The Weekly Screed (#770)

The NRA’s worst nightmare
by David Benjamin

“The Bible says that homosexuals should be put to death… Obviously, it’s not right for somebody to just, you know, shoot up the place…  these people all should have been killed, anyway, but they should have been killed through the proper channels…”
— Pastor Steven Anderson, Faithful Word Baptist Church, 14 June

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 1, 2016 — The mass slaughter that took place yesterday at the nation’s largest pet shop appears to have decisively shifted the long-stalemated gun control debate in the United States.

On a peaceful, festive Halloween afternoon in Manhattan, a heavily armed gunman — later identified as Akhmed B. “Benny” Bemish of Hauser Street, Queens — burst into the vast, multi-floor Pet World emporium on 2nd Avenue, and opened fire. Horrifically, the madman seemed determined to target puppies and kittens. He bypassed, for example, the cockatoos and parrots who began screaming and uttering strings of obscenities, and such larger, less cuddly targets as boa constrictors and ostriches.

This atrocity took the lives of 63 adorable puppies and mewing kittens before NYPD Tactical Police were able to storm Pet World and blow Bemish to Kingdom Come. Since then, the backlash has been overwhelming. Some of the Second Amendment’s most stalwart defenders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are admittedly reconsidering their position on personal ownership of combat weapons like the .50-caliber Beowulf assault rifle now made infamous by the Bemish rampage.

“Sen. McConnell,” said a spokesman, “is heartsick. As you know, he’s a great dog-lover who often hunts with his coonhounds, Old Blue and Bingo, in the Kentucky woods. He believes deeply in everyone’s right to charge into the natural world and shoot almost anything that moves. But in light of this outrage committed by a twisted freak against the very essence of innocence, the Senator has decided that thoughts and prayers are a piss-poor response.”

The scene at Pet World, according to witnesses, was nauseating. One employee described an infant Dalmatian ripped to shreds, and peke-a-poo pups riddled beyond recognition. “If you’ve never seen a little-bitty baby Bichon Frisé lying in a pool of gore, with no head — just a sticky ball of bloodsoaked fur — you have no concept of true horror. I’ll never be able to sleep again,” she said.

A policeman at the scene, later identified as Sgt. Waldo Hoople, burst from the store white-faced and weeping. Fellow police were unable to stop him from leaping into his cruiser. He sped away, lights flashing, siren screaming. Asked where he had gone, a patrolman said, “Where’d he go? Home, of course. He had to hug his rottweiler.”

Indeed, dog and cat lovers everywhere are holding their pets just a little closer in the aftermath of this unspeakable act of anti-animal animus. Commentators are comparing it to the 9/11 attacks and Hitler’s Final Solution. “Only worse,” said a tourist in Times Square, visiting from Wichita. “These little snuggle-pusses had no idea what was going on,” she said. “But the Jews saw Nazis all over the place. They had to figure their number was up.”

Within hours of the tragedy, which also claimed the lives of three Pet World employees, a bipartisan Congressional coalition had drafted bills to tighten background checks. Their proposals could also end the so-called gun-show loophole, massively increase the budget for mental health intervention, and ban blind people with seeing-eye dogs from carrying firearms.

The Pet World holocaust, during which furious police pumped more than 400 rounds into the lifeless body of Akhmed Bemish, drew no immediate comment from the NRA. But late today, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre warned against overreaction and leveled his fire at Bemish’s furry victims.

“Until we gain some control over the pets that infest and threaten our very way of life, incidents like this are inevitable,” said LaPierre. “These unhealthy creatures crap on our sidewalks and pee on our shoes. They bark all night, they shed all over the furniture, they track mud into the kitchen and they fill our lungs with cat dander. Hey, and don’t even get me started on fleas!”

Despite the NRA’s pleas for sanity, the entire nation is searching its conscience. Both ordinary people and experts on the psychology of extremist violence wonder how society could have sunk so low that it could cheapen the life of, for example, a four-week-old Pet World cocker spaniel named Poodgy, who sat helpless in a wire cage while a lunatic with a machine-gun ran amok. Poodgy perished in a hail of gunfire.

“Americans are among the most resilient folks on earth,” said Dr. Garrett Huxley, Chief Shrink at the world-renowned Bismarck Institute of Bad Behavior Studies. “We have an incredibly high tolerance for senseless violence.”

Huxley explained, “We can deal emotionally, say, with Elliot Rodger blasting four or five stuck-up sorority girls in Santa Barbara. In a way, we understand, because everyone’s been rejected by a member of the opposite sex. Likewise, we understand Jared Loughner going after Gabby Giffords because, really, who doesn’t despise politicians, especially Democrats? Likewise, we can easily see why a racist kid like Dylann Roof would shoot up a church full of black people, or why Omar Mateen would need to purge his latent homosexuality by gunning a bloody path through a gay nightclub. We can even feel a pang of sympathy for Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer. Sure, we all like kids, but have you ever seen one throw a tantrum at the shopping mall? You wanna strangle the rotten little moznik.”

But Dr. Huxley added that, even in America, where guns are the foremost icon of our historic victory over the redcoats, the Indians and the Clanton gang, there must be a limit. “Guns everywhere, for everyone, yes. Concealed and open carry, why not? Guns in schools, guns in bars, guns in crowded theaters, guns at Trump rallies, guns in the Mormon Tabernacle, assault weapons in nursery schools, okay, fine. But , but — ”

Here, the previously cool, collected psychologist welled with tears.

“But puppies? And kittens?! My God! The humanity!”