As everyone is certainly aware, a gunman opened fire in a screening of Amy Schumer and Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck in Lafayette, Louisiana last month, a shooting that ended with nine people injured and three—including the shooter, who killed himself—dead. This past weekend, a woman named Sarah Clements, whose mother survived the shooting at Sandy Hook, wrote an open letter to Schumer asking her to become a vocal advocate for gun control. The letter highlights that women in the United States are “11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than women in other high-income countries,” and that “from 2001 through 2012, 6,410 women were murdered in the United States by an intimate partner using a gun”—which Clements points out is “more than the total number of U.S. troops killed in action during the entirety of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.” It then goes on to say that Schumer should use the influence she has to “be a voice for our generation and for women.” In short, Clements wants Schumer to “demand change.”
It’s definitely powerful stuff, and Schumer responded to the post on Twitter by saying that she thinks about Jillian Johnson and Mayci Breaux—the victims of the Lafayette shooting—“everyday.” As for demanding change, Schumer added, “Don’t worry I’m on it. You’ll see.”
Now, only a couple of days later, Schumer has revealed what she meant by that. As reported by Variety, she has teamed up with New York Senator Charles Schumer (her cousin) to push for new anti-gun violence legislation, with the comedian noting, “These shootings have got to stop. I don’t know how else to say it.” The legislation reportedly involves a “three-part plan” that “would reward states that submit comprehensive records into background check systems with funding and penalize the ones that do not.”
The intention there is clearly to make it more difficult (or, perish the thought, impossible) for people who shouldn’t have guns to get them. Schumer underlined this point during a press conference, saying, “We always find out how the shooter got their gun and it’s always something that never should have happened in the first place.” She also added, “These are my first public comments on the issue of gun violence, but I promise you they will not be my last.”
We probably won’t have to wait long for her to comment on this again, because Schumer will be on The Daily Show tonight and it seems safe to assume that this subject is going to come up.