WEBVTT
00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:01.280
Guns are tools.
00:00:01.439 --> 00:00:07.200
They're used for hunting, they're used for war, they're used for repression, crime, and sometimes protection.
00:00:07.919 --> 00:00:09.759
What they're not is toys.
00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:11.839
Even so, guns are fun.
00:00:12.240 --> 00:00:15.599
Gun enthusiasts are out there, and some of them are even in this room.
00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:20.000
There's a market for guns, and therefore a market for gun content.
00:00:20.399 --> 00:00:32.079
And just like every other content niche, gun content has its own peculiarities, where the hobby and the content intersects with the economics, politics, and the contradictions of the real world.
00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:41.679
Today's episode is on a gun YouTuber who referred to the Nazi MP forty as the quote original ghetto blaster, alluding perhaps to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:47.920
He's a member of the white supremacist pseudo-history peddling neoconfederate organization, Sons of Confederate Veterans.
00:00:48.240 --> 00:01:03.840
He's also the Republican nominee to Texas's 23rd Congressional District, where he will represent a district stretching along the Texas-Mexico border, where sixty-four percent of the voting population are Latino and one in ten are naturalized citizens.
00:01:04.319 --> 00:01:06.560
Welcome to the Reaction Podcast.
00:01:06.799 --> 00:01:08.560
This is Brandon Herrera.
00:01:56.159 --> 00:01:57.760
Libkuk, Norway, yeah.
00:01:58.079 --> 00:01:59.439
Norway is famous.
00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:00.879
No, no, no, no.
00:02:01.040 --> 00:02:05.120
Norway is famous for actually being Giga Chad based.
00:02:05.439 --> 00:02:19.199
You travel on uh small rowboats and uh you throw medieval versions of Molotov cocktails at monasteries and then you sack them, but still using your short and long knives.
00:02:19.439 --> 00:02:25.439
While the Americans, even in the origin story of the American, he was using I gotta stop you though.
00:02:25.520 --> 00:02:32.080
This is a very offensive stereotype, you got Nick, because we actually own more guns per capita than the United States does.
00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:35.360
Yeah, but I'm sure they're trigger-locked and all that other gay shit.
00:02:35.599 --> 00:02:37.039
Oh yeah, yeah, no, except of course.
00:02:37.120 --> 00:02:43.039
They're they're for like hunting and the police have to inspect your ammo or whatever every six months or something.
00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:43.520
Yeah.
00:02:43.759 --> 00:02:48.719
You need to get like five notary publics to ensure that you have a gun safe.
00:02:48.960 --> 00:02:49.199
Yeah.
00:02:49.360 --> 00:02:55.680
We need to keep them in the safe exactly, in order to keep them load, locked and loaded, you know, in case a moose jumps through the window.
00:02:55.919 --> 00:02:57.360
And that's complimentary, by the way.
00:02:57.439 --> 00:03:00.159
In case anybody thinks when I say gay shit, it's it's insulting.
00:03:00.319 --> 00:03:01.840
No, that means that's complimentary.
00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:02.479
Complimentary.
00:03:02.879 --> 00:03:04.639
No, this these are sensible things.
00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:06.319
Sensible, yeah.
00:03:06.639 --> 00:03:27.120
Well when you when you when you look at when you look at the top 15 countries on planet Earth when it comes to uh uh ranking by civilian held firearms per 100 population, uh in the top 15 there's one, two, three, four Balkan countries.
00:03:27.520 --> 00:03:38.000
So uh I'm trying to say that you know I am I am also in the in the conversation when it comes to uh love towards El Boom Stikuru.
00:03:38.319 --> 00:03:38.479
Yeah.
00:03:38.639 --> 00:03:49.360
One of the things with like, and I'm sure that it's the same in the Balkans, one of the things with that statistic that's inflating the statistic in Norway is the sheer amount of rifles left behind by the Germans after the occupation.
00:03:49.919 --> 00:03:58.240
And those rifles, some of them were used by the Norwegian military post-war, and then some of them were kind of just allowed to be kept as like legacy guns.
00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:01.280
They're kind of just like outside the law a little bit almost.
00:04:01.439 --> 00:04:09.280
So like if your great-granddad had a you know a Nazi rifle, stamped with a swastika and everything, you kind of just were allowed to keep it.
00:04:09.360 --> 00:04:14.800
And I think maybe now it's at the point where like you're allowed to keep it until they find out.
00:04:15.039 --> 00:04:18.560
But uh yeah, that so there's a lot of those just lying around.
00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:30.160
Same same thing here, but it's more directly linked to a much more recent event during the nineties over where everybody kept an AK and a grenade or two somewhere in the attic.
00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:49.360
And it's and especially during the Yugoslav era, like every second guy was a fucking police officer, and then uh you know, Yugoslavia fell and nobody could uh keep up with all the pistols in particular, and almost every grandma has like three pistols from like two police officers from her family somewhere stuck.
00:04:49.839 --> 00:04:51.199
Yeah, two of her four sons.
00:04:51.279 --> 00:04:51.439
Yeah.
00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:59.600
Yeah, two of her four sons, and the grandpa has uh AK that he probably either used or bought very cheaply once the war ended.
00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:08.319
So yeah, lots of guns absolutely everywhere, but the path to legalizing them and getting rid of them is is is very, very complicated.
00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:10.160
So people just keep them illegally.
00:05:10.399 --> 00:05:11.439
Or or they get rid of them.
00:05:11.759 --> 00:05:17.600
I I was gonna ask because before we get going talking about Brandon Herrera, gun YouTube, and all that stuff.
00:05:17.920 --> 00:05:29.360
I think we should talk a little bit about like how we relate to guns, because guns are something that at least in the United States, is either a really fun little toy um or something really, really scary.
00:05:29.519 --> 00:05:33.360
It doesn't seem like, at least from my perspective, doesn't seem like there's much in between there.
00:05:33.759 --> 00:05:47.360
And for you know, us uh in Europe, in some countries, we look at like the amount of guns in the United States and how they're used and everything, and we think like it's crazy, but out up here, most of us do the same kind of stuff that they do in the United States.
00:05:47.439 --> 00:05:50.240
You know, we hunt, we use them recreationally, and so on.
00:05:50.639 --> 00:05:52.480
So how do you guys relate to guns?
00:05:53.040 --> 00:05:54.319
Well, I'll start.
00:05:54.639 --> 00:06:12.480
I'll start because you know, I my background is probably pretty typical of somebody a white American male, in that I, you know, I was a member of the Boy Scouts of America, and we had the shotgun and rifle merit badge.
00:06:12.879 --> 00:06:17.600
So I've been shooting before, you know, I hit puberty, to be honest with you.
00:06:17.839 --> 00:06:49.759
And people would hunt for sport, you know, where in in a lot of the communities that I lived in, where it was, you know, you would try to get, you know, claim a buck early on in in hunting season and you get them uh processed at the local butcher shop, and then you'd have your deep freezer full of you know venison steaks, and basically just guns and gun culture was not even remarkable, it was just part of the overall space.
00:06:49.920 --> 00:07:18.399
Now I've lived in cities and rural areas and suburbs my entire life, but to me, you know, being from primarily Pennsylvania, guns were you know normal, normalized, common, and you know, all of the uses, whether from personal protection to putting holes in paper to hunting for fun or even for subsistence, that was all normal stuff to us.
00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:27.279
And so, you know, I had that kind of background where it was no more remarkable than finding a fishing rod in someone's garage.
00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:30.959
It's the same in rural Norway as well, except for the protection part.
