The scourge of guns in America is no laughing matter.
Comedian Amy Schumer, still in tears over the mass shooting at a screening of her movie “Trainwreck,” joined forces with Sen. Chuck Schumer on Monday to push for gun control.
“I’ve thought about these victims each day since the tragedy,” she said at a news conference at the senator’s Manhattan office.
“People say, ‘Well, you’re never going to be able to stop crazy people from doing crazy things,’ but they’re wrong,” said Schumer, who is the senator’s second cousin. “There is a way to stop them.”
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The funnywoman said she is ignoring hate mail and death threats to speak out about guns in the wake of last month’s massacre in Lafayette, La., where movie theater gunman John Houser shot 11 people during a screening of the film before killing himself.
Amy Schumer’s crusade is part of her response to a call-to-action letter from Sarah Clements, whose mother survived the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Days after the theater shooting, Schumer tweeted about her sorrow.
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“My heart is broken and all my thoughts and prayers are with everyone in Louisiana,” Schumer posted at the time.
Along with bringing awareness to the heavily debated issue, Schumer is jumping on board her senator cousin’s gun-control bill.
Under the proposed legislation, background checks would require states to send information to federal authorities about individuals who are mentally ill, domestic abusers, felons and applicants with a history of violence.
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The law would urge the Department of Justice to come up with uniform national standards for selling guns and would push Congress to fully fund the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which is facing $159 million in cuts.
The Democratic senator said the country cannot “just sit back and allow mass shootings to become commonplace in the United States.”
“How many breaking news flashes will it take for Congress to act?” he asked. “How many tears? How many lives lost?”
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Officials said Houser, 59, legally bought the murder weapon in a Phenix City, Ala., pawnshop last year following an FBI background check that failed to reveal he had a history of psychiatric problems and had been the subject of domestic violence complaints. A Georgia judge ordered Houser detained for a mental evaluation in 2008 after relatives claimed he was dangerous. None of that information made it to the FBI.
“These shootings have got to stop,” Amy Schumer said. “I don’t know how else to say it.”
Her voice broke as she described the women he killed, Jillian Johnson, a 33-year-old artist and Mayci Breaux, a 21-year-old student.
“I was heartbroken when I heard about Columbine and Sandy Hook and Aurora and so many other names of places that are seared into our memories,” she said, “and I was heartbroken again when I heard about Lafayette. And I still am.”
Clements, whose mother, Abbey, survived the Sandy Hook shooting, reached out to Amy Schumer personally in an open letter.
“Amy Schumer, I and many other millennials look up to you so much,” Clements wrote.
“You are our generation’s epitome of what it means to be a strong, powerful, self-aware champion for the experiences and truths of being a woman and an American today, I know deep down that the tweet you sent after the shooting was not all that you’ve got. And we need your voice in this movement. We need your help.”
Known best for her humor revolving around women’s sexuality and gender inequality, Amy Schumer was asked by reporters Monday whether she thought Houser purposely picked her film because of his negative views about feminism and liberals.
“I got about a million emails from friends telling me, ‘It could have been any movie,’ and I’m trying to believe that. But I’m not sure,” she said. “I think the idea of women’s equality making anyone upset is not anything I’ll ever understand.”
She said that she’s always been in favor of smarter gun laws but that the shootings had made the issue “extremely personal.”
Schumer also said she expected backlash for speaking out about guns, but she didn’t care.
“I’ll handle it the way I’ve handled it the last 10 years,” she said. “I’ve had death threats and a lot of hate directed toward me. But I want to be proud of the way I’m living and what I stand for.”
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