OSD 378: The sin of scandal

May 23, 2026

Father Mike Schmitz did a video this week about scandal. That word comes from skandalon, the Greek word for a stumbling block or the trigger of a hunting trap. In a Christian context, scandal is the sin of leading others to sin.

Last week we talked about range theatrics as a form of leading others astray:

OSD 377: Hypebeasts as maladapted bees

Open Source Defense

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Making unsafe or ineffective gun handling look cool does a disservice to the audience. But that’s easy to spot, and it’s easy to point to others as the bad guy on that front. Looking inward, what are some other scandals of which we’ve all been guilty from time to time?

Promoting gear over training. If we’re talking about effectiveness rather than pure collector value, you’re much better off with a $500 gun you can use well than a $5000 gun that you’ve never shot. That means spending more on ammo than on guns — and then actually shooting that ammo. If money is tight, dry fire is a free and very effective training tool.
Glamorizing spending too much money on guns and gear. It’s fun to joke about this, and often it remains a joke. But there are people who don’t realize it’s a joke and spend thousands of dollars on gun stuff that they can’t really afford. The person who is financially healthy and only owns a Hi-Point is in a holistic sense much safer than the person stressed about money who owns a Staccato.
Stoking fear to drive purchases. Bans are a thing, and it’s good to warn people about what they might want to secure before a ban goes into effect. But this sometimes crosses the line into hysteria, and that’s financially and mentally unhealthy.
Legally dangerous bravado. It is a very personal decision to conscious violate a law that you believe to be unjust. Consider the barrel-length provisions of the National Firearms Act. We all find it unjust that a rifle with a 15” barrel will get you sent to prison for up to 10 years, while a rifle with a 16” barrel is perfectly legal. If someone in their indignation wants to disregard that law, they are free to make that choice. But that doesn’t mean it’s just to encourage other people to break that law: the person doing the encouragement bears no risk at all, and the person who listens to them risks federal prison. It’s hard to find numbers on how many people are sitting in prison for barrel-length felonies, but over the decades the total has to be in the thousands. Some argue that civil disobedience has social value (we’ve made that argument before in this newsletter!), and that can be true, but it’s very case-by-case. Looking at actual NFA cases, it’s hard to argue that the suffering of the people convicted under that law has had any positive effects.

This might all sound a bit sanctimonious, and it probably would be if we weren’t guilty too. The point is that it’s easy for all of us to say what other people are doing wrong, but it’s much more useful to look in the mirror and focus on what we can do better.