Comedian Amy Schumer is teaming up with her relative, Sen. Charles Schumer, to push for tougher gun control laws after a gunman killed two women and injured nine others at a movie theater showing Amy Schumer's film "Trainwreck." NY1's Grace Rauh filed the following report.
Amy Schumer's phone rang recently. Her cousin was on the line.
"I said, 'Hi Amy, this is cousin Chuck,'" said Sen. Charles Schumer. "She said, 'I hope you are going to ask me to do something with you on gun control.'"
Cousin Chuck, of course, is New York Sen. Charles Schumer. He was calling Amy Schumer, a comedian known for her raunchy humor, to see if she would partner with him to push for tighter gun laws.
Amy was compelled to act after a gunman killed two women at a showing of her movie "Trainwreck" last month in Louisiana.
"These shootings have got to stop," said Amy Schumer. "I don't know how else to say it."
She teared up when talking about the victims and spoke of a connection she felt in particular with one of the women.
"I think we would have been friends," said Amy Schumer.
The Schumers said they want to make sure guns don't land in the hands of violent criminals, domestic abusers and the mentally ill.
Sen. Schumer is trying to establish financial incentives to encourage states to cooperate with the gun background check system. They are pressing Congress to fund mental health and substance abuse programs.
The senator appears hopeful that support from his famous relation will prove influential.
"She's such a voice with so many followers, so many people who care about what she does," Charles Schumer said.
Amy Schumer has more than 1.5 million followers on Twitter. Sen. Schumer, one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, has a fraction of that: 111,000.
The senator and the comedian call each other cousins, but they are actually second cousins once removed. Amy's great-grandfather and the senator's grandfather were brothers.
"I am so proud to be related to the senator," said Amy Schumer. "No one ever believed me that I was related to him."
The senator seems to realize his younger relative has eclipsed him, in a sense. He said that when his nephew started college last fall, his roommates wanted to know if he was related to Amy. Apparently they had not heard about his uncle, the senator.