Just now I've seen the twenty-two-year-old daughter of one of the victims in Highland Park talk about running alongside her mother when her mom was shot in the chest. The daughter knew she was dead right away.
When the reporter asked her if there was anything she wanted to say she talked about having “the best mom” and started to cry. She looked in shock.
But in the moment I imagined a different scene and another answer. I imagined this as the moment she might become a “Hanna” or “Kill Bill” kind of character. What if she looked into the camera and spoke as if from the kind of action movie gun advocates take as a template for reality and social policy.
What if she had said:
I'm going to bury my mother in a few days and then grieve with my father and siblings for a few days after that.
And then I'm quitting my job and changing my life course to become an assassin. From this moment on I am dedicating my life to revenge.
I want Wayne LaPierre and all the board members of the NRA and anyone else who has actively pushed the idea that we need military grade weapons in the hands of children to know that I'm coming after them, that I will make them suffer as I am suffering now.
If the President of the United States can't help me and the Congress of the United States won’t help me, I will be a force of justice myself. I have the right to bear arms and bear arms I shall.
My mother’s life is over and the life I thought I would live disappeared with her murder.
And all of you out there who did this? From this moment on, a good girl with a gun is putting your life on notice too.
It would make a good movie moment and, I regret to say, a part of me wishes were real.