YouTube's New Policy on Gun Videos

The New York Times recently ran a story about YouTube changing its policy about allowing videos

pertaining to "the sale or manufacture of firearms and their accessories, specifically items like ammunition, gatling triggers, and drop-in auto sears". According to YouTube, the new policy will go into effect in April 2018.

As announced in October 2017,  YouTube had already made clear its plan to take down "video tutorials" about how to make guns fire bullets more rapidly via the use of a bump stock device. That decision was in response to a mass shooting that month in Las Vegas, wherein the shooter used a bump stock to rapidly spray bullets and take lives.  

The policy is not entirely new, but more of an expansion on YouTube's existing policy about dangerous or harmful content. In my book, Guns on the Internet,  forthcoming from Routledge/Taylor & Francis in August 2018, I include a chapter on YouTube gun videos. 

(I found videos using search terms like "bumpfire" and "bump stock", among others.) My specific interest in writing this chapter was whether gun-related video content should be protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, using standards such as those established through prior court cases. In other words, to what extent does the gun-related content of a video constitute political speech, or contribute to the marketplace of ideas? In a way, YouTube gun videos represent an intersection of sorts of the First and Second Amendments, with the caveat that YouTube is not a government entity and can enforce standards that are much more restrictive than Constitutional free speech standards. 

Source: http://blog.k-var.com/news/nssf-youtubes-policy-causes-concern/

Will the new policy mainly affect commercial operations like GlockStore, or will individuals -- gun owner YouTubers -- be impacted as well? On the blog of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the new policy is, unsurprisingly, decried as "censorship". 

My guess would be that the policy will not be uniformly enforced. Will YouTube staff do searches on words like "bumpfire" and "bumpfiring" and remove each and every video with those words in the tagline? That might be in the tens of thousands of videos. They could do this, but then YouTubers may simply switch to other synonyms (e.g., "rapid fire shooting with __________" [fill in name of gun]).

Time will tell how much of an impact YouTube's new policy will make. 

Florida's New Gun Control Law

As many folks know, this month the Florida legislature passed, and Governor Rick Scott signed, a new gun control law in response to a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Image source: www.thestreet.com/story/14488770/1/

police-deal-with-active-shooter-at-parkland-fl-high-school.html

The new law establishes a waiting period of 3 days, or until a background check is conducted, with some exceptions (e.g., police officers, members of the military). It also raised the minimum age for buying a gun to 21 years old (up from 18 years); included provisions to allow school personnel to be armed; and banned bumpstock, even though no bumpstocks were used in the Parkland shooting. Bumpstock was used a few months earlier in a Las Vegas mass shooting. (For the record, a gun owner doesn't need a bumpstock to bump-fire, but that's another conversation.)

As the New York Times and other news outlets made clear, Florida's new law didn't cover other areas, such as banning specific types of guns (e.g., AR-15s), strengthening background checks, or banning so-called "high capacity" magazines that can hold upwards of 100 bullets. Gun owners will often complain that bans of magazines that hold a certain (high) number of bullets won't do much good, due to shooters simply being able to quickly reload -- as is shown here and here. Some of these points are outlined in this video by Colion Noir. The new law also didn't touch the issue of guns being left in and subsequently stolen from cars. 

Shortly after the new law went into effect, the National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit to stop it. 

Will the new law be effective? Will it prevent future shootings and keep schools safer? As Pam Bondi of Florida's Office of the Attorney General wrote in a statement, the bill is "not perfect, and sadly it will not bring back the 17 lives lost in the horrific school shooting, but the safety of our children is not a political issue - it's simply the right thing to do."

Time will tell.

The Most Surreal Photo

It happened yesterday. 

(Source: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/03/01/mobapp-sen-dianne-feinstein-giddy-trump-gun-bill.cnn)

On February 28, 2018, Presi-dent Trump hosted a televised bi-partisan meeting to discuss gun control legislation in response to yet another mass shooting, this one at a high school in Parkland, Florida. As CNN described it, Senator Feinstein "erupted with glee" at the President's seeming embrace of a variety of gun control measures.  Banning bumpstocks. Expanding background checks. Taking guns away <gasp!> from people who are seemingly dangerous and/or suffer from a mental illness. This about-face from a POTUS who was elected with great support from gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA). 

Unsurprising-ly, gun rights groups have pushed back. NRA spokes-person Dana Loesch announced that the NRA "doesn't back any ban" on semi-automatic firearms. The Gun Owners of America just today (3/1/18) issued a Current Action Alert that "Yesterday was a horrible day for the Second Amendment"; called the President the "Gun-Grabber-in Chief"; and called on its members to "call the President immediately", listing a phone number. 

But it was the photo of the President next to a gleeful Senator Feinstein - showing him documents, POTUS nodding in agreement - that really struck me. I suspect I'm not alone in this.

How much do gun rights groups and members hate Dianne Feinstein? A lot. In fact, in visiting a story posted at Breitbart.com about Trump's February 28th gun control  meeting, I found this ad (shown above) with a picture of the Senator holding a rifle alongside the question, "Oppose gun control?" On its blog, the Gun Owners of America has a post entitled "Hypocrisy... I name thee Feinstein."

In yesterday's meeting, President Trump chided Republican Senator Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) for being "afraid of the NRA". Toomey was a co-sponsor, along with Democrat Joe Manchin (West Virginia), of the Manchin-Toomey amendment, written in 2013 in consultation with the NRA on the request of President Obama in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting. The Manchin-Toomey amendment ultimately failed to pass in the Senate, coming up several votes short. And yet President Trump has breathed new life into it. Who'd have thought?

Back to the President's comment about legislators being afraid of the NRA - yes, they are. We all know this, and so does the gun lobby. (Remember Senator Marco Rubio ducking & dodging a Parkland student's question about not taking any more NRA money? Three words: painful to watch.) After the Manchin-Toomey bill's defeat in 2013, Senator Manchin stopped talking about the bill or gun control. Back in 2015 I reached out to him via Facebook about the bill, in connection to a book I was writing (Guns on the Internet; due out from Taylor-Francis/Rouledge in fall 2018). He never responded. I suppose that makes sense. The NRA took out an ad against him, "Tell Manchin to Stand with West Virginia". "Manchin is working with President Obama and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. Concerned? You should be. Tell Senator Manchin to honor his commitment to the Second Amendment", the ad's narrator intones. And who can forget a decade earlier, gun rights advocate Charleton Heston taking aim (pun intended) at Presidential candidate Al Gore at a NRA convention for his (Gore's) gun control stance. "For everyone within the sound of my voice, to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS" [rifle raised above his head]. The convention crowd subsequently erupted in applause.

As some have asked, will Trump be the POTUS who - ironically - disrupts the legislators-gun lobby relationship, and brings about gun control measures? Something his much-hated-by-the-gun-lobby predecessor couldn't claim by the end of his eight years?

Well... let's see what tomorrow brings. I'd say it's 50-50 that tomorrow POTUS is back to pushing for arming teachers.