USA – -(Ammoland.com)- About 11 months ago, this is how I started the show…. Yea… at the time I fully believed that YouTube was not in fact going to come down hard on gun content creators. It seems as though I was completely wrong. As you guys may have seen by now YouTube has released a new policy about guns. I’ll break this down the best I can and then we’ll talk about what all of this means.
To my knowledge this is the first time Youtube has actually segregated out firearms into its own category. The policy states that youtube prohibits certain kinds of content featuring firearms. OH BOY. Then they get into specifics. They don’t allow content that intends to sell firearms or firearm accessories privately or links to sites that sell guns. Even more specifically, they outline accessories that “enable a firearms to simulate automatic fire or convert a firearm to automatic fire” … like bump stocks, binary triggers, etc. They also specifically mention everyone’s favorite vague term… high capacity magazines but they actually define it as mags or belts that hold more than 30 rounds. Drum mags be damned.
It keeps going. They dont allow content that provides instructions on manufacturing a firearm, ammunition, high capacity magazines, homemade silencers, or accessories like they mentioned in the other portion. So if you show how to complete an 80% gun, say goodbye. If you show how to reload ammo, say goodbye.
And the last and quite possibly the worst part… they don’t allow content that shows users how to install any of the aforementioned accessories. HOLY SH*T. This is insane.
Think about it this way… someone could argue that simply inserting a magazine into a gun is showing how to install that accessory. Someone could argue that simply taking the gun apart and reassembling it would be demonstrating how to build it. No more gunsmithing videos, no more reloading videos, no more educational content about guns AT ALL. And god forbid you give a positive review. That could be argued as a marketing or sales tool and you could have your channel shut down for simply talking about a product you actually like. Someone could argue that training on how to more proficiently use your firearms would a violation as it might make you shoot faster. On top of all of this… they recommend that people report policy violations by flagging the video. What that means is that youtube is opening the door to an entire subculture of undereducated anti gun people to come in and flag every little piece of gun related content they see and shut us down across the board. THIS IS BAD.
And this goes far beyond just us content creators. They are essentially silencing an entire industry. Imagine if the main resource for gun related content suddenly disappears. The direct line to a massive number of consumers would disappear overnight and I am very skeptical of anyones ability to bring them to a new platform in great enough volume to effect change. And the world would keep moving forward while the gun industry remains behind.
Some might say, well what about Facebook? What about instagram? Well first those are both owned by Facebook, which in recent months has shifted its algorithm and will continue to do so and push people AWAY from business pages and in a more general term, away from firearms related content. The days of easily distributing content on Facebook and instagram as a business are behind us now. And you might think, im not a business or a content creator, why does that matter? If the gun industry disappears from a platform, and you are completely unaware of what is happening, sales will PLUMMET and the gun industry will suffer in a big way.
This is not a joke. Its not April fools. This is one of the largest controllers of internet traffic, silencing an entire law abiding industry.
Which begs the question… can this be stopped? That’s really tough to say. We were able to bring channels back from the dead like Hikock45 with a huge concentrated effort and I would like to hope that YouTube’s policies can be shifted with a similar effort. You need to let youtube know that this is NOT okay. You can send them a message directly on the gun policy page thats linked in the description, OR you can hit them on social media everywhere and let both Google and YouTube know that you will not be silenced.
As far as TGC goes, This will absolutely impact us a big way. Without knowing exactly how things will shake out, I can’t predict the exact path but this could be a big problem. You can rest assured I am on it. I’ve already contacted YouTube looking for true clarification on all of this. If you guys want to support what we do here and stay up to date on gun news AND this attack on the firearms industry you can do that on Patreon.com/theguncollective, There is a link down in description for that. Stay tuned because I will have more for you guys tomorrow. When I know something, you’ll know something.