COLUMBIA, SC (AP) – At a town hall-style meeting in South Carolina, Pete Buttigieg promised to address the problem of mass shootings from a different angle by tasking the Department of Defense with creating “gun free zone” signs that are more effective at keeping guns out of the areas where they’re posted.

Struggling to maintain 4th place in the polls behind Biden, Sanders, and Warren, Buttigieg said he’s taking a “fresh approach to the problem,” one which he thinks will differentiate him from the rest of the Democrat pack as primary season approaches.

Town hall attendee Beatrice Taylor, who admitted that she finds Buttigieg’s Neumanesque appearance “quite charming,” asked the candidate, “these mass shootings I keep hearing about in the news are just awful! And they always seem to happen in gun free zones, just like that latest one in Virginia Beach. What’s your plan for stopping that?”

“I’m glad you asked about that,” Buttigieg responded. “Gun crime in this great nation of ours is an epidemic of such vast proportions that I consider it a national security threat. Therefore, as President, I will act immediately to task the Department of Defense with doing two things: One – finding out why gun free zone signs don’t work. And two, sparing no expense to design a more effective gun free zone sign that actually DOES work.”

Peter Pettigrew, a shill who’d been paid by the campaign to pose as “undecided” and empowered to toss out hard-but-not-hostile questions, asked Buttigieg “I don’t understand. Signs don’t shoot people, guns do. Guns are the problem. Why aren’t you going to get rid of all the guns like all the other Democrat candidates who you’re trying to differentiate yourself from?”

“I’m glad you asked about that,” Buttigieg responded, pretending not to recognize Jones from the pre-meeting brief. “Some of the other candidates have already given up on gun free zone signs as the best way to prevent mass shootings, but these people are overlooking one important fact: at every mass shooting, gun free zone signs are 99% effective. They disarm every person in the building except the shooter himself. Now, if we can find a way to make these signs just 1% more effective, we can finally leave mass shootings in the dustbin of history once and for all.”

Amid the stunned silence of every Democrat in the room struggling to follow the complex mathematics involved in Buttigieg’s answer, audience member Billy Ray Valentine – a homeless person who just came into the building looking to dig aluminum cans out of the trash – rubbed his chin thoughtfully and piped up, “isn’t the real problem that only law-abiding people actually obey signs, and they ain’t the ones shooting people?”

“I’m glad you asked about that,” Buttigieg responded, giving security a pre-arranged ‘get him out of here!’ hand-signal. “I’m afraid you’re a victim of NRA propaganda. The real reason why gun free zone signs aren’t 100% effective is, well, we don’t know why. Is it the size? The shape? The color? The material of the sign itself? Is it the font? Should we use Comic Sans instead of Arial? See, we just don’t know. All I know is that the Department of Defense kept me alive while I was serving in Afghanistan, so I think it just makes sense to let them use all their keeping-safe powers to provide us with a solution to this problem as well.”

“The bottom line,” concluded Buttigieg, “is that we need to do this because REAL gun free zone signs have never been tried.”

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