This week, the New Yorker published its account of a leaked video that was intended to be used as part of a promotional program for the National Rifle Association. It depicts Wayne and Susan LaPierre tracking and killing two elephants with the help of a guide in Botswana.

The most staggering part of the article is not the self-evidently barbaric act of big game hunting, nor the botched and extremely belabored murder committed by Wayne LaPierre. It is instead the self-deluded compassion Susan LaPierre has for her victim. There is something especially tragic about her mistaking a dead elephant for a living one, feigning to admire an animal whose feet she will soon sever and display in her living room.

At one point, still standing over the elephant's corpse, Susan remarks that he is "still there," and that she sees life in his eyes. She makes this mistake because she has no life in hers.