00:07:31.120 --> 00:07:38.560
That's the only thing that's vastly different from the United States, I think, in that it you're not legally allowed to keep a gun for personal protection here.
00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:38.959
Yeah.
00:07:39.199 --> 00:07:43.199
Pennsylvania is kind of interesting because it is like in the northeast.
00:07:43.439 --> 00:07:46.399
It's like at the crossroads of a lot of different regions, right?
00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:50.000
So it is in the rust belt, it is kind of in the northeast.
00:07:50.240 --> 00:07:55.759
So it represents the mixture of different perspectives on guns.
00:07:56.000 --> 00:08:01.120
And overall, it's very permissive compared to all its neighboring states except for Ohio.
00:08:01.519 --> 00:08:06.560
And so, you know, guns, it is a concealed carry shall issue state.
00:08:06.720 --> 00:08:18.639
So that means that if you go to your local law enforcement and they you could establish that you're a law-abiding citizen, they have to give you a license to carry, you know, a concealed weapon.
00:08:18.879 --> 00:08:24.480
There are very little restrictions on firearms that are not, you know, federally mandated.
00:08:24.800 --> 00:08:26.639
So it's pretty it's pretty lax.
00:08:26.800 --> 00:08:30.639
And I believe we have a castle doctrine state as well.
00:08:30.879 --> 00:08:36.399
Yeah, Pennsylvania is a is a castle doctrine state, which means we have no duty to retreat.
00:08:36.879 --> 00:08:46.080
If you're in your home, your workplace, or your vehicle, if somebody attacks you, you have the right to defend yourself using lethal force.
00:08:46.399 --> 00:08:58.639
And before, you know, I don't know if you guys want me to go down a rabbit hole, but basically, you know, at different states, they have different there's stand your ground states, there are castle doctrine states, and then there are duty to retreat states.
00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:08.080
So depending upon which jurisdiction you have, it re you know, you have different procedures you're supposed to follow before you're allowed to use deadly force.
00:09:08.159 --> 00:09:17.519
And there's been a definite um trend in America toward duty to retreat states becoming castle doctrine states and castle doctrine states being stand your ground states.
00:09:17.759 --> 00:09:22.080
Stand your ground just means that if someone attacks you anywhere, you never have to retreat.
00:09:22.159 --> 00:09:23.919
You could always respond with deadly force.
00:09:24.080 --> 00:09:33.919
Whereas duty to retreat means if somebody attacks you, you have the duty to flee, and you can only use deadly force if there's no other practical alternative.
00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:38.720
So you could still like you know pull your gun and make them aware that you have a gun, but not like use it.
00:09:38.799 --> 00:09:43.120
You could could use it as a means of like maybe creating some sort of distance between you and the person.
00:09:43.440 --> 00:09:43.759
Right.
00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:58.000
Like if I'm on the street and I see someone and they seem like they might attack me, and I, you know, if I just pull my gun and shoot, well then that would probably be legal in the stand your ground states, but not in the duty to retreat states or the castle doctrine state.
00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:08.879
But if I fled down an alley and I had nowhere to run and somebody chased me in there and they were threatening or I felt, you know, a reasonable fear for my life, then I could, you know, defend myself.
00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:14.720
And these, you know, this conversation that we're having is very American in its essence, right?
00:10:15.200 --> 00:10:16.000
Like, you know what I mean?
00:10:16.080 --> 00:10:21.200
Like, oh, let's imagine this scenario where you're being attacked and you need to respond with definite force.
00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:27.679
Like this entire mentality is is very American because most of us, this doesn't happen that often.
00:10:28.080 --> 00:10:29.919
Paranoid society type stuff, yeah.
00:10:30.159 --> 00:10:31.440
Yeah, it's very paranoid.
00:10:31.519 --> 00:10:37.440
It doesn't, you know, it I'm not saying that people are not attacked or robbed or mugged or whatever.
00:10:37.679 --> 00:10:38.559
That does happen.
00:10:38.720 --> 00:10:48.000
But the idea where you're in a situation where it's, you know, you or the bad hombre, as the as Trump would put it, is exceedingly rare.
00:10:48.240 --> 00:11:02.080
And honestly, it's it's this kind of paranoid, delusional fantasy that a lot of Americans and what gun culture kind of promulgates that has created a lot of the right-wing politics that we have today.
00:11:02.320 --> 00:11:22.879
Like the people occupying these fantasy spaces with so much of their free time and with their all so much of their like mental ruminations helps build a pre-political calculation that ends up with these far-right gun tuber type spaces.
00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:23.440
Yeah.
00:11:23.600 --> 00:11:26.480
It always comes back to LARP every fucking time.
00:11:26.799 --> 00:11:27.120
Yeah.
00:11:27.440 --> 00:11:39.120
It really does, and it's very interesting how this exceedingly American LARP also translates throughout the rest of the globe, because as we all know and often say on this show, we're all living in America.
00:11:39.279 --> 00:11:46.240
Um this conversation that uh probably the typical American has had at least a hundred times.
00:11:46.399 --> 00:12:12.399
Uh, I can proudly say, or not so proudly, that uh typical Balkan male has probably had at least thirty times this this uh rumination about potentially being attacked and what can you do to protect you and yours and your family has directly been taken out of out of this brand grander kind of uh conversation that uh that comes to us uh from the US.
00:12:12.480 --> 00:12:28.879
And that's the main reason why I, for example, know the very, very specific rules and regulations that exist in a country like Serbia when it comes to using your gun against, for example, a home invasion, as you guys would call it, uh, and so on and so on.
00:12:29.039 --> 00:12:53.759
Like these conversations were never really part of mainstream serious discourse, but there is a sense of identity when it comes to home protection that a lot of let's say men from my part of the world have almost uh completely like taken from the American cultural zeitgeist and tried to apply it at home.
00:12:53.919 --> 00:13:14.559
And you will hear a lot of, in my opinion, sometimes relatively insecure men that don't even own a gun, have these insane rants about hey, why if somebody comes into my house, like for example, if uh I own a firearm and I live in a house, and uh I mean, me personally live in an apartment.
00:13:14.639 --> 00:13:18.080
Well, let's imagine I live in a house and I have a car parked outside.
00:13:18.320 --> 00:13:26.799
If uh I hear somebody breaking into it and I go outside, I have my firearm in my hand, why can't I just shoot the motherfucker?
00:13:26.960 --> 00:13:38.720
And local regulations are very, very honest in their response, and the response is because uh the car's value does not equal the life of a human being.
00:13:38.879 --> 00:13:47.120
So while that human being being is doing something pretty fucked up to you and stealing your mode of transportation, you are still not allowed to shoot him.
00:13:47.279 --> 00:14:10.399
And I genuinely believe almost nobody would respond to that by unironically going re until the last 20-25 years, where most gun-related conversations have been kind of blasted through a loudspeaker from the United States of America and have genuinely influenced gun culture locally.
00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:35.919
Like my dad took me to shoot for the first time at like a local gun range when I was 14 or 15, but the logic behind why I should know how to handle a firearm was much more adjacent to like more recent like traumas of war, where like knowing how to operate a firearm was on the level playing field with trying to have two passports.
00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:41.360
So depending on which country is fighting which, you can show the other passport in order to get out.
00:14:41.519 --> 00:15:01.600
The idea that if you get forcibly you know put in the army when a conflict starts, the kids that have had previous experience with firearms, or in the case of my dad, and his entire generations had like their you know military service would be the kids that survive longer and so on.
