FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA — As he came out of the corporate headquarters of the National Rifle Association, Tim Timberlake was stopped and asked some questions about the tragic mass shooting in Parkland, Florida yesterday. Timberlake a member of the NRA’s executive team, and in an unforeseen turn, agreed to be extremely candid about guns in America, mass shootings, and the people they impact. In yesterday’s school shooting, a young man and formerly expelled student entered campus and opened fire. By the time the shooting spree had ended, 17 people were dead and many more were injured.
“Oh yeah, I heard about that shooting, sure,” Timberlake told reporters. “It, um, happened, I guess. Whatever.”
Timberlake said that in his estimation, and that of the NRA, mass shootings represent such a “tiny number” of American deaths, they “aren’t worth paying all that much attention to.”
“Think about it, everyone. People die in this country from the flu, from drowning in pools, and even from cancer,” Timberlake said. “I don’t see us all trying to ban concealed carry cancer in this country. Why is that? Also, SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. Let me just get that out there, even louder this time. SHALL! NOT! BE! INFRINGED!”
Mr. Timberlake was asked if he or his fellow NRA board members felt any remorse, or felt like their marketing and lobbying strategy might be exacerbating, at the very least, a public health crisis. Timberlake scoffed, and open handed smacked the reporter who asked that question.
“Keep that commie, anti-gun talk out of your mouth, sir,” Timberlake said. “And no, I don’t feel any remorse. None. Zip. I don’t give a fuck about your dead kids, or his dead kids, or her dead kids, or any dead kids in America. Are your dead kids going to pay out my annual bonus? No? Then why the shit should I care?”
Reporters tried again to loosen even a modicum of remorse or regret from Timberlake’s commentary, but to no avail.
“Look, let’s just be brutally honest here, shall we? The original intent of the Second Amendment was to placate anti-federalist factions in the Constitutional Convention in their fears of an expensive, standing army,” Timberlake said. “But over the last several decades, we’ve managed to completely re-write history for just enough Americans that they genuinely think they have a constitutional right to a gun to initiate a bloody revolution whenever they lose an election. We have sedition and treason laws in our constitution, but these people genuinely think the Constitution gives them the green light to murder Americans in the name of liberty.”
Timberlake paused for a moment, then continued.
“So we’ve already created this environment where a certain segment of the population will knee-jerk react to a shooting and reflexively defend the murder weapons from persecution, as if as adults we can’t come together and compromise on what kinds of guns we want to be able to be newly acquired,” Timberlake said. “This in turn leads to a gun culture that is paranoid at every turn is an ATF agent coming to take their gun, so they buy more guns to protect the guns they probably bought to protect other guns they bought to protect their original guns, where were given to them by their pappy who had them to protect his guns he got from his pappy.”
Timberlake again took a moment to gather his breath.
“Now we have the market cornered, and the market is ravenous for our product,” Timberlake said. “They buy more, it makes us more money, which in turn lets us buy off more politicians, allowing us to further saturate the market with even more guns that no one really needs. When their sales skyrocket, by bottom line is much better. All of this means one simple thing — I have no motivation to care about your kids. I have no reason to give a fuck about your dead children, America.”
A shocked and stunned group of reporters didn’t seem to know how to respond to Timberlake’s frank candor.
“What? Why hide it? Literally millions of people are now programmed to not care about dead kids,” Timberlake said. “Unless we really go for broke and invoke abortion. Nothing will make a gun lover defend his gun like bringing up abortion, no doubt.”
You can read satire like this every day on The Pastiche Post and The Political Garbage Chute.
