Friday, 2 October 2015

Open letter to the next armed mass murderer

My dear fellow human being,

For various reasons and lack of, which I strongly believe are not entirely your fault, you came to a point where you want to take your life but also want to take some others' lives with you for the ride. 


That is all very well, but spare me a bit of your attention and I promise you you won't regret it. 


You have a lethal gun or more and easy access, also, to ammo. So going down to a random place such as a school, or a church, where people are most likely unarmed or have extreme difficulties to thwart your plans, namely by being unable to fight you off, is, and you'll agree, quite the coward act. Do you want your last action on Earth to be just that? A last cowardly and attention seeking goodbye? Besides, shootings in schools and similar pacific locations are so common place that you would be only one more unimaginative armed mass murderer.


Now, I'm your friend even though we might not ever meet, and I think you deserve better than that. 


Imagine the challenge of storming into a NRA championship and trying out your skills with people who could fight back?  You'd have others helping you with the firecrackers and fireworks for free! Wouldn't that be less lonely a farewell party? Remember, the better armed you are the more memorable you can make that occasion. And those who would march with you to the afterlife would be fellow gun wielders and most likely as paranoid as you. So much more to talk about for eternity...  


Instead, if you want to be sure you take some friends with you, then your venue of choice should be a NRA meeting. The seconds it will take for any participant to be able to fire back at you are enough to take down a few of them. And one last idea: don't the organizers on the meeting stand seem like sitting ducks or common head and torso targets? A chance to honey your skills and be remembered for that. 


As I said, I'm your friend and thus need to tell you the whole truth. My pitch above has the goal of changing some people's views on gun control after going through a strong emotional process, such as your farewell party would be. That's because logical arguments don't seem to be as effective. Put simply, emotion trumps logic all the time. And you'd be the one who left us but made a real change.


Yours truly,


Emo Trumps