Wyoming Firearms Companies Say YouTube Unfairly Targets Gun-Related Content

Some Wyoming firearms companies say YouTube is unfairly censoring and banning them without giving solid reasons why. Greg Buchel, founder and president of Big Horn Armory in Cody, told Cowboy State Daily that after about a year of wrangling with YouTube over the platform’s rules, the company’s channel was finally shut down. “What they said was we violated ‘community policies,’ end of story,” Buchel said, without any further explanation. Big Horn Armory has switched to Rumble, an alternative long-form video platform.

Luke Thorkildsen, chief operating officer of Weatherby Inc. in Sheridan, said his company has also received “strikes” from YouTube without clear explanation. Each strike is a warning; after three, YouTube may delete the offending video or shut down the channel. “It’s incredibly frustrating,” Thorkildsen said. “My guess is that they just have AI crawling for information about any attempts to sell firearms on YouTube, which we don’t do.”

Big Horn Armory never posted content that included clearly forbidden material, such as instructions on how to alter a firearm, Buchel said. Most content demonstrated products like the AR500, touted as the world’s most powerful AR-style rifle. One video showed the rifle blasting a frozen chicken to pieces. Buchel said that shouldn’t have violated YouTube’s standards, as numerous gun-related channels feature similar content. He said problems started about a year ago when YouTube began issuing warnings without strikes, then escalated to strikes. The third strike hit about two weeks ago. “I can’t even access my videos that were already on there because they’ve completely blocked me from YouTube,” he said. “These were videos that were on our YouTube channel for years.”

Thorkildsen said Weatherby takes extreme care to avoid violations. “If we have a new product coming out, we’ll talk about it, but we take extreme care to not say, ‘Go here to buy this.'” At most, viewers are invited to the website for more information. Even so, Weatherby still gets penalized. “We’ll have one or two strikes. There’s no way to talk to a human about it. There’s no real recourse we can take. We’re a legal business. We’re operating fully within the bounds of the law.”

Boge Quinn, a friend of Buchel and creator of Gunblast, said his channel was also run off YouTube without explanation. “If they had given us some guidance, our fate could likely have been avoided; even the liaison assigned to us ghosted us,” he said. “I couldn’t help but notice that after they de-monetized our channel years ago, ‘somebody’ was still making ad money on them. I hate to lose the audience, but I don’t miss the BS.”

Mark Jones of Buffalo, a national director for Gun Owners of America, said firearms and pro-Second Amendment content faces trouble on social media platforms in general. “We know it happens. It happens to our content and that of other Second Amendment rights organizations. It’s happened for years and will probably continue to.” He said the arbitrary hostility may be driving gun rights organizations and content creators to platforms like Rumble. He recalled a quote from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: “In America, we treat the Second Amendment like it’s a secondary right.” A message sent to Google, which runs YouTube, was not answered by publication.