On the latest episode of her satirical Comedy Central show Thursday, comedian Amy Schumer took aim at the country’s glaring gun loopholesand called out members of Congress who receive money from the firearms lobby.
Schumer appears as the host of a home shopping gun show and pitches handguns for $39.95. She told an ex-felon and a suspected terrorist that they are eligible to purchase a gun — in reference to existing gun laws that gives them access to guns.
“Here is what’s great about this,” she said. “Almost anyone can purchase this.”
“No one can tell you that you don’t have a right to buy a gun in this country you’re trying to destroy,” Schumer told the suspected terrorist.
A call-in number — (888) 885-4011 —featured on the screen, goes straight to the hotline of the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. It ultimately connects callers to their local representatives in Congress.
The congressional members the sketch singled out include House Speaker Paul Ryan, Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
This is not the first time Schumer has spoken out in favor of gun control laws. She has been advocating for stricter gun control laws, following a deadly shooting at a screening of her film “Trainwreck” in Louisiana last year, when a shooter killed two people and injured nine others before he turned the gun on himself.
Days after the shooting, she appeared with New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, her cousin, at a press conference to promote a new gun control legislation. The measure seeks to prohibit people with violent criminal history and mental illness from having access to guns by providing financial incentives for states that submit data to the federal government for more fully rounded checks while penalizing states that don’t.
In her debut on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” in October, the comedian also took aim at the gun debate with a fake ad parodying people’s obsession with owning and using guns.
Khorri Atkinson