Jim Carrey Apologizes to Assault Rifle Defenders: "I Do Not Agree," but "I Do Love U"

Actor maintains that his position on banning the weapon hasn't mellowed, but admits that's no reason to be mean

Jim Carrey hasn't softened his position on whether he thinks assault rifles should be banned, but he has realized that saying mean stuff hasn't helped his cause any.

"Asslt rifle fans,I do not agree wth u,nor do I fear u but I do love u and I'm sorry tht in my outrage I called you names.That was wrong," tweeted the actor, who recently lamented his role in the upcoming Kickass 2 due to the amount of violence onscreen.

"Btw," he added, in case folks were wondering what prompted him to extend the proverbial olive branch, "I don't need a crisis mgr, just a conscience. Calling ppl names is inappropriate but my position on assault weapons hasn't changed."

Carrey has been very outspoken (via his voice and the written word) in recent months regarding his stance on gun laws (he says they should be stricter) and in bashing the status quo that he thinks has became complacent in the face of gun violence.

"I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence," he wrote last month. "My apologies to others [involved] with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart."

In April, he called his critics on the gun front "bullies," writing in an op-ed for Huffington Post that tragedies such as the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., were "also an invitation for us to become more civilized and to deal with our addiction and entitlement to violence. Not to shut our eyes and ears and scream at those with a different opinion than ours to 'f--k off and go back to Canada.'"

The insinuation being, of course, that "f--k off and go back to Canada" was what the Canadian-born star's critics were saying back to him.

As for accusations that he was being hypocritical because he travels with an armed bodyguard, Carrey wrote in the op-ed, "No one in my employ is allowed to carry a large magazine and NO ONE IS ASKING ANYONE TO GIVE UP THEIR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, though it is in the vested interests of those who profit by gun sales to make it seem so."

Barely a month before that, Carrey had called gun-control opponents "heartless motherf--kers unwilling 2 bend 4 the safety of our kids" in a FunnyorDie video that didn't sound like a laughing matter to its star.