked to the ground unconscious. Th[e] stick broke in two and was later recovered from the scene. Thanh Lam was treated overnight at Boston City Hospital.
After police arrested Wahlberg later on the night of April 8, 1988, Wahlberg was informed of his rights and returned to the scene of 998 Dorchester Avenue. In the presence of two police officers, he stated: “You don’t have to let him identify me, I’ll tell you now that’s the mother-fucker who’s head I split open,” or words to that effect.
As a police officer arrived at the scene of 998 Dorchester Avenue, Wahlberg and two other youths who were with him fled up Dorchester Avenue toward Pearl Street.
Shortly after 9:00 p.m. on April 8, 1988, Hoa Trinh, an adult Vietnamese male who resides in Dorchester, was standing several blocks away from 998 Dorchester Avenue, near the corner of Dorchester Avenue and Pearl Street. Hoa Trinh was not aware of the altercation outside of 998 Dorchester Avenue.
Wahlberg ran up to Hoa Trinh, put his arm around Hoa Trinh’s shoulder, and said: “Police coming, police coming, let me hide.” After a police cruiser passed, Wahlberg punched Trinh in the eye, causing him to fall to the ground.
Police arrived and Hoa Trinh identified Wahlberg as the person who punched him. Wahlberg was placed under arrest and read his rights. Thereafter he made numerous unsolicited racial statements about “gooks” and “slant-eyed gooks.” After being returned to 998 Dorchester Avenue, Wahlberg identified Thanh Lam as the person he hit over the head with a stick.
Trinh lost one of his “slanted” eyes due to the attack. Wahlberg plead guilty to two counts of criminal contempt, was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and was released after 45 days. Although Wahlberg describes his incarceration as a “turning point” in his life, to this day he continues to deny that race played a role in either attack.
That conviction should have placed Mark Wahlberg squarely on the “prohibited person” list as felons (convictions for crime with a sentence of over one year incarceration) are prohibited from owning, possessing or even touching firearms or ammunition.
Yet despite this prohibition, he’s starred in a number of action movies prominently featuring guns.
While Hollywood’s prop guns are often non-firing facsimiles of guns, or solely blank-firing guns that aren’t firearms under most definitions, Wahlberg’s own promotional people have touted his “training” for his roles. Training that included shooting real guns.
For instance, this piece from Visual Hollywood gushes over Wahlberg’s supposed fast-learned shooting skills:
WAHLBERG GOES TO SNIPER SCHOOL: ABOUT TRAINING AS A SHOOTER
Key to the suspense of “Shooter” is the most true-to-life, painstakingly accurate portrayal of a military sniper yet seen on film. To achieve this, Mark Wahlberg had to commit himself to an intensive “boot camp,” learning and carefully cultivating some of the extraordinary skills that set the very best shooters, like Bob Lee Swagger, apart, including a Zen-like ability to control one’s emotions, fears and nerves while dialing in a laser-like focus that allows for near-impossible shots to hit their marks dead-on. Wahlberg came to the production with the advantage of already being a highly trained athlete with exceptional physical strength, endurance and coordination. But to hone him into a seasoned shootist – the kind who could hit a target 1,000 meters away with dead aim – the production recruited one of the nation’s true elite in the field: U.S. Marine scout sniper Patrick Garrity, who has served both in vital deployments overseas and as a specialized trainer for snipers.
Jumping into the task with a typical gung ho spirit, Garrity constructed a not-so-basic training in field skills for Wahlberg that put even the famously tough actor through his paces. The idea was to not only teach Walhberg to shoot well but to give him a sense of the kind of mental and physical commitment, not to mention heart, the extremely dangerous missions of a sniper scout require. His boot camp began at Front Sight Firearms Training Institute near Las Vegas, Nevada, where Wahlberg followed a nerve-testing training protocol that included jumping off the largest zip line tower in America. For Wahlberg, the training was revelatory.
“Front Sight is basically the most elaborate weapons training facility that I’ve ever seen,” says Wahlberg. “At one point, I had on 130 pounds of equipment, was carrying this huge sniper rifle and had to walk out on this little thin beam a couple of hundred feet in the air. A few years ago, these are things that I would have loved to have done, but now I’m a parent and have a lot more to live for!”
