SYDNEY • Actor Matt Damon, who returns this month to the Jason Bourne franchise as the gun-toting spy in a new film, is a fan of what he says is "common sense" gun control.

However, sense, he stressed in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, is in scant supply.

"You guys did it here in one fell swoop," said Damon, referring to Australia's 1996 gun reform following a mass shooting there.

He added: "I wish that could happen in my country, but it's such a personal issue for people that we cannot talk about it sensibly. We just can't.

"I wish we could be sensible like that, but I don't think that's going to happen in my lifetime," said Damon, who was in Australia for the premiere of Jason Bourne, in his fourth turn as the former CIA assassin with a new conscience.

Damon, 45, who has expressed support for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, did not stop his bleak assessment of the future of gun-control legislation in the United States.

"I don't know what needs to happen," said Damon, who attended the premiere of Jason Bourne with co-star Alicia Vikander in Sydney on Sunday.

"Obviously, mass shootings aren't going to do it. There have been so many of them.

"Sandy Hook, when those children were murdered, if that didn't do it, you know, I just don't know.

"Maybe we just need to evolve further before we can have that conversation, I don't know." He was referring to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre of 2012 in Connecticut, in which 26 were killed.

The US Senate rejected new gun-control proposals last month, after the mass shooting in Orlando, leading celebrities such as Bette Midler, John Legend and Mia Farrow to vent their frustrations on social media.

WASHINGTON POST