An open letter to would-be shooters

Do yourself first, please.

Not last. Not after the lover who left you, the wife and kids you'd rather see dead than free of you, the godless infidels in the public square or the young concertgoers daring to have fun in a world you've lost the ability to find joy in.

First. Not last.

For once in your meaningless life, do something of worth. Take yourself out before you start killing all those people you've been plotting for days or weeks or months or even years to kill.

Does that seem like a waste of all that time? Doesn't have to be. Here's an idea: write a nice long note describing all the killing you were going to do. Name names, if you can. Then explain the choice you made instead: to do yourself first.

I guarantee you that the media exposure will be just as plentiful—maybe more so—and that you'll be remembered long after all the feckless clichés who did it the other way around.

Let's face it. By this point, our initial shock at yet another mass murder gives way to indifference almost immediately after we post some obligatory "thoughts and prayers" bullshit and scroll down. So it's not like you were going to make a real mark anyway, beyond the lives you would have shattered. But here's the good news: by doing yourself first, you'll be the exception that truly stands out—"The One Who Let Them Live."

Some people will even come to think of you as a kind of hero.

Fine by me. As long as you do yourself first.

I don't give a fuck whether you're a jilted boyfriend, a shell-shocked soldier who saw a little too much, a jihadi wannabe with promises of glory rattling around in a mostly empty head or, more likely, just another disaffected white loser looking to settle a score with the privilege you keep hearing about but never experiencing. Nor do I care about whatever you've gone through that has brought you to consider such an extreme "solution." You got problems? We all got problems, brother. But if your problems have you fantasizing about blasting the heads off everyone in your office lottery pool, well, it's time for you to seek help.

I hope you do seek that help, and I hope it works. I really do. But if you won't bother to seek that help, you deserve no sympathy. Perhaps you deserve only the fate you have mapped out for yourself after you've managed to end as many people as you can and the cops are upon you and the enormity of what you've done has finally impinged on your dull consciousness.

So go ahead, Johnny, get your gun. And do it. But please, for all of us in this existence who see the beauty of it despite the bad and want to stick around for as long as we can, just do us one favour.

Do. Yourself. First.