00:15:01.759 --> 00:15:17.440
So his motivation was not linked to fantasies of defending the home or owning or epically owning a stupid burglar that comes to you and with a knife and says your life or your money, and then you take out the gun and blow his brains out.
00:15:17.600 --> 00:15:38.399
It was linked exclusively to a survival mechanism, or at least trying to uh give your child the best skills so that you might not have had in case uh you know horrors beyond the imagination start to spread in the country or the place that you that you live in.
00:15:38.559 --> 00:15:41.600
But that conversation is like completely gone now.
00:15:41.759 --> 00:16:11.440
I'm talking about newer generations, generations that were either pretty young during the war, like myself, or generations that don't even remember it whatsoever, uh, even younger ones, where conversations about gun culture are pretty much uh either treating them, as Freda said, as like collectibles, as toys, or for people that were a bit, let's say, financially luckier in life as a way to protect them and theirs, uh, and so on and so on.
00:16:11.600 --> 00:16:33.840
And this has created this entire ecosystem of trying to go through the laws and regulations uh that surround that are very that are not even that complicated, but somewhat limiting, that go around owning owning a firearm in order for them to uh to to be able to buy one.
00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:42.000
So uh I can see I'm just giving you the Balkan context or whatever, but I think to an extent it can apply to other parts of the world as well.
00:16:42.240 --> 00:17:07.440
I can see a direct shift between uh um a lack of ideation with firearms, but the knowledge that uh you need to know how to use it just in case uh everything goes to shit, more towards this very American ideation with firearms, which is again defend your home, or you know, collect them as these cool things that you shoot for sports.
00:17:07.839 --> 00:17:13.759
I mean here in Norway, it's obviously we don't have the same sort of like recent trauma and such.
00:17:13.920 --> 00:17:26.000
And it's also for us, it's not the the American style either, where like everybody owns a gun with either like fantasies of using it or uh due to some sort of like paranoia about these like scary people who are gonna come for you or that kind of stuff.
00:17:26.240 --> 00:17:57.680
It is maybe like the the middle point of these two experiences, uh, or maybe even like fur way further into the sort of like happy, go lucky, nobody locks their door fantasy land that Scandinavia is often portrayed as, where like most people here who own a gun that I know and that I know of either are hunters, sports shooters, or they just have an old Nazi gun from you know the old from the occupation uh that that was left behind, like their great-granddad or their granddad had, or something like that.
00:17:57.839 --> 00:17:58.640
And that's it.
00:17:58.799 --> 00:18:01.839
Um like I've got people in my family who hunt.
00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:05.920
Um, we you know, we eat like locally sourced meat, that kind of stuff.
00:18:06.160 --> 00:18:22.960
I have people like friends who hunt, and the only person that I think like that ever got that sort of American brain kind of imported is a friend of mine from uh school who uh who's awesome and like very cool, he's like left-wing and everything.
00:18:23.200 --> 00:18:30.559
But like when we were growing up, he um was very like interested in guns from like playing a lot of video games and everything.
00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:43.759
And he uh kind of started to like think along these lines of like you know anti-gun control arguments in Norway where gun control was like a completely different conversation.
00:18:43.839 --> 00:18:51.359
Now, granted, we had recently had a horrendous uh Nazi terrorist attack um occur in Norway.
00:18:51.680 --> 00:19:10.400
Um and uh the weapon uh or rather weapons that the uh perpetrator used, uh one of them being I think a Ruger Mini 14, which is like a semi-automatic uh rifle that has um I think it's like a small caliber, like pistol caliber uh thing, actually, uh I think, but I'm not 100% sure.
00:19:10.559 --> 00:19:16.240
But that weapon was specifically targeted in the same way that like AR-15s are targeted in the United States.
00:19:16.559 --> 00:19:27.440
And him being like a gun enthusiast started to like kind of hear a lot of these arguments because he wanted these guns because they're cool and you could own them legally at the time to shoot you know for sport.
00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:32.079
And I saw that and I was like, whoa, what's happening here?
00:19:32.319 --> 00:19:36.000
And I was really deeply afraid that it was gonna sort of pull him to the right.
00:19:36.160 --> 00:19:52.640
I'm very lucky that that didn't happen, that he had people around him, uh including me, but to a greater extent other people, who kind of like helped him navigate everything, and he's now like a guy who owns a bunch of guns, but is still like deeply left-wing, which I think is really cool.
00:19:52.960 --> 00:20:07.359
You know, one of the things about gun culture in America is is that it has been used as a wedge issue to drive blue-collar, you know, what we call ancestral Democrat labor voters to the right.
00:20:07.519 --> 00:20:20.400
Like if during the entire 90s, you know, you had this kind of stereotypical Pennsylvania blue-collar guy who maybe worked as a carpenter, but would go deer hunting with his friends, right?
00:20:20.480 --> 00:20:26.000
Or go, you know, sport shooting, who was saving up to buy an AR-15 for fun.
00:20:26.319 --> 00:20:35.680
And the NRA really was one of the major cultural drivers of pushing that kind of voter away from the Democratic Party.
00:20:35.839 --> 00:20:56.880
As the Democratic Party became more and more the party of the like educated urban white liberal, the upper middle class inner suburbanite, that's where they sort of embraced gun control as a unifying policy plank, and it kind of dovetailed with that cultural shift, right?
00:20:57.039 --> 00:21:11.440
And and played into the right wing's efforts to pull men and working class people away from the Democratic Party and away from talking about economic issues to you know cultural issues.
00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:19.039
It is a culture war conversation, like it really is, no matter how much that might piss some people off.
00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:25.200
And as and you'll learn more as we explore it further through the episode, but it really, really, really is.
00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:35.359
Speaking as one of these, like, you know, Pennsylvania men, I always was taught that guns were a useful tool.
00:21:35.519 --> 00:21:44.640
It was a lot of fun to go shooting, you know, good, you know, being invited to go hunt was really just sit around in the woods with your buddy and bullshit.
00:21:44.799 --> 00:21:59.759
You know, that was the the vast majority of the time was just having this occupation of you know being in nature and with your friends and and kind of reconnecting with the more wild parts of.
00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:07.759
Society just kind of doing a nature, you'd rarely, you'd you'd rarely, you know, actually get uh you know bag anything.
00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:08.799
Yeah, it's a hike, yeah.
00:22:08.960 --> 00:22:10.240
You know, maybe I was just bad at it.
00:22:10.559 --> 00:22:11.759
I mean it's the buildup, right?
00:22:11.839 --> 00:22:14.880
Like it's a buildup and the the idea that like maybe this time, you know?
00:22:15.200 --> 00:22:28.880
And and so what I'm trying to say is that this kind of cultural pivot is part of why we've had these, you know, the the successful de-classing of the parties, right?
00:22:28.960 --> 00:22:42.240
Like the Democratic Party, the the so-called New Deal coalition was pulled apart as this neoliberal politics was created, and they needed to have these culture war issues to declass the parties.
00:22:42.319 --> 00:22:54.319
And what the Republicans successfully did, you know, with gun control is they made it a kind of cultural thing, and you know, guns being associated with these more masculine pursuits, right?
00:22:54.559 --> 00:23:45.279
So being a Democrat was being in favor of gun control, which was a kind of an emasculating nanny state that was going to take away your culture and take away your fun, and it was going to control you, take away your rights, as you know, and so we're talking about that, and that is the the the kind of context of gun culture in America and how it's become so partisan, whereas in the past it wasn't, where gun control was simply a common sense public policy that people could, no matter what their political party was or what their political orientation, it isn't left-wing or right wing to want to regulate guns or make sure that people that have mental health problems don't, you know, acquire guns or make sure that a gun is not put into the hands of a small child who accidentally shoots their sibling or something.
