As the Republican congressional candidate from Kansas, I am truly devastated and shocked by this most recent mass shooting, which happened right here in my home state of Kansas. It’s a tragedy – a heinous act committed by a lone psychopath which clearly raises issues about mental health in our society. However, we must remember: there’s just no way this tragedy could have been prevented, even though the exact assault rifle used in this killing was raffled away as a marketing stunt by my campaign.
That’s right, you heard that correctly. I, Tyler Tannahill, a potential lawmaker, gave away an AR-15 to a stranger on Twitter in the wake of a school shooting in order to gain publicity and garner right-wing favor in my bid to represent my state in Washington. And then the winner of the drawing sold the gun at a gun show, where the most recent mass shooter purchased it and then used it in his horrific slaughter of innocents.
“Tyler,” a lot of people have said to me, “why in the world did you give away a gun in a state where there are no laws regulating person-to-person gun sales?” To which I respond with this: Did you see how much my polling numbers went up after our AR-Sweepstakes? A fucking shit-ton! I got 75,000 retweets! And the NRA wrote me a check for an amount of money I’d rather not say while the victims of this most recent mass shooting are still being identified. This shit was marketing fucking genius!
That said, I would like to offer the families of the victims my sincerest thoughts and prayers. I wish there were something we could have done to prevent this. I think it’s time to have a serious discussion about mental health, and perhaps maybe even start enforcing our mild background check laws in Kansas. But honestly, if this madman wanted to shoot up people with an AR-15, he could have purchased any AR-15 from anyone he wanted and we’d have never known. It’s just a coincidence that the one he used has the exact specifications and serial number as the one I gifted on the internet as a cheap ploy for votes in my congressional campaign.
I think we should just accept that, in America, these dozens of dead innocent men, women and children are just the price we pay for blindly adhering to the Second Amendment, words written hundreds of years ago which, sadly, can never be amended. Of course I wish there was something that could have been done to keep this most recent mass-fatality gun massacre from happening. But there wasn’t. Because I needed to do something to get my name out there, and when that intern suggested giving away the exact gun used in the Florida school shooting a mere five days afterward, I wasn’t going to NOT do that.
Thanks, everyone, for your understanding. I look forward to seeing you all at my fundraiser next week where the largest donor wins a trip to my ranch where we will release dozens of unarmed Leavenworth inmates and hunt them with large-caliber bolt-action rifles to raise awareness for mass incarceration.