He adds: “The training definitely opened my eyes to the importance of being safe and smart as opposed to being reckless like I once was.”
… “He has so much natural ability. At first, there was some concern because Mark is a left-hander and, since most weapons aren’t made for a left-handed shooter, he had to learn how to shoot right-handed for the movie – which is tough – and also switch between right-handed shooting and left-handing shooting. But Mark was amazing. He hit a few bull’s-eyes right away the first day.”
Knowing that Wahlberg could handle it, Garrity designed training as intensive as anything undertaken before by an actor preparing for such a role. He started by giving Wahlberg a basic history lesson about Marine scout snipers – who have made a difference in many American battles by providing precision fire on selected targets. Garrity then quickly moved into the nitty-gritty, teaching Wahlberg the use of different shooting positions, how to manipulate the prismatic scope for extreme long-range shooting, how to judge the effects of the wind on a shot and all the many vital factors that go into producing keen marksmanship.
Garrity further worked on extreme distance shooting with Wahlberg, which is one of Bob Lee Swagger’s specialized skills. “I took him to an unknown distance range in the middle of the desert – we call it Sniper’s Point – and started him at close targets. Finally, we walked out to 900 yards. I think he missed the first one and after the first miss, made contact on the next one. Same thing at 1,100 yards, which is about ten football fields. I was pretty excited that I could get somebody, in two days, to be able to hit an 1,100-yard man-sized target. Mark got on the phone and started calling all of his friends,” laughs Garrity, “to tell them, ‘You won’t believe what I just did. I shot something a thousand yards away!’”
Federal law calls for five years imprisonment for a felon in possession of a firearm and most, if not all states, have state-level prohibitions – complete with prison sentences – for felons possessing guns or ammunition.
Why weren’t charges leveled against Wahlberg? Was it because he received some sort of clemency for his racial hate crime – which, of course, he denies the attack on the “slant-eyed gook” (as Wahlberg referred to the man) was race related? Or is it because he’s a member of the elite class, like David Gregory, who can violate gun laws without fear of legal repercussion?
In the case of Gregory, he used an AR-15 magazine as a prop in an anti-gun news story in the District of Columbia.
(Washington Times) – The attorney general for the District of Columbia, Irvin Nathan, announced Friday that he will not press charges against NBC News’ David Gregory nor any employee of the broadcast network for violating the city’s gun laws. Violation of the city’s firearms laws carry a maximum $1,000 fine and one year in jail.
In the case of Mark Walhberg?
We’re still waiting to hear why he hasn’t been arrested and incarcerated for handling firearms unlawfully.
Walhberg is hardly a friend to gun owners. In 2000, at the MTV Movie Awards, Wahlberg suggested the “Best Villain” award should go to Charlton Heston of the NRA. “I believe Charlton Heston is America’s best villain because he loves guns so much. Maybe he should get the award for being president of the National Rifle Association,” Wahlberg said.
In a 2007 story in the Australian Herald-Sun, Wahlberg contradicted his earlier interview in Visual Hollywood. In the Herald-Sun, Wahlberg was quoted as saying, “Well, I would love it if they could take all the guns away… Certainly, I haven’t used a gun anywhere other than on a movie set and I’d like to see if we could take them all away. It would be a beautiful thing.”
Let’s go back to the Visual Hollywood interview we cited:
“Front Sight is basically the most elaborate weapons training facility that I’ve ever seen,” says Wahlberg. “At one point, I had on 130 pounds of equipment, was carrying this huge sniper rifle and had to walk out on this little thin beam a couple of hundred feet in the air. A few years ago, these are things that I would have loved to have done, but now I’m a parent and have a lot more to live for!”
He adds: “The training definitely opened my eyes to the importance of being safe and smart as opposed to being reckless like I once was.”
So, Marky-Mark, which is it? Have you only violated federal law on movie sets or have you violated federal law on movie sets and at Front Sight in Nevada?
Again, back to Marky-Mark: “Well, I would love it if they could take all the guns away. …I’d like to see if we could take them all away. It would be a beautiful thing.”
Frankly, we’d be okay if they just took guns away from you, sir, before taking you away on charges of a felon in possession of a firearm.
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