00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:48.640
Like that is not a left versus right issue.
00:23:48.799 --> 00:23:57.119
That is kind of a public policy issue that everybody should be able to sit down and come to some sort of reasonable compromise.
00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:03.039
But politics necessitated these culture war totems, and guns have become that.
00:24:03.200 --> 00:24:10.000
They have become symbols of this kind of lost masculinity that so many men are grasping onto.
00:24:10.559 --> 00:24:10.880
Yep.
00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:35.279
Yeah, you you start out with a hobby like you really like video games, and the right kind of hooks you into a co-opted conversation about video games, and now all of a sudden, for me, a guy who really likes building, I don't know, PC gaming rigs and playing like the newest fucking indie, oh, two, three seconds pass, I now fucking hate I don't know, black people.
00:24:35.599 --> 00:24:37.759
Same thing with with firearms to an extent.
00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:58.480
You're somebody who likes going once a week and shooting at a bunch of papers or whatever the fuck you call it, a bunch of paper mache targets, and then two weeks pass, and now I believe that every communist needs to be shot in the in the back of the head because their vision of the world is completely violently incompatible to mine.
00:24:58.720 --> 00:25:18.720
They they take as probably our listeners I hope at this point have learned from the show, they take things that people genuinely care about and they kind of redesign them as culture war topics in order to pull you towards their ideology because they promise you that it's them.
00:25:18.960 --> 00:25:22.720
Trust me, it's them that are going to protect your favorite hobby.
00:25:23.279 --> 00:25:31.279
And also like it obviously when you're in the the hobby, they uh manufacture this like constant assault on it.
00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:44.400
Because that's that's the same thing with the gamers and gamergate, and it's the same thing with, you know, regular, real economic anxieties that are reframed as like, you know, immigrants are taking your jobs, that kind of shit.
00:25:44.480 --> 00:25:47.680
It's always gotta be something that is coming for something.
00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:50.400
You're you're always under fucking attack.
00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:55.119
And with every hobby, there's a content creation niche.
00:25:55.279 --> 00:26:03.359
What I'm going to keep calling gun YouTube is a niche of YouTubers whose content and online persona revolves around firearms.
00:26:03.599 --> 00:26:09.759
Think of it like tech content, like Marquez Brownley or Linus Tech Tips, but for guns.
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:16.799
Some channels are more in-depth in this regard about the technical details about firearms, and some lean more into entertainment.
00:26:17.039 --> 00:26:19.599
It's a very, very broad category.
00:26:19.839 --> 00:26:28.559
It includes stuff like Forgotten Weapons, whose content has more of a museum-like character, borrowing strange historical firearms from auction houses or museums.
00:26:28.960 --> 00:26:35.039
Another popular channel with a museum-like character is the Literal Royal Armories Museum in Leeds in the UK.
00:26:35.279 --> 00:26:43.359
Their most recent video is on a Vietnam War AK and is made in partnership with the first person shooter video game Hell Let Loose.
00:26:44.079 --> 00:26:52.160
Then you've got people like Kok 45, a pleasant old man who shoots at metal targets, bottles, and watermelons at his own firing range in the woods.
00:26:52.720 --> 00:26:55.200
He is an institution on gun YouTube.
00:26:56.400 --> 00:27:04.319
What separates gun YouTube from many other niches on YouTube is the degree to which politics very often has reshaped its entire landscape.
00:27:04.559 --> 00:27:07.039
These guys are making content about weapons.
00:27:07.279 --> 00:27:13.920
Weapons that are illegal in some countries or states, weapons that are used in war or other horrible acts of violence.
00:27:14.160 --> 00:27:24.079
Anyone who's familiar with YouTube or content creation in general knows that a lot of creators subsist off of ad revenue, but not all content is created equally in the eyes of the advertisers.
00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:33.119
Given the choice, an advertiser would much rather hitch their wagon to a family of logger, who has a still non-zero but lower chance of ending up on the news.
00:27:33.519 --> 00:27:41.599
When YouTube came down on controversial content in the so-called adpocalypse in 2017, it came down hard on gun YouTubers.
00:27:41.920 --> 00:27:52.240
This impacted everyone, and it led everyone to rethink their strategies in terms of funding and led everyone, including gun YouTubers, into the arms of sponsors.
00:27:52.880 --> 00:28:03.359
The difference is that whereas I might get paid to talk about a video game whose forums keep leaking US Defense Department secrets, these guys get paid by firearms manufacturers to review their products.
00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:11.119
And like so often is the case with content creators reviewing products, these reviews are just thinly veiled ads.
00:28:12.160 --> 00:28:18.400
This, by the way, is one of the ways in which the gun YouTube ecosystem is far more like tech YouTube than many people think.
00:28:19.519 --> 00:28:24.160
This became a fairly lucrative YouTube niche for firearms manufacturers for a while.
00:28:25.039 --> 00:28:38.240
On June 18th, 2024, the Gun YouTube niche took another hit when YouTube changed its policy to disallow content, quote, intended to sell firearms, instruct viewers on how to make firearms, ammunition, and certain accessories.
00:28:38.799 --> 00:28:42.559
YouTube shouldn't be used as a platform to sell firearms or accessories.
00:28:44.480 --> 00:28:55.279
This meant that channels which had subsisted off of direct sponsorships, affiliate links and so on, who were advertising guns or firearms accessories, had another one of their funding mechanisms restricted.
00:28:56.240 --> 00:29:01.039
The way they got around this, of course, was through the certain accessories wording.
00:29:01.200 --> 00:29:12.960
Only accessories that enable a firearm to simulate automatic fire, accessories that convert a firearm to automatic fire, and magazines or belts with a capacity of more than thirty rounds were banned from being advertised on YouTube.
00:29:13.519 --> 00:29:18.559
This is why Hickok 45's most recent video advertises special grips for pistols.
00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:24.400
It's still a gun product, but it's within the bounds of what YouTube feels comfortable with being advertised on their site.
00:29:25.359 --> 00:29:28.960
So despite their panic, the gun YouTubers survived.
00:29:29.839 --> 00:29:33.039
Corporations like YouTube are never proactive with this stuff.
00:29:33.279 --> 00:29:44.079
All of this is of course happening because guns, despite often being used as or portrayed as toys by the gun tubers, serve a real intended function and purpose out there in the real world.
00:29:44.720 --> 00:30:00.319
When they're used in violent street crime or acts of terror, they begin to represent something wholly different to those communities impacted than they do to these usually fairly rich gun YouTubers, to whom these are really, really expensive toys or totems of masculinity.
00:30:00.799 --> 00:30:12.319
Many of these guys are very right wing, and I feel confident in saying that the niche, when it comes to the guys who love to go out and shoot guns in tactical gear, is overwhelmingly dominated by upper middle class white.
00:30:12.720 --> 00:30:15.759
This podcast is 100% financed by you guys, the listeners.
00:30:16.640 --> 00:30:17.519
And we have to pay our editor.
00:30:18.240 --> 00:30:25.599
As such, you can find the rest of this episode over at patreon.com slash the reaction podcast, or just use the link in the podcast description.
00:30:28.880 --> 00:30:32.559
If you're already a patron and you're hearing this, you are on the wrong podcast feed.
00:30:32.720 --> 00:30:34.319
Thank you all so much for listening.
