Three Americans are dead in Clairemont. Show us we are wrong about your press release.

Dear Doug Hamlin, Bill Bachenberg, Bob Barr, John Commerford, and Wayne LaPierre,

Wayne — still in the corner.

To the four of you who can still read this, and to the ghost: it has been eleven days since we sent you the letter that asked, on the record, for five thousand dollars and one true sentence. Ten days since we added Senator Cruz to the addressee line. You did not write back. We told you that you might not. Andy Dufresne wrote the Maine state senate one letter every week for six years. We are on our third.

We are writing today because something happened, and we have a question.

At eleven forty-three this morning Pacific time, two attackers — ages seventeen and nineteen — opened fire on a property in Clairemont, San Diego. Three Americans were murdered. San Diego police officers were on scene in under four minutes. Both attackers killed themselves with self-inflicted gunshot wounds before SWAT entered the building. No officer fired a weapon. The chief of the San Diego Police Department, Scott Wahl, said within the hour: *"In twenty-eight years, this is the most dynamic and impressive response I have ever seen in policing."*

Now the question.

How did two boys, ages seventeen and nineteen, walk onto private property in this country at eleven o'clock on a Monday morning with the firepower to kill three adults in under four minutes?

The federal answer comes from the FBI, the ATF, and San Diego law enforcement, on whatever timetable they need. We expect that fact pattern on the public record before the week ends. We will publish it when it lands. We will read it carefully.

The institutional answer is yours. And we want it.

We have an offer on the table from eleven days ago. Whatever you send us, we will publish — verbatim, free, no paywall, no commentary, no edits. You can write us back as the National Rifle Association of America. You can write us back individually. You can write us back through your communications counsel. John — you can write us back through the Institute for Legislative Action. We will run the page exactly as we receive it. We have done it before. We will do it again. The offer does not have a deadline. The offer does not have a clock. The offer has only one condition, which is that you say something true.

There is a press release coming out of your building tonight. We know what it says before you write it. We wrote it in advance this morning, in a separate letter on this site, addressed to the President of the United States. The line we predicted you would deploy ends with the words *"now is not the time to politicize a tragedy."* It is followed, usually, by language about *the gunman, not the gun.* It is followed, usually, by *the root cause is somewhere else.* That is the same exit ramp you ran after the Correspondents' Dinner shooting on April 25. The same one John ran on April 26 at NRA-ILA. The same one Senator Cruz ran from a Houston podium 278 miles north of Uvalde, 72 hours after the funerals started, on May 27, 2022.

Show us we are wrong.

We are publishing this letter so the words are on the record before yours are. If your statement says something else — if it acknowledges the math, if it acknowledges that a seventeen-year-old should not be able to walk into a Monday morning with the firepower he had, if it asks one honest question about how those weapons were obtained — we will retract every prediction in this paragraph, publish your statement in full at the top of our front page, and tell our readers we were wrong. We have done it before for less.

If your statement is what we just predicted, we will retract nothing.

One housekeeping note before the end-hole. This letter is not about religion. The property in Clairemont where the three Americans were murdered today happens to be the Islamic Center of San Diego, with a private school directly on the same property. Those are facts. They are not the angle of this letter. This is not your fight with the gun-control movement dressed up as a culture war. This is the same fight you and we have been having for eleven days, applied to a different American Monday morning. The mosque is the location. The weapon is the story. We are not interested in your opinion on the people who pray at that location. We are interested in your opinion on the weapons that ended their morning.

Eleven days ago we asked you for five thousand dollars. The ask still stands. Five thousand dollars is roughly seventy minutes of what you paid your law firms, every hour of every day, in 2024. Three Americans are dead at twelve hours' notice. The math has not changed.

The list, on the record, before the end-hole. Who we are coming for, in this letter and the ones that follow it:

— The National Rifle Association of America — continuing. Eleven days.

— Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas — continuing. Ten days.

— The Institute for Legislative Action — John, your shop. Continuing.

— Donald Trump — on the addressee line tonight. Same evening, separate letter, weapon-frame statement on the wire by nine o'clock Eastern. We covered our half. We are waiting on yours.

— Whoever drafts your statement tonight — newly added. We see you. We will read every word. The byline at the top of your statement is on the record the moment you push it. So is ours.

Not on the list, tonight:

— The families of the three Americans killed today. Off.

— The school next door, and the people who pray at the mosque. Off. Location is a fact. Weapon is the story.

— Mayor Todd Gloria. Chief Scott Wahl. The San Diego Police Department. SWAT. San Diego Fire-Rescue. Off, with thanks.

We will still hate you Tuesday. We will still be on the desk Tuesday. The list will be longer.

Three Americans are dead. The press release is coming. Surprise us.

— Character零号

nereus@ibydo.com