Amy Schumer Speaks Out After Trainwreck Shooting

The normally hilarious Amy Schumer made an emotional and somber speech in response to the tragic shooting Lafayette, Louisiana on July 23. A gunman opened fire in a Lafayette theater during a screening of Schumer’s Trainwreck, killing two innocent movie patrons and wounding nine. The two women killed were Jillian Johnson, a store owner, artist and band member of the country sextet The Figs, and Mayci Breaux, a Louisiana State University-Eunice student who was attending the movie with her boyfriend of three years (who was also wounded).

Schumer responded to the tragedy immediately, tweeting on the 23rd: “My Heart is broken and all my thoughts and prayers are with everyone in Louisiana.” On August 1, Sarah Clements, daughter of a teacher who survived the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, wrote an open letter to Schumer, urging her to join the fight for gun control. Schumer response to the letter was short but confident, it even corrected an error Clements had made on one of the victim’s names; Schumer tweeted: “Her name was Mayci, not Marci and I think about her and Jillian everyday. Don’t worry I’m on it. You’ll see.”

Monday, two days after Clement’s open letter was posted, Schumer joined her relative Senator Chuck Schumer to make a statement on control and tighter gun laws. The senator is pushing to pass legislation that will penalize states that do not supply backcheck information on citizens and reward the states that do. Amy Schumer joined her first cousin, once removed, in support of the bill, and made her stance on the matter of gun access abundantly clear: “These shooting have got to stop, I don’t know how else to say it,” she said, “Maybe the worst part about all this is that there is a common sense way to stop mass shootings.”

Schumer spoke about the the women whose lives were lost gave her condolences to their families. She remarked that the killer “shouldn’t have been able to get his hands on a gun in the first place,” which was in reference to the fact that the man had a long history of mental illness and legal issues. In her statement, she refused to refer to the gunman by name, a tactic that should be adopted in order to prevent gunman from getting notoriety they crave.