00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:01.280
Guns are tools.
00:00:01.439 --> 00:00:07.200
They're used for hunting, they're used for war, they're used for repression, crime, and sometimes protection.
00:00:07.919 --> 00:00:09.759
What they're not is toys.
00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:11.839
Even so, guns are fun.
00:00:12.240 --> 00:00:15.599
Gun enthusiasts are out there, and some of them are even in this room.
00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:20.000
There's a market for guns, and therefore a market for gun content.
00:00:20.399 --> 00:00:32.079
And just like every other content niche, gun content has its own peculiarities, where the hobby and the content intersects with the economics, politics, and the contradictions of the real world.
00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:41.679
Today's episode is on a gun YouTuber who referred to the Nazi MP forty as the quote original ghetto blaster, alluding perhaps to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:47.920
He's a member of the white supremacist pseudo-history peddling neoconfederate organization, Sons of Confederate Veterans.
00:00:48.240 --> 00:01:03.840
He's also the Republican nominee to Texas's 23rd Congressional District, where he will represent a district stretching along the Texas-Mexico border, where sixty-four percent of the voting population are Latino and one in ten are naturalized citizens.
00:01:04.319 --> 00:01:06.560
Welcome to the Reaction Podcast.
00:01:06.799 --> 00:01:08.560
This is Brandon Herrera.
00:01:56.159 --> 00:01:57.760
Libkuk, Norway, yeah.
00:01:58.079 --> 00:01:59.439
Norway is famous.
00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:00.879
No, no, no, no.
00:02:01.040 --> 00:02:05.120
Norway is famous for actually being Giga Chad based.
00:02:05.439 --> 00:02:19.199
You travel on uh small rowboats and uh you throw medieval versions of Molotov cocktails at monasteries and then you sack them, but still using your short and long knives.
00:02:19.439 --> 00:02:25.439
While the Americans, even in the origin story of the American, he was using I gotta stop you though.
00:02:25.520 --> 00:02:32.080
This is a very offensive stereotype, you got Nick, because we actually own more guns per capita than the United States does.
00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:35.360
Yeah, but I'm sure they're trigger-locked and all that other gay shit.
00:02:35.599 --> 00:02:37.039
Oh yeah, yeah, no, except of course.
00:02:37.120 --> 00:02:43.039
They're they're for like hunting and the police have to inspect your ammo or whatever every six months or something.
00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:43.520
Yeah.
00:02:43.759 --> 00:02:48.719
You need to get like five notary publics to ensure that you have a gun safe.
00:02:48.960 --> 00:02:49.199
Yeah.
00:02:49.360 --> 00:02:55.680
We need to keep them in the safe exactly, in order to keep them load, locked and loaded, you know, in case a moose jumps through the window.
00:02:55.919 --> 00:02:57.360
And that's complimentary, by the way.
00:02:57.439 --> 00:03:00.159
In case anybody thinks when I say gay shit, it's it's insulting.
00:03:00.319 --> 00:03:01.840
No, that means that's complimentary.
00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:02.479
Complimentary.
00:03:02.879 --> 00:03:04.639
No, this these are sensible things.
00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:06.319
Sensible, yeah.
00:03:06.639 --> 00:03:27.120
Well when you when you when you look at when you look at the top 15 countries on planet Earth when it comes to uh uh ranking by civilian held firearms per 100 population, uh in the top 15 there's one, two, three, four Balkan countries.
00:03:27.520 --> 00:03:38.000
So uh I'm trying to say that you know I am I am also in the in the conversation when it comes to uh love towards El Boom Stikuru.
00:03:38.319 --> 00:03:38.479
Yeah.
00:03:38.639 --> 00:03:49.360
One of the things with like, and I'm sure that it's the same in the Balkans, one of the things with that statistic that's inflating the statistic in Norway is the sheer amount of rifles left behind by the Germans after the occupation.
00:03:49.919 --> 00:03:58.240
And those rifles, some of them were used by the Norwegian military post-war, and then some of them were kind of just allowed to be kept as like legacy guns.
00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:01.280
They're kind of just like outside the law a little bit almost.
00:04:01.439 --> 00:04:09.280
So like if your great-granddad had a you know a Nazi rifle, stamped with a swastika and everything, you kind of just were allowed to keep it.
00:04:09.360 --> 00:04:14.800
And I think maybe now it's at the point where like you're allowed to keep it until they find out.
00:04:15.039 --> 00:04:18.560
But uh yeah, that so there's a lot of those just lying around.
00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:30.160
Same same thing here, but it's more directly linked to a much more recent event during the nineties over where everybody kept an AK and a grenade or two somewhere in the attic.
00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:49.360
And it's and especially during the Yugoslav era, like every second guy was a fucking police officer, and then uh you know, Yugoslavia fell and nobody could uh keep up with all the pistols in particular, and almost every grandma has like three pistols from like two police officers from her family somewhere stuck.
00:04:49.839 --> 00:04:51.199
Yeah, two of her four sons.
00:04:51.279 --> 00:04:51.439
Yeah.
00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:59.600
Yeah, two of her four sons, and the grandpa has uh AK that he probably either used or bought very cheaply once the war ended.
00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:08.319
So yeah, lots of guns absolutely everywhere, but the path to legalizing them and getting rid of them is is is very, very complicated.
00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:10.160
So people just keep them illegally.
00:05:10.399 --> 00:05:11.439
Or or they get rid of them.
00:05:11.759 --> 00:05:17.600
I I was gonna ask because before we get going talking about Brandon Herrera, gun YouTube, and all that stuff.
00:05:17.920 --> 00:05:29.360
I think we should talk a little bit about like how we relate to guns, because guns are something that at least in the United States, is either a really fun little toy um or something really, really scary.
00:05:29.519 --> 00:05:33.360
It doesn't seem like, at least from my perspective, doesn't seem like there's much in between there.
00:05:33.759 --> 00:05:47.360
And for you know, us uh in Europe, in some countries, we look at like the amount of guns in the United States and how they're used and everything, and we think like it's crazy, but out up here, most of us do the same kind of stuff that they do in the United States.
00:05:47.439 --> 00:05:50.240
You know, we hunt, we use them recreationally, and so on.
00:05:50.639 --> 00:05:52.480
So how do you guys relate to guns?
00:05:53.040 --> 00:05:54.319
Well, I'll start.
00:05:54.639 --> 00:06:12.480
I'll start because you know, I my background is probably pretty typical of somebody a white American male, in that I, you know, I was a member of the Boy Scouts of America, and we had the shotgun and rifle merit badge.
00:06:12.879 --> 00:06:17.600
So I've been shooting before, you know, I hit puberty, to be honest with you.
00:06:17.839 --> 00:06:49.759
And people would hunt for sport, you know, where in in a lot of the communities that I lived in, where it was, you know, you would try to get, you know, claim a buck early on in in hunting season and you get them uh processed at the local butcher shop, and then you'd have your deep freezer full of you know venison steaks, and basically just guns and gun culture was not even remarkable, it was just part of the overall space.
00:06:49.920 --> 00:07:18.399
Now I've lived in cities and rural areas and suburbs my entire life, but to me, you know, being from primarily Pennsylvania, guns were you know normal, normalized, common, and you know, all of the uses, whether from personal protection to putting holes in paper to hunting for fun or even for subsistence, that was all normal stuff to us.
00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:27.279
And so, you know, I had that kind of background where it was no more remarkable than finding a fishing rod in someone's garage.
00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:30.959
It's the same in rural Norway as well, except for the protection part.
