TRIGGER WARNING: GRAPHIC VIOLENCE
The following is a revenge fantasy. It is not a call to action. It most definitely is not a blueprint for action. Due to unfortunate life circumstances, my brain does a lot of violent fantasizing and ideation (involving harm to both self and others). The Marjory Stoneman Douglas massacre brought it to the point where I had to void some it from my brain. And if someone does take this (crudely sketched) scenario as a call to action? I will feel very sorry indeed - for the perpetrator and his loved ones, not for the victims. Make of that what you like.
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They met online. Through bereavement support forums, facebook groups, and twitter. It took a long time – years – for them to find each other and coalesce into action, with more new candidates joining the pool every year. The vast majority of the people where they met were there for emotional support, to try to make sense of it all, to heal. They felt the need for something more.
Almost all of them had spent time down the political rabbit hole, dedicating their energies to advocating for change, to campaigning, raising funds, electing officials. None of it helped of course. Perhaps what they were doing wouldn’t either, but hey – at least it was something that hadn’t been tried yet.
Even after finding all his fellow travelers, it was a long slog of making sure every member of the team was committed enough, of sifting out those that were too moral, too good for such an act – a “use of fire” as Sun Tzu meant it, even if done practically in a way he never imagined – before he divulged the plan to even one of them. But Joe was used to being patient. His capacity for meticulous planning of death and destruction had been honed through long years of service to his country, which was now occupied by an enemy from within.
Eventually, though, he assembled his crew, which was built not just on commitment (each had lost an only child in a mass shooting, and was either widowed or divorced), but on pertinent skill. He had the fighters, and the healers, the hackers and the spies he needed, and after more long months everything was ready. They were ready.
At 11:01 AM, Tuesday morning, on the anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High shooting, the air conditioning vents at 11250 Waples Mill Road in Fairfax, VA began to emit a colorless, odorless gas. Within a minute every single person in the building was lying on the ground or slumped over a table, unconscious – including Ted Nugent, Oliver North, Karl Malone, Tom Selleck and the rest of the board of directors of the NRA, whose headquarters were now under attack.
At 11:02 the power in the building went out, and the attackers, wearing gas masks, drove straight up the walkway in several trucks, pouring out of the vehicles and into the building. They spread out through the complex silently, quickly tying the hands of the prone victims behind their backs before they all stormed up to the grand meeting room and likewise secured the hands of the heads of the organization, from the celebrities to the politicians all the way to the President, Peter Brownell, and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. About a quarter of the several dozen assailants went back down to boobytrap and guard the entrances, the archives and the computer servers – these last after backing up their contents and transmitting them elsewhere, using a portable power generator.
Another quarter went up to the roof, to secure it against a chopper landing. The remaining half went to work in the boardroom, installing cameras, opening a live feed, sizing up the passed-out occupants and setting up eyebolts in the wall around the room at neck height accordingly.
By 11:45 AM the work was done and the 80 or so board members of the NRA had been hauled up, still handcuffed behind their backs with zip strips, and secured by the neck to a bolt driven into the wall. A second bolt was driven in the wall for each captive, and a rope was secured to it, then looped under each bound board member's armpits, holding them up.
The assailants waited patiently for the drug gas to dissipate and for their victims to groggily regain awareness; at which point, upon registering the two dozen men ranged in front of them, in a concentric circle, each wearing a gas mask and holding an AR-15 assault rifle with a bump stock, the screaming began. The assailants allowed themselves a few moments to savor the terror, staring at their prey through the insect-like eye holes of their masks, making no response to the questions, pleas and imprecations hurled at them in panicked voices. Then Joe raised his weapon and fired a burst into the ceiling. As soon as the last round’s echo faded, he bellowed: “Silence.” And the noise died down to keening and whimpers. The live feed was turned on, its address tweeted out and posted on Facebook, and after registering a million viewers, the show began.
“Dear board members of the NRA,” Joe began. In a few short moments, you are about to receive an up-close and personal demonstration of the error of your ways. Do you have anything to say?”
The pandemonium resumed, and another burst was required to silence the sniveling merchants of death. “Not if you’re gonna make a ruckus. Wayne, you were saying? You’re on live camera, by the way.”
LaPierre, all his customary, smarmy confidence lost, spluttered and struggled in vain against his binds, causing him to choke, before he managed to splurt out that “You won’t get away with this.” Joe looked at the portable gas detector, saw that the air was safe to breathe, and took his mask off. His team did the same, and more than one board member wet their pants, filling the air with the acrid smell of ammonia on top that of fear, as they saw their captors looking at them, not a shred of pity or sympathy in their eyes.
“We don’t expect to, Wayne ole buddy. We’re going to do what we came here to do, and then we’re going to surrender peacefully. Unlike you, we take responsibility for our crimes.” This was followed by more shouting, protestations of innocence, invocations of the law, and execrations of their commie, leftie, liberal, lily-livered hearts. The assailants grinned, and then Joe spoke again:
“Unlike many of the victims of your crimes, you are not about to die. That would be too easy. Like many others of your victims, your lives as you knew them are over. You will be kept alive so that you may suffer for a long time from the consequence of your actions, and that suffering will be brought to you courtesy of the weapons you insisted we should have practically unfettered access to.”
The inner ring of assailants stepped back, and aimed their guns at a 45-degree angle downwards, took the safeties off their weapons, and switched to automatic. As the weapons clicked and clacked, each of the black-clad men and women stated the name of the mass shooting in which they had lost their only daughter or son, whose photo with name caption they held up for the cameras:
MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL
RANCHO TEHAMA RESERVE
HARVEST MUSIC FESTIVAL, LAS VEGAS
PULSE NIGHTCLUB
MARYSVILLE PILCHUCK HIGH SCHOOL
SANTA MONICA
SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
AURORA MOVIE THEATER
OIKOS UNIVERSITY
NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY
VIRGINIA TECH
WEST NICKEL MINES SCHOOL
RED LAKE
APPALACHIAN SCHOOL OF LAW
COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL
As the last name was sounded, they began to mow down their captives’ legs just above the knee. The screams rose just above the deafening roar of the volley, which seemed to go on forever, as they kept reloading clip after clip and kept firing, until all the 160 legs were either completely severed, or hanging by thin strips of tendon.
Then it stopped, and Joe picked up an axe and went around the room, severing any still-attached limbs, careful not to slip in the copious blood that pooled and streamed towards the center of the room. After him walked Adam, cauterizing the wounds with a blowtorch, followed by Mike who was wielding a fire extinguisher. Matt the medic followed mike around the room, administering shots to help the blood clot quicker.
As the board members lay on the ground in shock, gasping from their near-asphyxiation experiences, involuntary high-pitched squeals coming from their mouths, their stumps twitching, Joe addressed them again. “As I said, having seen and felt the tremendous destructive power of your merchandise turned on you, you will be allowed to live. And suffer. And be a burden to your loved ones. And find out whether or not you actually have loved ones who love you back. And mostly, to serve as a lesson. Have a crappy rest of your life.”
Joe turned around and led his troops down to the ground floor, made sure all three units were there and that the NRA’s data had been safely transmitted to offshore servers. Then he had the bomb experts diffuse the bombs at the entrances. Joe notified the police (who were warned about the booby traps, and told that they could come and arrest the crew once it was over, and that any attempt to enter a second earlier would result in stupid, unnecessary bloodshed,) that it would be safe to enter in 2 minutes. They split into pairs, laid their weapons in a pile and cuffed each other in front of their bodies, and sat down to await arrest.