Fairfax, Va.—In the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that left seventeen dead and five injured, NRA communication staffers Whitaker Thompson and Niles Yates arrived at the guns rights headquarters early Wednesday evening to prepare talking points and press releases for the already exploding news cycle.
Parking next to each other, both men were sipping from paper Starbucks cups as they exited their vehicles an annoyed Thompson said, “How come it’s us again? Remember, we missed Sunday football after the Texas Baptist Church shooting? This is bullshit.”
“We’re still low man. It’ll be a breeze, we’ll just recycle the Baptist church shit,” said Yates.
“Yeah, but it’s Valentine’s day and I had the magic third date lined up with this girl I met on Match.com. We were going to Applebees,” Thompson said shaking his head.
“Me too, had a big night planned with the wife. Things have been pretty rocky lately. She wants me to quit this job, but we just can’t afford it right now. Anyway, we can’t think about that, this is what we signed up for. Hopefully we’ll rotate out after another round or two and the way things are going that’s maybe, two or three months tops,” said Yates trying to find the bright side of not getting laid on Valentine’s day.
They walked into the building, past security and the edited version of the 2nd Amendment emblazoned on the lobby wall: “… the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,” which conveniently omitted the first half of the statement about, “A well regulated militia,” It was something that used to stick in both men’s craw, but now, as they went up the elevator to the their third floor offices, they didn’t even give it a thought.
Sitting down in their adjoining cubes, firing up their laptops Thompson’s frustration continued, “Why do we gotta send all this out again, can’t they just use the emails we sent after Texas, Vegas, Dallas, Orlando, Charleston, San Bernardino, Sandy Hook, Aurora? It’s all the same shit about it not being time talk policy and giving the families time to grieve, before moving onto the thing about a good guy with a gun being able to stop a bad guy with a gun and then all the laws already on the books….”
“Dude,” Yates interrupted forcefully. “Don’t make this worse than it has to be. We have a job to do and let’s just do it. Do you want to do the talking points or the press releases. It’s Valentine’s day, maybe we can work some love bullshit into the pressers. Which one do you want?”
“I’ll do the talking points,” Thompson said with resignation. “You’re better with the topical stuff.” Working in silence for hours they occasionally printed out their work for the other to review. It was just before 10 pm when they finished up and were looking at their text messages while they exited the building.
“Motherfucker,” Thompson said looking at his phone reading the message from the Match girl who said maybe it was time to pause and reassess this relationship.
Getting in their cars Yates got a listless call from his wife asking him to pick up a few things up on his way home.
Thompson angrily turned his satellite radio from the Love channel he was going to use as part of his plan to woo the Match girl to the Fox News channel where he barely noticed his work already making its way into the news cycle.
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