00:07:31.120 --> 00:07:38.560
That's the only thing that's vastly different from the United States, I think, in that it you're not legally allowed to keep a gun for personal protection here.
00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:38.959
Yeah.
00:07:39.199 --> 00:07:43.199
Pennsylvania is kind of interesting because it is like in the northeast.
00:07:43.439 --> 00:07:46.399
It's like at the crossroads of a lot of different regions, right?
00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:50.000
So it is in the rust belt, it is kind of in the northeast.
00:07:50.240 --> 00:07:55.759
So it represents the mixture of different perspectives on guns.
00:07:56.000 --> 00:08:01.120
And overall, it's very permissive compared to all its neighboring states except for Ohio.
00:08:01.519 --> 00:08:06.560
And so, you know, guns, it is a concealed carry shall issue state.
00:08:06.720 --> 00:08:18.639
So that means that if you go to your local law enforcement and they you could establish that you're a law-abiding citizen, they have to give you a license to carry, you know, a concealed weapon.
00:08:18.879 --> 00:08:24.480
There are very little restrictions on firearms that are not, you know, federally mandated.
00:08:24.800 --> 00:08:26.639
So it's pretty it's pretty lax.
00:08:26.800 --> 00:08:30.639
And I believe we have a castle doctrine state as well.
00:08:30.879 --> 00:08:36.399
Yeah, Pennsylvania is a is a castle doctrine state, which means we have no duty to retreat.
00:08:36.879 --> 00:08:46.080
If you're in your home, your workplace, or your vehicle, if somebody attacks you, you have the right to defend yourself using lethal force.
00:08:46.399 --> 00:08:58.639
And before, you know, I don't know if you guys want me to go down a rabbit hole, but basically, you know, at different states, they have different there's stand your ground states, there are castle doctrine states, and then there are duty to retreat states.
00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:08.080
So depending upon which jurisdiction you have, it re you know, you have different procedures you're supposed to follow before you're allowed to use deadly force.
00:09:08.159 --> 00:09:17.519
And there's been a definite um trend in America toward duty to retreat states becoming castle doctrine states and castle doctrine states being stand your ground states.
00:09:17.759 --> 00:09:22.080
Stand your ground just means that if someone attacks you anywhere, you never have to retreat.
00:09:22.159 --> 00:09:23.919
You could always respond with deadly force.
00:09:24.080 --> 00:09:33.919
Whereas duty to retreat means if somebody attacks you, you have the duty to flee, and you can only use deadly force if there's no other practical alternative.
00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:38.720
So you could still like you know pull your gun and make them aware that you have a gun, but not like use it.
00:09:38.799 --> 00:09:43.120
You could could use it as a means of like maybe creating some sort of distance between you and the person.
00:09:43.440 --> 00:09:43.759
Right.
00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:58.000
Like if I'm on the street and I see someone and they seem like they might attack me, and I, you know, if I just pull my gun and shoot, well then that would probably be legal in the stand your ground states, but not in the duty to retreat states or the castle doctrine state.
00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:08.879
But if I fled down an alley and I had nowhere to run and somebody chased me in there and they were threatening or I felt, you know, a reasonable fear for my life, then I could, you know, defend myself.
00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:14.720
And these, you know, this conversation that we're having is very American in its essence, right?
00:10:15.200 --> 00:10:16.000
Like, you know what I mean?
00:10:16.080 --> 00:10:21.200
Like, oh, let's imagine this scenario where you're being attacked and you need to respond with definite force.
00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:27.679
Like this entire mentality is is very American because most of us, this doesn't happen that often.
00:10:28.080 --> 00:10:29.919
Paranoid society type stuff, yeah.
00:10:30.159 --> 00:10:31.440
Yeah, it's very paranoid.
00:10:31.519 --> 00:10:37.440
It doesn't, you know, it I'm not saying that people are not attacked or robbed or mugged or whatever.
00:10:37.679 --> 00:10:38.559
That does happen.
00:10:38.720 --> 00:10:48.000
But the idea where you're in a situation where it's, you know, you or the bad hombre, as the as Trump would put it, is exceedingly rare.
00:10:48.240 --> 00:11:02.080
And honestly, it's it's this kind of paranoid, delusional fantasy that a lot of Americans and what gun culture kind of promulgates that has created a lot of the right-wing politics that we have today.
00:11:02.320 --> 00:11:22.879
Like the people occupying these fantasy spaces with so much of their free time and with their all so much of their like mental ruminations helps build a pre-political calculation that ends up with these far-right gun tuber type spaces.
00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:23.440
Yeah.
00:11:23.600 --> 00:11:26.480
It always comes back to LARP every fucking time.
00:11:26.799 --> 00:11:27.120
Yeah.
00:11:27.440 --> 00:11:39.120
It really does, and it's very interesting how this exceedingly American LARP also translates throughout the rest of the globe, because as we all know and often say on this show, we're all living in America.
00:11:39.279 --> 00:11:46.240
Um this conversation that uh probably the typical American has had at least a hundred times.
00:11:46.399 --> 00:12:12.399
Uh, I can proudly say, or not so proudly, that uh typical Balkan male has probably had at least thirty times this this uh rumination about potentially being attacked and what can you do to protect you and yours and your family has directly been taken out of out of this brand grander kind of uh conversation that uh that comes to us uh from the US.
00:12:12.480 --> 00:12:28.879
And that's the main reason why I, for example, know the very, very specific rules and regulations that exist in a country like Serbia when it comes to using your gun against, for example, a home invasion, as you guys would call it, uh, and so on and so on.
00:12:29.039 --> 00:12:53.759
Like these conversations were never really part of mainstream serious discourse, but there is a sense of identity when it comes to home protection that a lot of let's say men from my part of the world have almost uh completely like taken from the American cultural zeitgeist and tried to apply it at home.
00:12:53.919 --> 00:13:14.559
And you will hear a lot of, in my opinion, sometimes relatively insecure men that don't even own a gun, have these insane rants about hey, why if somebody comes into my house, like for example, if uh I own a firearm and I live in a house, and uh I mean, me personally live in an apartment.
00:13:14.639 --> 00:13:18.080
Well, let's imagine I live in a house and I have a car parked outside.
00:13:18.320 --> 00:13:26.799
If uh I hear somebody breaking into it and I go outside, I have my firearm in my hand, why can't I just shoot the motherfucker?
00:13:26.960 --> 00:13:38.720
And local regulations are very, very honest in their response, and the response is because uh the car's value does not equal the life of a human being.
00:13:38.879 --> 00:13:47.120
So while that human being being is doing something pretty fucked up to you and stealing your mode of transportation, you are still not allowed to shoot him.
00:13:47.279 --> 00:14:10.399
And I genuinely believe almost nobody would respond to that by unironically going re until the last 20-25 years, where most gun-related conversations have been kind of blasted through a loudspeaker from the United States of America and have genuinely influenced gun culture locally.
00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:35.919
Like my dad took me to shoot for the first time at like a local gun range when I was 14 or 15, but the logic behind why I should know how to handle a firearm was much more adjacent to like more recent like traumas of war, where like knowing how to operate a firearm was on the level playing field with trying to have two passports.
00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:41.360
So depending on which country is fighting which, you can show the other passport in order to get out.
00:14:41.519 --> 00:15:01.600
The idea that if you get forcibly you know put in the army when a conflict starts, the kids that have had previous experience with firearms, or in the case of my dad, and his entire generations had like their you know military service would be the kids that survive longer and so on.
