Not bad to have the summer’s most unlikely and likeable leading man and cash cow in Hollywood advocating for gun ownership for both self defense, specifically for women, and hunting. And, he’s not afraid to talk about it, citing a 30-40 gun arsenal in an interview with Esquire and seemingly freaking out the author of the piece a bit. But here’s the power of Pratt, who for my money, is one of the most underdoggy, everymanny crazy likeable figures to come out of Hollywood in years. He didn’t freak her out much. Her piece reads like he totally had her convinced in the interview, but when she got back to writing, she felt obligated to throw in some digs.

“Pratt talks about his thirty- or forty-gun arsenal. He bought Faris [actress Anna Faris, Pratt’s wife] a gun in the event that crazy person comes to their house while he’s in Louisiana and necessitates her ‘blowing their f—— brains out.’ He tells me to print that, just in case Anna Faris’ and Esquire’s fan demographics overlap.

It’s not all so primal — Pratt believes in firearm regulation, background checks, and preventing guns from falling into the hands of the mentally ill. He explains population control and hunting licenses and tags and the virtues of eating what you kill. It all makes sense, but it also feels kind of like when Dexter explains that he’s a good serial killer because his victims are rapists and murderers. Really, this guy just likes to kill s–t.”

“It all makes sense,” she conceded before going home and comforting herself with her talking points and her assurances that Pratt’s probably just another psycho, all evidence to the contrary after a really nice conversation with him. It all makes sense because there are a lot of rational arguments for guns for self-defense and animal population control and the “virtues of eating what you kill” that people who are viscerally against guns hardly ever stop to consider. Pratt got her to stop, and it made sense, for a second. Here’s hoping he gets others to think about it, too. Glad to have him and his wife Faris join the trend of surprising pop-culture figures with gun views that match up with the majority of the country more than with Hollywood.

Another note on Pratt’s likeability: The other night a friend of mine mentioned rumors of a “Knight Rider” reboot, at which I immediately frowned, until she said, “starring Chris Pratt,” and my frown turned upside down. I’m not even a fan, per se, but him in the role of Michael Knight suddenly changed my mind almost entirely about this tired reboot idea.

Hat tip to Western Journalism, which has video of Pratt on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” talking about the gun-slinging filming of “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which I haven’t even seen yet. Some Chris Pratt fan I am.

The rest of the Esquire interview is here.