Chicago, Illinois — Est. 2019
This
is
America
Clothing Company
Satire in the tradition of Swift.
A call to action in the tradition of grief.
Chicago, Illinois — Est. 2019
Satire in the tradition of Swift.
A call to action in the tradition of grief.
The Shop
~4,000 Copies Remaining
A satirical augmented reality catalog. Sent by courier to every member of Congress. Reviewed by the FBI. Pulled by Amazon for 11 days without explanation. Available here, directly from the author. The companion app with its educational augmented reality elements will soon return to the App Store and Google Play Store.
$8.50 — 850 AD is approximately when gunpowder was invented. Look how far we've come.
In Stock — S through XXL
This 100% ring-spun cotton t-shirt has a special dye process performed right here in the good ol' USA. We dye a mostly white, but sometimes slightly pink, target on your back that's paired with our company name: This Is America Clothing Company. On the front, the half-mast flag — also mostly white, but sometimes pink due to the discharge printing process. We then finish the t-shirt with a plastisol tag ironed onto the inside back of the shirt.
Select SizeThe Story
This Is America Clothing Company exists because Brandon McNichols was a freshman in high school the year Columbine happened, and he has been thinking about how to stop them for more than half of his life.
The feeling started early: watching a lunchroom turn tense in seconds, understanding how fast something as ordinary as a broken relationship can become something that destroys countless lives. When his youngest brother Tommy committed suicide years later, he learned how far tragedy can spread through families, through generations, and through community.
This Is America Clothing Company Presents The AR Bomber Jacket is a satirical catalog for a fictional concealed-carry garment designed to hide an AR-15. It's funny, the way Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is funny. And then it isn't.
There's a page in the middle that nobody forgets.
The cover features a 3D American flag that rises to full staff, lowers to half-mast, then rises again... on a loop. This happens when paired with the free app. Because that's what we do in America. We honor the dead, raise the flag, and then wait for the next one.
Augmented reality elements give open-minded readers new opportunities for engagement with this sensitive issue. They can press buttons that will, for example, play videos of mass shooting survivors advocating for assault-style weapons to be removed from our communities — or even hear from those who directly defend the use of these weapons in the face of the carnage it brings. The companion app with its educational augmented reality elements will soon return to the App Store and Google Play Store.
The book was also sent to every member of the Tennessee and Florida state legislatures, and to every school board member in America sitting on a board that had banned a book. It was sent to school libraries, because technology — an augmented reality layer accessible through a free app — can sometimes make people see an issue they've only ever seen one way with a fresh perspective.
The three ideas at the center of this project are not radical. They are what the majority of Americans agree on in poll after poll:
This Is America Clothing Company was founded by Brandon McNichols — a Chicagoan who lost two brothers, who watched the parents of Uvalde and Parkland and Sandy Hook and recognized something in their faces, and who decided that if people had gone numb to the statistics, maybe they needed to be shocked back into feeling something.
Press & Coverage
WKRN News 2 — Nashville, TN
Catalog with realistic illustration of dead children sent to TN schools, lawmakers
Nashville television covered the project directly — the outreach to Tennessee schools and the state legislature prompted significant local news coverage.
Watch / Read →Valley Breeze — Pawtucket, RI
School Committee Calls Emergency Summit on Graphic Mailers
The book prompted an emergency school board meeting in Rhode Island — exactly the kind of conversation it was designed to force.
Read the article →EIN Presswire — Nationally Syndicated
AR Bomber Jacket Book Launch Acts as an Explosive Wake-Up Call to Ignite Change for Gun Control
The launch press release ran across dozens of regional outlets, including FOX2 and KRON4.
Read the release →Bearing Arms
Satirical Product Meant to Scare on Guns
Even gun-rights media couldn't ignore it. The project was covered and debated across the political spectrum.
Read the piece →WPBF ABC 25 — West Palm Beach, FL
Satirical catalog advertising concealed weapons sent to South Florida schools, lawmakers
South Florida television covered the project's outreach to Florida schools and state legislators directly.
Watch / Read →