00:15:01.759 --> 00:15:17.440
So his motivation was not linked to fantasies of defending the home or owning or epically owning a stupid burglar that comes to you and with a knife and says your life or your money, and then you take out the gun and blow his brains out.
00:15:17.600 --> 00:15:38.399
It was linked exclusively to a survival mechanism, or at least trying to uh give your child the best skills so that you might not have had in case uh you know horrors beyond the imagination start to spread in the country or the place that you that you live in.
00:15:38.559 --> 00:15:41.600
But that conversation is like completely gone now.
00:15:41.759 --> 00:16:11.440
I'm talking about newer generations, generations that were either pretty young during the war, like myself, or generations that don't even remember it whatsoever, uh, even younger ones, where conversations about gun culture are pretty much uh either treating them, as Freda said, as like collectibles, as toys, or for people that were a bit, let's say, financially luckier in life as a way to protect them and theirs, uh, and so on and so on.
00:16:11.600 --> 00:16:33.840
And this has created this entire ecosystem of trying to go through the laws and regulations uh that surround that are very that are not even that complicated, but somewhat limiting, that go around owning owning a firearm in order for them to uh to to be able to buy one.
00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:42.000
So uh I can see I'm just giving you the Balkan context or whatever, but I think to an extent it can apply to other parts of the world as well.
00:16:42.240 --> 00:17:07.440
I can see a direct shift between uh um a lack of ideation with firearms, but the knowledge that uh you need to know how to use it just in case uh everything goes to shit, more towards this very American ideation with firearms, which is again defend your home, or you know, collect them as these cool things that you shoot for sports.
00:17:07.839 --> 00:17:13.759
I mean here in Norway, it's obviously we don't have the same sort of like recent trauma and such.
00:17:13.920 --> 00:17:26.000
And it's also for us, it's not the the American style either, where like everybody owns a gun with either like fantasies of using it or uh due to some sort of like paranoia about these like scary people who are gonna come for you or that kind of stuff.
00:17:26.240 --> 00:17:57.680
It is maybe like the the middle point of these two experiences, uh, or maybe even like fur way further into the sort of like happy, go lucky, nobody locks their door fantasy land that Scandinavia is often portrayed as, where like most people here who own a gun that I know and that I know of either are hunters, sports shooters, or they just have an old Nazi gun from you know the old from the occupation uh that that was left behind, like their great-granddad or their granddad had, or something like that.
00:17:57.839 --> 00:17:58.640
And that's it.
00:17:58.799 --> 00:18:01.839
Um like I've got people in my family who hunt.
00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:05.920
Um, we you know, we eat like locally sourced meat, that kind of stuff.
00:18:06.160 --> 00:18:22.960
I have people like friends who hunt, and the only person that I think like that ever got that sort of American brain kind of imported is a friend of mine from uh school who uh who's awesome and like very cool, he's like left-wing and everything.
00:18:23.200 --> 00:18:30.559
But like when we were growing up, he um was very like interested in guns from like playing a lot of video games and everything.
00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:43.759
And he uh kind of started to like think along these lines of like you know anti-gun control arguments in Norway where gun control was like a completely different conversation.
00:18:43.839 --> 00:18:51.359
Now, granted, we had recently had a horrendous uh Nazi terrorist attack um occur in Norway.
00:18:51.680 --> 00:19:10.400
Um and uh the weapon uh or rather weapons that the uh perpetrator used, uh one of them being I think a Ruger Mini 14, which is like a semi-automatic uh rifle that has um I think it's like a small caliber, like pistol caliber uh thing, actually, uh I think, but I'm not 100% sure.
00:19:10.559 --> 00:19:16.240
But that weapon was specifically targeted in the same way that like AR-15s are targeted in the United States.
00:19:16.559 --> 00:19:27.440
And him being like a gun enthusiast started to like kind of hear a lot of these arguments because he wanted these guns because they're cool and you could own them legally at the time to shoot you know for sport.
00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:32.079
And I saw that and I was like, whoa, what's happening here?
00:19:32.319 --> 00:19:36.000
And I was really deeply afraid that it was gonna sort of pull him to the right.
00:19:36.160 --> 00:19:52.640
I'm very lucky that that didn't happen, that he had people around him, uh including me, but to a greater extent other people, who kind of like helped him navigate everything, and he's now like a guy who owns a bunch of guns, but is still like deeply left-wing, which I think is really cool.
00:19:52.960 --> 00:20:07.359
You know, one of the things about gun culture in America is is that it has been used as a wedge issue to drive blue-collar, you know, what we call ancestral Democrat labor voters to the right.
00:20:07.519 --> 00:20:20.400
Like if during the entire 90s, you know, you had this kind of stereotypical Pennsylvania blue-collar guy who maybe worked as a carpenter, but would go deer hunting with his friends, right?
00:20:20.480 --> 00:20:26.000
Or go, you know, sport shooting, who was saving up to buy an AR-15 for fun.
00:20:26.319 --> 00:20:35.680
And the NRA really was one of the major cultural drivers of pushing that kind of voter away from the Democratic Party.
00:20:35.839 --> 00:20:56.880
As the Democratic Party became more and more the party of the like educated urban white liberal, the upper middle class inner suburbanite, that's where they sort of embraced gun control as a unifying policy plank, and it kind of dovetailed with that cultural shift, right?
00:20:57.039 --> 00:21:11.440
And and played into the right wing's efforts to pull men and working class people away from the Democratic Party and away from talking about economic issues to you know cultural issues.
00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:19.039
It is a culture war conversation, like it really is, no matter how much that might piss some people off.
00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:25.200
And as and you'll learn more as we explore it further through the episode, but it really, really, really is.
00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:35.359
Speaking as one of these, like, you know, Pennsylvania men, I always was taught that guns were a useful tool.
00:21:35.519 --> 00:21:44.640
It was a lot of fun to go shooting, you know, good, you know, being invited to go hunt was really just sit around in the woods with your buddy and bullshit.
00:21:44.799 --> 00:21:59.759
You know, that was the the vast majority of the time was just having this occupation of you know being in nature and with your friends and and kind of reconnecting with the more wild parts of.
00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:07.759
Society just kind of doing a nature, you'd rarely, you'd you'd rarely, you know, actually get uh you know bag anything.
00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:08.799
Yeah, it's a hike, yeah.
00:22:08.960 --> 00:22:10.240
You know, maybe I was just bad at it.
00:22:10.559 --> 00:22:11.759
I mean it's the buildup, right?
00:22:11.839 --> 00:22:14.880
Like it's a buildup and the the idea that like maybe this time, you know?
00:22:15.200 --> 00:22:28.880
And and so what I'm trying to say is that this kind of cultural pivot is part of why we've had these, you know, the the successful de-classing of the parties, right?
00:22:28.960 --> 00:22:42.240
Like the Democratic Party, the the so-called New Deal coalition was pulled apart as this neoliberal politics was created, and they needed to have these culture war issues to declass the parties.
00:22:42.319 --> 00:22:54.319
And what the Republicans successfully did, you know, with gun control is they made it a kind of cultural thing, and you know, guns being associated with these more masculine pursuits, right?
00:22:54.559 --> 00:23:45.279
So being a Democrat was being in favor of gun control, which was a kind of an emasculating nanny state that was going to take away your culture and take away your fun, and it was going to control you, take away your rights, as you know, and so we're talking about that, and that is the the the kind of context of gun culture in America and how it's become so partisan, whereas in the past it wasn't, where gun control was simply a common sense public policy that people could, no matter what their political party was or what their political orientation, it isn't left-wing or right wing to want to regulate guns or make sure that people that have mental health problems don't, you know, acquire guns or make sure that a gun is not put into the hands of a small child who accidentally shoots their sibling or something.
