August 3, 2015

Amy Schumer Announces Plan To Tackle Gun Control


Amy Schumer just joined the gun control fight.

During a press conference on Monday, the comedian, along with her cousin New York Senator Chuck Schumer, unveiled a new initiative to tackle gun violence. Last month, 59-year-old John Russell Houser allegedly opened fire inside a Louisiana movie theater during a screening of Schumer’s latest film “Trainwreck.” He killed three people, including two women, before killing himself.

“Unless something is done and done soon, dangerous people will continue to get their hands on guns,” Schumer told reporters. “We need a background check system without holes and fatal flaws.”

The three-part legislative plan will seek to limit gun access to the mentally ill and violent criminals by rewarding states that provide thorough background check information while penalizing states that fail to do so. The two also called on Congress to fund greater mental health and substance abuse programs.

Over the weekend, Schumer responded to an open letter from a daughter of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting survivor that urged her to speak out and support gun control legislation. The letter, posted on Medium, asked Schumer to be a “voice for our generation and for women—two groups who make up most of the victims of the gun violence in our country.”

“These are my first public comments on the issue of gun violence,” Schumer said on Monday. “But I promise you they will not be my last.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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