Comedian Amy Schumer appeared with her second cousin — Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer — at a press conference in the senator’s New York office on Monday to promote new legislation on gun control.
Her participation was prompted by a July 23 shooting in a Louisiana movie theater where gunman John Russell Houser killed two women and injured nine others then killed himself during the screening of “Trainwreck”, a movie starring Schumer.
The film features strong sexual content, nudity, language and drug use. Schumer plays a promiscuous magazine writer who considers monogamy.
Sen. Schumer’s bill – which has not yet been passed - contains provisions that would make it harder for convicted criminals to obtain guns legally, prevent those people whom the government determines are mentally unfit to own guns to own them legally and provide more federal control of states in making decisions on who can own a gun.
The senator's legislation would create monetary rewards for states that submit records into the federal background check system and penalize states that do not.
At the press conference, Amy Schumer spoke tearfully of the two women shot to death during a screening of her movie, and asked lawmakers to support Schumer’s bill.
Houser bought the murder gun in Alabama last year following a 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.
While making the connection between guns and random, insane murders, neither of the Schumers commented on the widely documented causal connection between prescribed psychiatric drugs and murder by its users.