00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:48.640
Like that is not a left versus right issue.
00:23:48.799 --> 00:23:57.119
That is kind of a public policy issue that everybody should be able to sit down and come to some sort of reasonable compromise.
00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:03.039
But politics necessitated these culture war totems, and guns have become that.
00:24:03.200 --> 00:24:10.000
They have become symbols of this kind of lost masculinity that so many men are grasping onto.
00:24:10.559 --> 00:24:10.880
Yep.
00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:35.279
Yeah, you you start out with a hobby like you really like video games, and the right kind of hooks you into a co-opted conversation about video games, and now all of a sudden, for me, a guy who really likes building, I don't know, PC gaming rigs and playing like the newest fucking indie, oh, two, three seconds pass, I now fucking hate I don't know, black people.
00:24:35.599 --> 00:24:37.759
Same thing with with firearms to an extent.
00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:58.480
You're somebody who likes going once a week and shooting at a bunch of papers or whatever the fuck you call it, a bunch of paper mache targets, and then two weeks pass, and now I believe that every communist needs to be shot in the in the back of the head because their vision of the world is completely violently incompatible to mine.
00:24:58.720 --> 00:25:18.720
They they take as probably our listeners I hope at this point have learned from the show, they take things that people genuinely care about and they kind of redesign them as culture war topics in order to pull you towards their ideology because they promise you that it's them.
00:25:18.960 --> 00:25:22.720
Trust me, it's them that are going to protect your favorite hobby.
00:25:23.279 --> 00:25:31.279
And also like it obviously when you're in the the hobby, they uh manufacture this like constant assault on it.
00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:44.400
Because that's that's the same thing with the gamers and gamergate, and it's the same thing with, you know, regular, real economic anxieties that are reframed as like, you know, immigrants are taking your jobs, that kind of shit.
00:25:44.480 --> 00:25:47.680
It's always gotta be something that is coming for something.
00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:50.400
You're you're always under fucking attack.
00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:55.119
And with every hobby, there's a content creation niche.
00:25:55.279 --> 00:26:03.359
What I'm going to keep calling gun YouTube is a niche of YouTubers whose content and online persona revolves around firearms.
00:26:03.599 --> 00:26:09.759
Think of it like tech content, like Marquez Brownley or Linus Tech Tips, but for guns.
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:16.799
Some channels are more in-depth in this regard about the technical details about firearms, and some lean more into entertainment.
00:26:17.039 --> 00:26:19.599
It's a very, very broad category.
00:26:19.839 --> 00:26:28.559
It includes stuff like Forgotten Weapons, whose content has more of a museum-like character, borrowing strange historical firearms from auction houses or museums.
00:26:28.960 --> 00:26:35.039
Another popular channel with a museum-like character is the Literal Royal Armories Museum in Leeds in the UK.
00:26:35.279 --> 00:26:43.359
Their most recent video is on a Vietnam War AK and is made in partnership with the first person shooter video game Hell Let Loose.
00:26:44.079 --> 00:26:52.160
Then you've got people like Kok 45, a pleasant old man who shoots at metal targets, bottles, and watermelons at his own firing range in the woods.
00:26:52.720 --> 00:26:55.200
He is an institution on gun YouTube.
00:26:56.400 --> 00:27:04.319
What separates gun YouTube from many other niches on YouTube is the degree to which politics very often has reshaped its entire landscape.
00:27:04.559 --> 00:27:07.039
These guys are making content about weapons.
00:27:07.279 --> 00:27:13.920
Weapons that are illegal in some countries or states, weapons that are used in war or other horrible acts of violence.
00:27:14.160 --> 00:27:24.079
Anyone who's familiar with YouTube or content creation in general knows that a lot of creators subsist off of ad revenue, but not all content is created equally in the eyes of the advertisers.
00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:33.119
Given the choice, an advertiser would much rather hitch their wagon to a family of logger, who has a still non-zero but lower chance of ending up on the news.
00:27:33.519 --> 00:27:41.599
When YouTube came down on controversial content in the so-called adpocalypse in 2017, it came down hard on gun YouTubers.
00:27:41.920 --> 00:27:52.240
This impacted everyone, and it led everyone to rethink their strategies in terms of funding and led everyone, including gun YouTubers, into the arms of sponsors.
00:27:52.880 --> 00:28:03.359
The difference is that whereas I might get paid to talk about a video game whose forums keep leaking US Defense Department secrets, these guys get paid by firearms manufacturers to review their products.
00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:11.119
And like so often is the case with content creators reviewing products, these reviews are just thinly veiled ads.
00:28:12.160 --> 00:28:18.400
This, by the way, is one of the ways in which the gun YouTube ecosystem is far more like tech YouTube than many people think.
00:28:19.519 --> 00:28:24.160
This became a fairly lucrative YouTube niche for firearms manufacturers for a while.
00:28:25.039 --> 00:28:38.240
On June 18th, 2024, the Gun YouTube niche took another hit when YouTube changed its policy to disallow content, quote, intended to sell firearms, instruct viewers on how to make firearms, ammunition, and certain accessories.
00:28:38.799 --> 00:28:42.559
YouTube shouldn't be used as a platform to sell firearms or accessories.
00:28:44.480 --> 00:28:55.279
This meant that channels which had subsisted off of direct sponsorships, affiliate links and so on, who were advertising guns or firearms accessories, had another one of their funding mechanisms restricted.
00:28:56.240 --> 00:29:01.039
The way they got around this, of course, was through the certain accessories wording.
00:29:01.200 --> 00:29:12.960
Only accessories that enable a firearm to simulate automatic fire, accessories that convert a firearm to automatic fire, and magazines or belts with a capacity of more than thirty rounds were banned from being advertised on YouTube.
00:29:13.519 --> 00:29:18.559
This is why Hickok 45's most recent video advertises special grips for pistols.
00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:24.400
It's still a gun product, but it's within the bounds of what YouTube feels comfortable with being advertised on their site.
00:29:25.359 --> 00:29:28.960
So despite their panic, the gun YouTubers survived.
00:29:29.839 --> 00:29:33.039
Corporations like YouTube are never proactive with this stuff.
00:29:33.279 --> 00:29:44.079
All of this is of course happening because guns, despite often being used as or portrayed as toys by the gun tubers, serve a real intended function and purpose out there in the real world.
00:29:44.720 --> 00:30:00.319
When they're used in violent street crime or acts of terror, they begin to represent something wholly different to those communities impacted than they do to these usually fairly rich gun YouTubers, to whom these are really, really expensive toys or totems of masculinity.
00:30:00.799 --> 00:30:12.319
Many of these guys are very right wing, and I feel confident in saying that the niche, when it comes to the guys who love to go out and shoot guns in tactical gear, is overwhelmingly dominated by upper middle class white.
00:30:12.720 --> 00:30:15.759
This podcast is 100% financed by you guys, the listeners.
00:30:16.640 --> 00:30:17.519
And we have to pay our editor.
00:30:18.240 --> 00:30:25.599
As such, you can find the rest of this episode over at patreon.com slash the reaction podcast, or just use the link in the podcast description.
00:30:28.880 --> 00:30:32.559
If you're already a patron and you're hearing this, you are on the wrong podcast feed.
00:30:32.720 --> 00:30:34.319
Thank you all so much for listening.
