OSD 91: The bigger they are, the harder they FAL
If a Monday morning email was 20 rounds of 7.62 NATO.
The past week was chock-full of interesting links, let’s dive right into it.
This week’s links
Lifehacker wrote this article: “How to safely own and store a gun”
This is major progress. Normalization is the way.
OSD rerun: “Guns are specifically designed to kill: the logic error behind the whole gun debate”
This longform piece of ours from back in February got rediscovered this week and was making the rounds. Check it out in case you missed it the first time around.
Schools are still running active shooter drills over Zoom
The inertia of bureaucracy and vested interests:
As of 2017, 95 percent of American schools held active-shooter drills. And across the country, students like Vivian have continued to observe and participate in the exercises — over video chat, from their homes.
COVID-19 has sent schools around the world scrambling. Eight months after the first wave of closures, many districts are still offering virtual instruction in some form, through either fully online or hybrid models (like Vivian’s school) with some students in the classroom and others calling in. Students and teachers have improvised to replicate aspects of traditional school over video chat: prom, scavenger hunts, art shows, musicals, even sports. But the cocktail of safety drills that schools usually offer (including simulations of active-shooter scenarios and other events like fires, tornadoes, and earthquakes) could pose a particular challenge when it comes to engaging remote students.
These drills have historically been cultivated by an unfortunate accidental alliance between certain gun control groups and a lucrative security/police consulting industry that has sprung up to run the trainings.
Vista Outdoors: “We currently have over a year’s worth of [backlogged] orders for ammunition in excess of $1 billion”
Vista is the parent company of Federal, American Eagle, CCI, Speer, Blazer, Independence, Estate, Fusion, and Remington.
FPC brought in Rob of @2Aupdates to run their legal-related community comms
Rob is bar-none the best source of 2A-related legal updates on the internet. This is a great move for all involved, and for the gun rights world.
Suppressed MP5 vs MP5SD using regular and subsonic ammo. Which is more quiet?
Just your run-of-the-mill video of two Swedish dudes in full-face gas masks shooting MP5s in a marsh.
Empirical data on optics vs. iron sights, from the Army Research Laboratory
Check out the comments for details on the study sample of shooters and on the methodology. Interesting how quickly the differences open up beyond 100 yards.
@gtroopcorey on Instagram
Been enjoying this account.
Oldie but goodie: 11-year-old boy shoots intruder in the leg
Meet the new CEO of OSD.
OSD Office Hours
If you’re a new gun owner, thinking about becoming one, or know someone who is, click here to come to OSD Office Hours. It’s a free 30-minute video call with an OSD team member to ask any and all your questions.
Merch and coffee
We’ve got merch that you’ll want to wear. Check it out.
If you like this newsletter, you can support OSD instantly on our Buy Me a Coffee page. It isn’t our biggest funding mechanism, but it is a dead-simple way to kick in a few bucks to help us keep growing like crazy.