YouTube Bans Gun Sales and How-To Videos, Prompting Backlash

YouTube Bans Gun Sales and How-To Videos, Prompting Backlash

YouTube quietly introduced tighter restrictions on videos involving weapons, becoming the latest battleground in the U.S. gun-control debate, according to Bloomberg.

The video service will ban videos that promote or link to websites selling firearms and accessories, including bump stocks, which allow a semi-automatic rifle to fire faster. Additionally, YouTube said it will prohibit videos with instructions on how to assemble firearms.

For many gun-rights supporters, YouTube has been a haven. A current search on the site for “how to build a gun“ yields 25 million results, though that includes items such as toys. At least one producer of gun videos saw its page suspended. Another channel opted to move its videos to an adult-content site, saying that will offer more freedom than YouTube.

“We routinely make updates and adjustments to our enforcement guidelines across all of our policies,“ a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement. “While we’ve long prohibited the sale of firearms, we recently notified creators of updates we will be making around content promoting the sale or manufacture of firearms and their accessories.“

YouTube has placed greater restrictions on content several times in the past year, responding to a series of issues with inappropriate and offensive videos. The firearms decision comes days before Saturday’s March For Our Lives, a rally organized by survivors of the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead.

The new YouTube policies will be enforced starting in April, but at least two video bloggers have already been affected. Spike’s Tactical, a firearms company, said in a post on Facebook that it was suspended from YouTube due to “repeated or severe violations“ of the video platform’s guidelines. InRange TV, another channel devoted to firearms, wrote on Facebook that it would begin uploading videos to PornHub.