While Amy Schumer realizes some people don’t like it when celebrities get involved in politics, after she met the families of the two women shot and killed at a screening of her movie Trainwreck, she decided to use her platform to advocate for gun safety.
The April 28th episode of Inside Amy Schumer starts with a sketch poking fun at how easy it is to obtain a gun in America. Later in the show, Schumer takes a more serious tone to address the very important issue of gun violence and safety.
The sketch depicts two shopping network hosts who are willing to sell guns to just about anyone. One caller says he has been convicted of several violent felonies, but Schumer reassures him that he can still get a gun, “as long as you buy on the internet or at a gun show.” Her cohost explains, “If you go to a gun show, you can get an unlicensed seller to sell you a gun—no questions asked.”
Suddenly, the hosts are notified of a mass shooting, and they announce to viewers: “This means the government might come for your guns soon. They never have, but they always might.” This speaks to the trend of gun sales spiking after mass shootings—such as the December 2015 shooting in San Bernardino—in fear of the federal government making it increasingly difficult to obtain guns.
The hosts are clearly uneducated about gun safety, waving and tossing the weapon around carelessly, and Schumer’s cohost ends up shooting himself. “It was his foot’s time,” Schumer’s character says, rather than actually addressing the issue of gun safety.
Though humorous, the sketch portrays the attitude toward guns and gun safety in America. Later in the show, Schumer interviews Brina Milikowsky, chief strategy officer of Everytown for Gun Safety, the nation’s largest organization for gun violence prevention. The organization is often incorrectly perceived as attempting to take everyone’s guns away, but Milikowsky explains that she meets with members of the NRA regularly to find some common ground.
She is not concerned with taking guns away, but, like Schumer, she wants to promote gun safety. Though news of mass shootings at public places like schools and movie theaters is widely circulated, the most common type of shooting is domestic violence related. Everytown reports that American women are 11 times more likely to be murdered with guns than women in other developed countries.
While most of us may not have experienced it personally, Schumer and Milikowsky remind us that gun violence is a widespread problem in America, and we shouldn’t wait until it happens in our city or to someone we know before we work toward preventing it.