LAKE LE’TARGET, MINNESOTA — As 41 year old Carol Scoffley hugged her 13 year old daughter before school today, she had just one thought on her mind.
“Gosh, I really hope Crystal dies a hero today,” Carol told us via Skype. “I used to hope she just had a good day and learned something new; now I hope she is put in the position of sacrificing her young life to the altar of the Second Amendment.”
Scoffley has lived in her medium-sized Minnesota town for most her life. She went away to college at the University of Miami of Toledo of St. Paul of Japan of Neptune to study architecture and design, but came back to her hometown to start her own firm after she graduated. Carol considers herself to be a “pretty middle of the road” person, politically. Growing up near a rural, farming area, she was exposed to plenty of guns growing up, but Scoffley says she’s always “understood how important it is to be smart about who should get a gun.”
“I’m all for the right to defend yourself, even from a cop unlawfully trying to end your life,” Crystal told us. “But I’m also very much in favor or trying our best to keep guns away from psychos, terrorists, and domestic abusers of any gender.”
Recently, Carol has noticed a trend in school shootings.
“It seems like the last few we’ve read about, one or more of the students themselves end up trying to rush the gunman,” Carol said. “Sure, I’d much rather my kid be learning about algebra and stuff, but since our legislators don’t seem to give a shit if my kid dies, why should I?”
Some on the right have even started to hail this new trend as “The Hero Solution,” as evidenced in this op-ed piece from noted conservative thinker, David French of The National Review.
As three straight mass shooters have confronted immediate, fierce resistance, has a Flight 93-style change happened? As policy-makers struggle to grapple with a problem beyond their control, citizens deprive shooters of the carnage and fame they crave: https://t.co/YeaehcKWxe
— David French (@DavidAFrench) May 9, 2019
Ms. Scoffley says she “totally gets how important it is” for children to die in America. The Constitution “doesn’t specifically promise parents a right to their kids not dying in a hail of bullets,” she says.
“The Constitution does promise everyone, no matter how stupid, dangerous, or unfit, to own as many guns as they want,” Carol said. “If I have to trade my kid’s life so every freedom loving, God fearing, red meat eating patriot can own one more semiautomatic weapon he’ll never get to actually use in the Civil War he’s been desperately praying for, I guess that’s just the price we pay for living in a free and open society.”
If her daughter has to die, Carol says, she just hopes Crystal “doesn’t go out like a cuck.”
“Every mother looks at their newborn baby and thinks to themselves how great it would be if in just over a decade they’re dead in a pool of their own blood on the cafeteria floor,” Carol says. “At least that’s what I’ve taken to understand from years of watching our government do absolutely nothing to mitigate the wholesale slaughter of our kids at the hands of their peers.”
Carol says the other night she had “this crazy dream” that seemed to indicate there might be a different way of looking at school shootings.
“In the dream, Congress took up super common sense things like background checks on every gun, buybacks of guns that people just don’t need, and reasonable restrictions on the types of firearms available on the open market,” Carol told us. “But when I woke up, my neighbor the libertarian NRA member, was standing over me shouting, ‘SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED’ at the top of his lungs and I forgot all about the dream until just now.”
The bottom line for Carol is quite simple.
“Of course I’d be better if she didn’t die, but if my kid’s gotta go out, I just hope she does it in a blaze of glory,” Carol told us. “I’ve seen enough westerns to know that’s just as good as, you know, living a full life and stuff.”
Reached for comment, NRA Spokesterrorist Dana Loesch said she couldn’t hear our questions over the sound of classroom gunfire and higher profit margins.
Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook and Instagram, but not Twitter because he has a potty mouth.
