Schumer rips Senate

Amy Schumer rips Senate 'cowardice' on gun votes

By Nick Gass

The Senate's partisan squabbling and failure to agree upon four separate gun-related amendments after the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history last week in Orlando is no joke to comedian Amy Schumer.

"I am sickened by the cowardice of these people who are supposed to lead us," Schumer told POLITICO. "Their dedication seems to be only to dollar signs for their own pockets. In November, we will remember who stood with the gun lobby, rather than their constituents, as we mourned for Orlando."

Schumer joined the fight for stricter gun laws last summer after a man opened fire in a Louisiana theater showing her movie Trainwreck, teaming up with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — who happens to be her second cousin — to call for measures like universal background checks.

"After the shooting at a screening of Trainwreck last July, the deaths of Mayci Breaux and Jillian Johnson made gun violence in America a deeply personal issue for Amy," the show's executive producer Dan Powell told POLITICO. "She pledged to add her voice to those advocating for safer gun laws. The show had already set a precedent in our first few seasons of covering political and social issues of importance to Amy, so it was a natural fit."

Earlier this year, an episode of her Comedy Central show "Inside Amy Schumer" skewered the gun lobby while calling for reform. But the episode aired April 28 and aptly titled "Welcome to the Gun Show," did not include one segment that the comedian's publicist told POLITICO was cut for time but is particularly relevant a week after 49 people were killed at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub and in the days after partisan divisions scuttled efforts to reform background checks and ensure suspected terrorists are not able to buy guns.

The edgy two-minute, 38-second sketch, titled "Gun Lawyer" and exclusively shared with POLITICO, parodies the usual lawyer TV commercials but takes an early grim turn.

"Have you been injured in a mass shooting or other gun crime? Do you want justice?" the lawyer played by comedian Jon Benjamin says. "Hi, I’m Toby Shrak of the law firm of Shrak & Murphy, but don’t call me, because there’s nothing I can do. For over 20 years, my brother and I fought for our clients, victims of car accidents, medical malpractice, workplace harassment, lead poisoning, asbestos harassment."

"Since my brother caught a stray bullet at a mall shooting, I found out it’s not even worth it to try to sue gun or ammo manufacturers because the law gives them almost complete immunity from liability," the character playing the lawyer said, before the faux commercial features testimonials from clients.

“A coworker we laid off opened fire at my office with a semiautomatic weapon that the gun manufacturer had made incredibly easy to convert to a fully automatic machine gun. I am disabled for life, so I called Shrak and Murphy, and they told me I was s—t out of luck," a woman says.

Another man says, “I tried to sue the manufacturers of a hollow-tip bullet that was designed to inflict as much pain as possible, but current law makes it impossible to sue for damages. I even had to pay the ammo company’s legal costs.”

"They don’t call me 'Wow, Thanks for Nothing Shrak' for nothing," the lawyer says, before cutting to a person who says that he "was doing a school shooting when I slipped on the wet floor near the cafeteria. I sued the school district, and I won $500,000.”

The video then becomes grainier and faded as a man bearing a striking resemblance to Shrak appears on-screen to talk about how he was shot at a mall by a "recently hospitalized man" who had purchased his weapon at a gun show.

"My brother tried to sue the gun dealer for selling him the gun before the background check came back. But the law George W. Bush signed made that impossible, so he can’t avenge my death," the man says, as he removes his toupee to reveal that he is still Shrak, "Or should I say, ‘I can avenge his death.”

“That’s right. It’s me, Toby Shrak, the one who’s still here and haunted by his uselessness. If you’ve been the victim of nearly any tragedy, you can call me and I’ll get the money you deserve, unless you’ve been the victim of a gun tragedy, in which case you can call me just to talk," Shrak says, as the spot cuts to a logo of the fake law firm. "I am here, and my brother’s chair is always empty, because he’s dead. And I am getting old. I’m a lawyer, and I have an office and a phone. Hablamos ingles.”

Kevin Kane, the show's supervising producer, called the segment "absurd" but "100% true."

"Jon Benjamin's character has this morbid reluctance," Kane told POLITICO. "There is nothing he can do. That's the narrative we have all been lulled to sleep by and it's the narrative, after Monday's vote, that no one is buying anymore."