Joseph Osse loaded his black sedan with several weapons, steel target and recording stand for his phone before putting it west of Salt Lake City on a cold day in mid -November.
Mr. Osse, 32, began to shoot himself filming about a year ago for short videos that he published on YouTube. He earned more than 300, with unusual titles such as “Plinking Steel”, “Art of the Mag Dump” and “First Rifle Cam”, each of which has attracted several hundred to several thousand views.
Firearm content on YouTube has long been a relatively niche, an algorithmic recommendation that can appear after viewers watch the video game Call of Duty, or look for information about the neat weapons used by John Wick, the popular MAN movie hit.
Mr. Osse, who publishes Graizen Brann, has learned to shoot by watching YouTube channels, which is now trying to imitate. In the past, the education of firearms was often awarded by older family members and picked up in youth groups or entering the army.
“I liked what I was doing,” he said. “And maybe if there was someone else on the planet who felt almost the same as the firearms, that they would go forward and subscribe and just found out what would happen.”
The new generation of American weapons owners, who are younger, more diverse and attracted to tactical training and self -defense, regularly watch firearms channels. According to unpublished data from scientists at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Digital Forensic Research Laboratory at the Atlantic Council Atlantic Council Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab and digital forensic research laboratories in the Atlantic. It was produced for a growing subculture commonly referred to as Guntube, with creators known as guntubers.
“He has this gigantic audience that we haven’t tried until recently,” said Jared Holt, manager of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a Think Tank that examines the impact of technology on political and social issues.
For some, videos that check firearms, test gear and training tips resemble hobbies that could be equally well on a bike or guitar.
But Guntube is his own large community. Some guntubers have cult consequences and there are industrial prices known as Gundies, Riff on Dundies from the situation comedy “The Office”. The firearm industry sponsor content creators – who help sell weapons and countless accessories – and like video game streamers, some Guntube stars earn thousands of dollars per video. One even ran Political office.
And weapons are not guitars. Their growing presence on YouTube attracted some controversy, especially over the content of the videos and who should be able to watch it.
In March, a state judge in New York decided that Google (parent company Youtube) and Reddit will face litigation to allow racial accused killing of Mr. Gendron. In June, under pressure from every city, a group for defense of weapons security, YouTube announced that yes Limit a certain content of firearms For viewers under 18 years of age and forbid videos that show modifications and functions on specific firearms. To navigate the restrictions and prohibitions of YouTube, some of the large guntubers have moved to their own streaming service related to weapons.
Mr. Osse, who emigrated from Haiti at the beginning of the 90s, was brought up by the only father who worked as a mechanic of the American Air Force. Like many millennia, Mr. Osse got into firearms through video games and during the Coronavirus pandemic he bought his first weapon – Glock pistol -. He is working to enter the minimum wage entry and scare the money from the side concerts to support the hobby, which he said he was learning to shoot, defend himself and teach others.
“I’m not for money right now, so I just enjoy sharing content with the world and see positive reviews, also negative reviews,” Osse said.
One of the channels that Mr. Osse watched when he learned to shoot in 2022 was T. Rex ARMS, Guntube icon and portal for knowledge of weapons, equipment, training and “civil defense industry” As shown on your website.
About ten years old channel began with its main star and founder Lucas Botkin, shooting targets and producing pistol cases with thermoplastic leaves in the toast furnace. Now the channel has more than a million subscribers, a weekly podcast, download training and tactical equipment with approximately 90 employees.
ISAAC BOTKIN, brother Lucas Botkin and host of Podcast T. Rex Talk, follows the origin of Guntube on a series of tactical DVD training issued in 2008, at the height of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and just months after video game and only months after video games and only months after video games Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released.
“Video games have become realistic, we were in the war as a nation, and this content was available on DVD and you found it on the Internet.” Mr. Botkin said. “Practical training ceased to be secret knowledge and became widely accessible.”
For Guntuber Chris Charles, video games were a gate from digital shooting to the rumble of real rifles.
“Call of Duty 4, it was huge,” said Mr. Charles, 26, who lives in the suburbs of Atlanta Stockbridge, where he works as an inspector of a car emission and studies the digital media at Mercer University. “That’s what brought all weapons, all attachments, and that’s what has changed.”
Mr. Charles started shooting as a serious hobby after his brother gave him the upper receiver AR-15 when he was 17. YouTube videos helped him to assemble a rifle, and when his mother died a few years later, filming went on his other hobbies – Playing piano and football and climbing – as a way to deal with her death.
Mr. Charles founded his own channel, kit, guns and Gear, about a year ago, and attracted a modest follow. For Mr. Charles, shooting is a strict hobby separated from sending messages on antigovernment and the other addition that some prominent guntube direct a parrot because they control engagement. Although, of course, he says, “Some of those things will crawl.”
Just a few days before the presidential election in November, Mr. Charles, accompanied by 10 friends, including one woman, most in their 1920s and 1930s, competed in the Pistol competition in the shooting club, which was recorded for his channel.
Mark Leeber, one of the officers of the series, has been shooting since the age of 90 and attributed the composition of his group “huge cultural change”. He said Youtube made sport available. The most important development, he added, was the changing demography.
“Much more African Americans are getting into it,” Mr. Leber said, adding that black women also appear more often. “In all age groups they take a different level of interest.” It’s an interesting dynamics because you know when I started, it was a bunch of white guys or white middle -aged boys. ”
Many Guntube channels are operated by men, but one – a tacticool girlfriend with more than 62,000 followers – is operated by a trans woman who hides her identity because she is wary of persecution. In the video last autumn, Guntube called a “very toxic place” that is “full of machism and various bigotry”, nodded at the municipal guard, which exceeds sex and builds the army of the army against a civilian background in terms of knowledge.
“But I really want to see more people who do this job of groups that are not usually seen in shooting strains.
Continuation of 2009 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare attracted Tim Stuckey, a steel mill worker, to shooting and finally to his own channel, equipment and weapons that began in 2022. He grew to more than 9,000 followers.
“Then it just passed from like Nerf Guns to BB Guns, and then I was more interested in what my dad had, which was his shotgun,” said Mr. Stuckey, 24.
Mr. Stuckey’s channel includes content, such as how to combine the AR-15 or choose the right range. In October he received the first payment of $ 219.23 for his videos. For Mr. Stuckey, who is religious and hopes to become a police officer, ownership of weapons, and the second addition are rooted in “life protection”. He creates videos to help other weapons owners learn from his mistakes, he said.
Mr. Stuckey’s growing popularity seems to point to a wider trend: civilians find space in a community that has once dominated people with military and recovery pedigrees.
In their Ranch Home on the edge of Fort Wayne, Ind., Grace Stuckey, Sister of ICU, she said her relationship with firearms was different from her husband. She was not raised around weapons. Although it was exposed to arms violence as nurses, she slowly appreciated the hobby when Mr. Stuckey poured a large part of his free time into shooting and creating content for his followers.
“I want to say that you have the ability to kill someone, so that is the back of the mind,” said Mrs. Stuckey, who sat in the living room like a pair rabbit, shmoogs, padded over the floor. “But I think it’s, it helps people.” Just like yesterday he showed me his little comments he gets on Facebook, and he likes, “I actually help someone.”
Ben Laffin contributed by video production.
