Appeals Court Outlaws Finger Guns; Mime Interest Group Cries Foul

by Waddleton McQuack

Think twice before you use your favorite office greeting: it may soon be illegal in more states than one. As reported by The Hill and others, a Pennsylvania appeals court affirmed that by firing off his forearm firearm at a neighbor, Stephen Kirchner of Manor Township, PA committed a misdemeanor.

“Kirchner acted with a reckless disregard of creating a risk of public alarm,” stumbled Pennsylvania State Appeals Court Judge Maria McLaughlin. “What he did was extremely mean, and nasty, and stinky, and he and all mimes everywhere just really creep me out, and we should throw all of them in jail forever.”

Kirchner, a professional mime by trade and charter member of the League of Mimicry, a national outreach organization which helps mimes across the United States combat evil through precise body movements and force of will, was captured on security cam footage delivering a near-lethal pyscho-kinetic blow to his neighbor.

“The League won’t stand for this,” warned Kirchner, while pretending to sit on an invisible chair and sipping imagined tea. Next he tried but failed to slide an impossibly heavy object across the room. “No matter how hard we have to push, we’re going to get some traction on this issue,” he added, feet sliding backwards.

When asked why he pretended to fire off his five-shooter at his neighbor, Kirchner replied that his neighbor had just “given him the finger with both hands.” This, as any self-respecting mime knows, is an extremely obscene and violent gesture. “I couldn’t sit down on an invisible chair for weeks afterward,” Kirchner explained, wincing.

Mimes aren’t the only ones not standing for this legal development. Enter the National Finger Gun Association and its maverick Chief Executive, Wayne LaPalmierre, Jr. We caught up with Wayne at a local hand massage parlor.

“The founders of our great nation made it very clear in the second-teenth amendment that they never intended for finger guns to be outlawed in any way, shape, or form,” said Wayne, as he pulled out a well-worn copy of the the U.S. Constitution. He then read me the amendment:

“A well regulated Mimery, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, conjured out of Hands and Fingers, shall not be infringed. Second-teenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

“Now there’s some dispute about that infamous comma just after “Arms” which obfuscates the subject of the passive “conjured out of,” continued LaPalmierre, “but we and most competent legal scholars believe the intent of the framers is clear: finger guns are an integral part of our defense against evil, governmental and otherwise.”

Opponents say that common sense finger control is necessary in light of recent shootings across the country, though none of them actually involve mimicry.

“No American needs a finger assault rifle, full stop,” said oft-confused Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden. “I remember back on our family farm on Mars that finger assault rifles with extended magazines and bump stocks were responsible for the deaths of many, many alien tour guides working at the Obama Presidential Library, which is also where I racked up three hundred thousand dollars in student debt at a remote US Military outpost in the Konar province in Afghanistan and rappelled down a 60-foot cliff to pin a silver star on my Uncle’s dying cow. Anyway, what were we talking about again? Can I smell your feathers? Mmmm.”

Finger gun industry analysts expect an uptick in finger gun sales in the face of impending legislation, especially of finger gun assault rifles, finger gun zoom optics, and finger gun extended magazines and bump stocks, which can boost the fire rate of such fearsome fingers from tens of rounds per second to a million gillion gillion rounds per second. Makers of props such as the large foam hands waved in stadium audiences across the country also fear they could be next in line for a government-mandated halt on hand-worn gesture aids.

But is finger gun control really the only option to combat the wave of pretend violence that threatens our once-great nation? No, says local pre-school teacher Tabatha Toucan. Shockingly finger guns are an everyday occurrence during recess, yet to date no casualties have been recorded. We asked Tabatha for the secret to safely wrangling finger gun abusers.

“Well, our preference is to try to let the kids work out disagreements on their own,” said Tabatha as we watched small children playing happily. “Finger guns can happen in all sorts of pretend contexts, whether cops and robbers, aliens vs cowboys…”

“What about neighborly disputes between members of the League of Mimicry?” I asked.

“The what?” replied Tabatha. “Anyway, if anyone starts getting really mean, we start with a stern talking to, and if necessary we move on to five-minute time-outs, which really hurt when you start with a recess of only thirty-five minutes,” she continued. “And if someone gets really out of control, you know, firing two-handed fully automatic finger machine guns with attachments, we arrest them and cart them off to Pennsylvania, where they are typically sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor in politically correct re-education and fake news classification camps. It’s all very sweet, really.”

No stranger to controversy, President Trump weighed in during one of his infamous chopper talks. When asked by a barely-audible member of the press corps whether the federal government should take a stand on finger guns, he replied: “I prefer finger hand grenades, myself.”

Trump pulls the pin on a soon-to-be-illegal finger hand grenade while shouting at reporters during a recent chopper talk. Photo credit: Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times