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NRA Fears Challenge From Anti-Vaxxers for 2019 Children-Killing Award

The NRA has dominated the child-killing scene for almost a decade. Now anti-vaxxers want to unseat it.

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The leaders of the NRA are fretting that their position as reigning champion at the annual Children-Killing Awards may be threatened this year; they have held several meetings this past week to ramp up their For Your Consideration campaign for the first time since 2012, sources familiar with the matter said.

“We had a really strong showing last year,” said an NRA board member who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The whole March For Our Lives thing really amplified what a destructive force for evil we are in American society. We were basically guaranteed the award. But this year, there haven’t been any real gun stories—just in New Zealand, and that’s not American, so it’s not really our thing.”

The award, popularly nicknamed the “Lyndon,” has been given out since 1969 to the “entity or group that most excels at creating or feeding the forces that result in children dying”; it was first presented to Lyndon B. Johnson for his “standout work in My Lai.” Since 2012, when the nation was swept by several mass shootings, the NRA’s reception of the award has almost been, in the words of one anti-vaxxer The Spectator spoke to, “coronation-like.”

But this year, anti-vaxxers might take the Lyndon. For years, they have campaigned tirelessly for the widespread deaths of children. Many Lyndon-watchers feel that while the NRA does excellent, depravedly evil work, the anti-vax effort to bring humanity back to a time when average life expectancy was less than 40 years is the kind of breathtaking villainy the Lyndon is supposed to honor.

“Look, I’ve got massive respect for the NRA,” Academy member Alan Martin said. “That whole ‘guns don’t kill people’ thing? Brilliant. But the anti-vaxxers are trying to turn the tide of history, man. I mean, people have done a great job at killing other people throughout history, but diseases are really, really good at killing other people. The anti-vaxxers are harnessing that? I honestly don’t see how they won’t get the Lyndon by 2021.”

One eager anti-vaxxer The Spectator spoke to, Karol Childs, made the case for an anti-vax victory at the Lyndons: “Look, there’s a legitimate case to be made for some gun rights. It’s not necessarily healthy to have a state monopoly on firearm violence, and responsible, regulated gun ownership ought to be allowed. Obviously, the NRA goes way beyond that, but they’ve got some basis. But dude. Look at what we’ve done. Is there any remotely scientific basis for anything we say? No. Are we more detached from reality than people who think the DOE will follow through on replacing the escalators? Yes. We’ve got nothing. And yet we’ve still managed to make a real dent and create a real public health crisis. If that’s not Lyndon-worthy, I don’t know what is.”

Another NRA board member, firearm manufacturer John Wasp, worried that the NRA’s status as presumptive Lyndon-winner might hurt it. “No one likes a frontrunner,” Mr. Wasp said, “and I’m worried that some folks at the Academy [of Child-Murder Arts and Sciences] might let our status distract from the really great work we do. Who cares about measles? Guns are cool!”

“And,” he added, leaning in, “a big reason the anti-vaxxers are a threat this year is how much measles have affected the Jews, and you know how they control things.”

Mr. Wasp hastily added that he is not anti-Semitic: “In fact, I am a great friend of the state of Israel, and the Judeo-Christian tradition is really important to me.”

At press time, oil executives were seen watching the clock for climate-induced droughts to start hitting in full force.