Back in late July, a little over a month after the Charleston church shooting that killed nine African Americans, one month before the Roanoke shooting that took the lives of two news station employees live on air, and a few months before the recent Umpqua Community College shooting that claimed the lives of nine people, a misogynistic gunman opened fire at a screening of the movie Trainwreck in a Lafayette, Louisiana, movie theater, leaving two dead and nine wounded.
In the wake of the shooting, Trainwreck star Amy Schumer joined her cousin, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, and made an emotional plea for stricter gun control regulations.
“Unless something is done and done soon, dangerous people will continue to get their hands on guns,” Schumer said. “We need a background check system without holes and fatal flaws. We need one with accurate information that protects us like a firewall. The critics scoff and say, ‘Well, there’s no way to stop crazy people from doing crazy things,’ but they’re wrong. There is a way to stop them. Preventing dangerous people from getting guns is very possible. We have common-sense solutions. We can toughen background checks and stop the sale of firearms to folks who have a violent history or history of mental illness.”
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She later blamed “money”—i.e. the gun lobby—for the persistent lack of gun control in America in follow-up statements made at Italy’s Locarno Film Festival.
As the host of the second episode of this season’s Saturday Night Live, Schumer poked fun at America’s national obsession with guns, featuring in a mock ad (think Zales commercial) of regular Americans experiencing pivotal moments in their lives, from receiving gifts to childbirth to first love.
“Whatever you’re waiting for, whatever you face, whatever you’re looking for, there are things we all share: love, family, connection, a sense of purpose, and also… guns,” a narrator announces.
Yes, in the ad—titled “Guns: We’re Here to Stay”—guns play a role in each of the characters’ lives. Schumer is gifted a gun as an anniversary present by Taran Killam; Bobby Moynihan and Schumer’s Trainwreck co-star Vanessa Bayer visit the hospital to have their child with a rifle in tow; Kate McKinnon fires shots in the air from her revolver while taking a leisurely jog through the park; the list goes on.
You can watch it here:
