OSD 67: Slowly, and then all at once
Wherever we're going, we're headed there fast.
Well, this has been an eventful few days. We’re a gun rights group, and one of the temptations for any single-issue group is to tie every news story back to that pet issue. But the current turmoil pulls in a lot of things. Police, race, state power, qualified immunity, media incentives, political incentives, pent-up polarization, and probably somewhere in there is the fact that everybody’s been cooped up at home for a couple months. And yes, gun rights. But gun rights are just a slice of it, so while that’s the slice that happens to be our specialty, and the one we’ll stick to here, it’s certainly not the only one worth thinking about.
We grew up on Mr. Rogers. He didn’t teach us much about guns (although that would have made an awesome episode), but we do like his advice for tough times: “Look for the helpers.” So with that in mind, today we want to feature some of the many, many people who are helping:
Ice-T explains why gun rights are important (video from 2012)
Residents of Bellevue, WA guard their neighborhood. This is a wealthy suburb of Seattle. The “nobody needs” talking point will sound increasingly tone-deaf as more and more people see this video.
This week’s links
The boogaloo movement is not what you think
Mainstream journalists have increasingly been reporting on the constellation of subcultures around this term. This piece certainly has some gaps and misunderstandings, but it’s one of the better efforts to document this stuff.
Reno May explains the case of Allen Sun, a guy in California arrested for violating feature bans
A look at what these laws do to real people.
Larry Vickers reviews the gunfights from Sicario
Part 4 in a fun series of movie gunfight reviews.
We recorded two interviews this week
Our very own Chuck Rossi was on both the Restless Native Podcast and a livestream podcast with Hank Strange this week, check it out!
The OSD store is live
You can now get OSD merch! And instead of just slapping a brand onto a random t-shirt, we made custom designs and printed them on high-quality shirts that we actually want to wear. You can get an OSD logo shirt, or a shirt from the Select File series, replicating an AR-15 or MP5 selector pattern but with little computer files. Plus there’s a gallery-quality limited-edition print of an M72 LAW. Enjoy.
If you’re a new gun owner, thinking about becoming one, or know someone who is, click here to come to OSD Office Hours. You get a 30-minute video call with an OSD team member to ask any and all questions you have, in a friendly, non-judgmental space. For free. So come on by!
If you like this newsletter, you can donate to OSD instantly on our Buy Me a Coffee page. Donations aren’t our biggest funding mechanism, but they are a dead-simple way to kick in a few bucks to help us keep growing like crazy.