Comedian and actress Amy Schumer joined her cousin, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, on Monday to make an emotional call for more intensive background checks and increased government funding for mental health care to combat mass shootings.
“Unless something is done and done soon, dangerous people will continue to get their hands on guns,” the Trainwreck star said, several days after a gunman—whose name she refused to say—killed two people and injured nine others when he opened fire during a screening of the romantic comedy.
“We need a background check system without holes and fatal flaws,” she said. “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.”
The Democratic senator for New York laid out proposals to incentivize states to share information on felons, domestic abusers and dangerously mentally ill, to increase funding for mental illness treatment, and to standardize involuntary commitment for the mentally ill across all 50 states.
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