Karen Mallard is a school teacher and a Democrat candidate for Virginia’s 2^nd Congressional District.

She had a plan.

It was a great plan.

In her head, it was a great plan.

She apparently saw the video from February of self-professed Second Amendment supporter, Scott Pappalardo (He had a tattoo to prove his support of the 2^nd Amendment), deeming himself unstable and otherwise not to be trusted with a firearm, sawing off his AR-15.

That video went viral (hopefully with people alerting authorities about this unstable man’s cry for help). Mallard hoped to recreate the magic.

With what she said was her husband’s AR-15, Mallard got in front of the camera and gave her pitch.

“Our job is to teach children. It’s not to protect them from gun violence. That is the government’s job, and they’re failing at it,” said Mallard.

In the video, as Mallard introduces herself, she says, “I grew up in Wise County, surrounded by guns. Our family had guns my whole life. We use them for hunting, for protection, and recreation.”

She went on to say she wasn’t happy when her husband first brought home a super-scary AR-15.

The decision to destroy the gun was mutual.

“So, today, we’re going to destroy it,” Mallard state in the video before taking a handheld power saw to the rifle.

She proceeds to hack off the barrel with a handheld saw, creating a potentially illegal short-barrel rifle.

Mallard explained her gun reform platform to 13News Now on Thursday, saying, “We need just common sense gun laws, and these military-style assault weapons are the ones being used in mass shootings, and we need to get rid of the bump stocks, we need to get rid of those magazines.”

There you go. Typical bleeding-heart, lefty nonsense.

The video, however, drew a lot of hecklers, claiming she was grandstanding.

She was, of course. This stunt has already been done. By the Second Amendment supporter.

She couldn’t even be original with her anti-gun rhetoric.

Several others said Mallard broke federal law by taking a legal firearm and altering it, making it into an illegal one. Many of them referred to details contained within the Sawed-Off Shotgun and Sawed-Off Rifle Act which, in part, prohibits people (except for those permitted by the act) from having a rifle that has been “modified to an overall length of less than 26 inches.”

Mallard accused her detractors of being “NRA trolls” and said they finished the job, as far as dismantling the gun, per regulations, and turned it into the local police department.

Still, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are looking into any potential violations by Mallard.

It’s a great way to run a campaign, isn’t it?

Using a recent tragedy to pander to the base, ripping off a recent viral video without even giving a nod to the originator of the schmaltz, and then breaking a federal gun law.

Mallard’s opponent is incumbent Republican Congressman Scott Taylor.