Take Your Best Shot

or Open Season for Lunacy

In the Mid-Atlantic states, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey, hunting seasons are managed by their respective state agencies, but they generally follow these typical date ranges:

• For hunting deer, archery seasons typically begin in late September or early October. Rifle seasons usually occur in October or November. Shotgun season typically runs from late November to mid-December, with muzzleloader seasons commonly held in late December.

• Spring turkey season usually opens in April, with some southern zones potentially starting in late March. Fall turkey seasons typically occur in September or October.

• The hunting of ducks and geese are federally managed and generally open in late September or October. Hunting for small game and upland birds — squirrels, rabbits, pheasant, quail, et al. — often begin in early fall and can extend through the winter.

But in Washington, D.C., it’s open season on everything — regardless of whether you’re using a bow and arrow, a rifle, a shotgun, a muzzleloader, a handgun, a slingshot, or any other weapon you can lay your hands on — all the time, particularly presidents, and most especially President Trump.

This weekend’s news brought us this from the Wall Street Journal: “Heavily Armed Gunman Detained After Shots Fired at Washington Dinner”:

A gunman fired shots Saturday outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner before President Trump was due to make an address. The shooter hit a law-enforcement officer wearing a bullet-proof vest … The suspect, identified by authorities as Cole Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif., is in custody and is expected to be charged on Monday.

And CBS News elaborated on the same story thusly: “What we know about the suspect in shooting at White House Correspondents’ Dinner”:

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, was an educator from Torrance, California with an engineering degree from a prestigious university. He also owned two firearms, one of which was used in the shooting at the Washington Hilton Hotel … Officials have not released information on the suspect’s possible motive, but Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” Sunday morning that investigators believe he was targeting members of the Trump administration. Two sources previously told CBS News that after the suspect’s arrest, he told law enforcement that he wanted to shoot administration officials.

Hats off to Todd Blanche for connecting those dots. 🙄

Reporters spoke to some of Allen’s neighbors in Torrance and got the following comments:

“He seemed like such a nice young man.” (Herb Deadbolt)

“He loved teaching gun safety at the shooting range.” (Mildred Blintz)

“He was very proud of his arsenal.” (Buck “Bucky” Buckmiller)

“I don’t know. It seems like he was sneaking around a lot.” (Gladys Mildew)

“His greatest ambition was suicide-by-cop.” (Fernando Gruebli)

Everyone interviewed said Allen will be missed while he does his bid in Lewisburg. Accordingly, Torrance residents have launched a clothing and hand tools drive. Donations can be brought to Uncle Ernie’s Hardware store on Carbine Street. And a GoFundMe page has been set up to contribute to Allen’s commissary account.

Author’s Question: Am I the only one who wonders why the prestigious university wasn’t named? Just curious.

“Just another day at the office.”

TDS is Real

After Allen was apprehended, we here at the O’Brien Center Examining Antagonistic Nitwits (OCEAN) interviewed Dr. Irving Forbush, Allen’s psychiatrist. According Dr. Forbush, Allen’s was the most pronounced case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) he’d ever seen.

“If Mr. Allen saw even the faintest wisp of orange hair, he’d lapse into a violent manic episode like Curly when he saw a mouse. The only thing that would bring him out of it was a photograph of Joe Biden — but only if Kamala was in it, too.”

In less severe cases, sufferers from TDS:

• Believe after being lied to by Iran for 47 years about its nuclear program, its sponsorship of terrorism, and murdering its own citizens, the jihadist leadership in Iran has suddenly declared Truth Serum the National Drink.

• Believe since Israel’s statehood was recognized by the United Nations General Assembly on May 11, 1949 (Resolution 273) — and since Israel has been under attack since May 12, 1949 — Israel is a militant, warmongering, imperialistic, colonizing, genocidal nation, committed to its survival without permission from Iran, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and American liberals.

• Don’t believe people who’ve entered the United States illegally (committed a crime) are criminals.

• Don’t believe resisting and committing violence against people and agencies sworn to uphold the law is a crime.

• Believe President Trump’s win in 2016 was the result of Russian collusion, and Vladimir Putin and the KGB were in the United States stuffing ballot boxes.

• Believe and declare President Trump is a fascist without having the vaguest idea of how to define fascism and believing fascism just means stuff they don’t like.

The O’Brien Medical Group (OMG) is working on a pharmaceutical cure for TDS. But it evolves and mutates faster than the strains of COVID that don’t exist.

We can only pray they get the help they need.

Hope For the Best

We can’t know what hunting season Cole Allen might have thought it was. We can’t know how he thought he’d get by President Trump’s security detail. We can’t know what might have motivated him to think shooting a law-enforcement officer was a good idea, let alone a president. And we can’t know what he might have planned for the rest of his life should he ever get out of prison.

We do know he had to write a manifesto to qualify for the Ted Kaczynski Crackpot of the Month Club. According to the Daily Beast:

Allen referred to himself as the “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen,” and outlined his plan to kill Donald Trump and his top administration officials … “they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”

According to his mother’s second cousin on this father’s side, Allen “Al” Allen, Cole had several engineering project in the works:

Yeah, he was workin’ on a jelly donut that wouldn’t leak in your back pocket. And he was gonna build a smoke machine that didn’t make no smoke because of climate change an’ all.”

While we can’t know what he might do while he’s in stir or afterward, we can only hope he doesn’t develop an idiot-proof gun and an Acme Invisibility Machine and try his luck on the next President he doesn’t like.

Regardless of what Allen does, the rest of us should seriously consider buying Kevlar. And the more forward-looking of us will be saving our pennies nickels for when Arclin, goes public.

Since it’s open season for lunacy, you can’t be too careful.