There are some things that are truly tasteless. Quinoa is the least of these.

For example, you could take your son’s obituary, a young man who took his own life, to advocate for gun control rather than think about all the things that went wrong long before he went to purchase a firearm. After all, that’s what one Vermont woman did.

Alyssa Black did not expect her son’s obituary to receive attention beyond his loved ones.

“None of this was our intention,” she said of the obituary, which sparked intense conversations around gun control.

Andrew Black, who died by suicide on Dec. 6, purchased a firearm and used it to take his own life within a few hours, according to his father. The obituary ended with a request: For those who feel compelled, lobby for a wait period in between the purchase and possession of a firearm to honor Andrew’s memory.

Vermont currently has no wait period.

“We know how our son died and why”

Alyssa thought that only family and friends would see the obituary. When it came time to write Andrew’s, she said the call to lobby for a waiting period was intended for people who believe in the cause themselves.

But the family was not intentionally trying to reach gun supporters.

“We were just trying to reach people like us,” she said.

She acknowledged a waiting period would not guarantee her son would still be alive, “but there is a possibility it could have.”

Look, I’m sympathetic. Losing a loved one is tough. Losing one to suicide is even tougher, especially because you want to blame something or someone.

In this case, Black wants to blame the gun and the laws that didn’t miraculously stop her son from taking his own life.

She argues that a study shows people are less likely to commit suicide if they’re forced to wait. I have doubts about whether that’s true or not, but you know what I don’t have doubts about? That is that people who need guns to protect themselves from very real threats are also impacted by waiting limits as well, people who may well be killed while waiting.

Like it or not, suicide is a voluntary action. While I don’t like it happening, I’m not ready to put people lives at risk to stop people from committing a voluntary action, no matter how little I approve of that action.

In fact, a step below approving of suicide is approving of people grandstanding on the corpse of a loved one to advocate for freaking gun control. It’s disgusting, it really is.

Now, Vermont may well end up with a waiting period because people were stirred by Black’s emotional outburst masquerading as an obituary. I’m sure she’s rather proud of that fact.

Will she be proud of it when some college co-ed is murdered in cold blood by a stalker after that young woman was told she had to wait to purchase a gun? Will she be proud when a battered woman is killed by her jealous husband, just as he told her he’d do, but she could do nothing because the waiting limit for her firearm wasn’t up yet?

I wonder how proud she’ll be then.