Gun Owners of America Sharply Criticizes New Anti-gun Policy At YouTube
Jose Nino
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On June 4, 2024, Gun Owners of America (GOA) issued several statements following YouTube’s announcement of a formal change in their policies towards gun content.
“Restricting access to adults only—for content that depicts wholly legal and constitutionally-protected activity—is wrong, and it aims to push a sinister narrative to minors that firearms are evil,” stated Erich Pratt, GOA’s Senior Vice President. “In turn, as younger generations come of age, they will not question or push back on further violations of our Second Amendment rights.”
“Alvin Bragg and his anti-gun friends have been aggressively pressuring YouTube to censor and directly prohibit certain content related to guns for years now, and sadly they just succeeded and free speech has once again become the victim,” declaredAidan Johnston, GOA’s Director of Federal Affairs. “Congress must demand answers from YouTube on how influential DA Bragg and gun control groups were in facilitating this change in policy and determine whether the Biden Administration or its White House Office of Gun Control was weaponized to force the censorship of Second Amendment content.”
YouTube and its parent company Google announced plans to change their policy on gun related content, which goes into effect on June 18. Under this new policy, which is set be retroactive and apply to all current content on the video platform, the following content will be censored:
- Content showing the use of homemade firearms, automatic firearms, and certain firearm accessories will be age restricted.
- Content showing how to remove “safety devices” will be banned.
- Firearms in movies, video games, military and police footage, and warzone footage will not categorically be age restricted—creating a double standard for Hollywood and anti-gun corporate media.
GOA noted in a press release that back in April, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sent a letter to YouTube CEO Neil Mohan calling on him to change their algorithms to guarantee that certain gun content not be promoted. Additionally, he called on the company to directly censor and take out certain gun-related content.
Big Tech functions as a de facto arm of the managerial regime. When the government can’t impose anti-free speech measures against content creators, it will outsource this function to unscrupulous private actors in the Tech sector
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