In a failed attempt to assassinate Donald Trump, Thomas Michael Crooks wore a distinctive “DEMOLITIA” T-shirt from the popular YouTube channel Demolition Ranch. This channel, with 11.7 million subscribers, showcases gun enthusiasts engaging in explosive stunts while avoiding overt political commentary. Host Matt Carriker emphasizes that the channelâs intent is entertainment, not incitement. Despite this, the broader GunTube community often contains covert political undertones, creating a complex landscape of ideologies and content.
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By Jack Crosbie
When Thomas Michael Crooks climbed onto the roof of a building near Butler, Pennsylvania, and tried to kill Donald Trump, he had a distinctive, gunmetal-gray T-shirt. On the back there was an angular gray eagle, stylized like the crest of a futuristic army. The front featured one word: âDEMOLITIA.â
The shirt comes from a YouTube channel called Demolition Ranch, which over the past 13 years has published thousands of videos featuring an almost uncountable arsenal of firearms. Crooks didnât leave many digital breadcrumbs, and his choice of the shirt, which retailed for about $30 from the channelâs online store, is one of a few clues about his interests or ideology.
As a clue, though, it may not say much. The politics of GunTube, the sprawling world of firearms-focused social media influencers, arenât always clear. Demolition Ranch, which has 11.7 million subscribers, deliberately eschews all but the blandest political statements about the Second Amendment.
A typical Demolition Ranch video will show Matt Carriker, the owner and host of the channel, and his friends shooting something surprising with a very large gun. They may showcase a specific weapon, a certain type of bullet or even a real-world scenario involving firearms. But the general scope is exactly as advertised: fun-loving Texans shooting very large guns at things they want to blow up. Watermelons are a favorite, as are every GunTuberâs top prop, a human-shaped dummy made of ballistic gel that can simulate a projectileâs impact on flesh.
âWe keep politics out of it. For one, itâs not my bread and butter, but also I donât feel the need to impose my views and beliefs on other people. This channel was never meant to incite violence or hate,â said Carriker in a video on his channel discussing the Trump shooting. He expressed dismay at Crooksâ fashion choice. âWe donât vet the people who buy our shirts, obviously,â he said. A week and a half later, Demolition Ranch returned to business as usual, posting a video of Carriker shooting tungsten carbide bulletsâmade and shipped to him by one of his viewersâout of a variety of rifles into steel body armor plates to test their penetration power.
Carriker didnât respond to a request for comment.
A successful YouTube gun channel can pull in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year through a mixture of ad revenue and direct sponsorships from a network of arms companies, firearms accessory brands and traditional direct-to-consumer brands that are willing to take the risk in attaching themselves to explosive content. Spending too much time on politics could drive away viewers, cutting into earning potential. Then again, guns are an inherently political topic in the US, and engaging in the culture wars has some obvious potential benefits as well. The amount of political signalingâand the specific nature of those politicsâvaries widely by channel.
Some GunTubers, including the wizened Hickcok45, have developed a reputation for more sober, responsible demonstrations of modern and antique firearms. Demolition Ranch and its peers engage in elaborate and explosive stunts. Other channels, such as GarandThumb and Administrative Results, have leaned into their hostsâ past military or law enforcement backgrounds, giving their shooting experiments the sheen of real-world expertise. Each channel has its own flavor and branding, usually revolving around a central personality and a rotating supporting cast of friends and assistants. Many creators are friends in their off-camera lives, and crossover videos, podcasts and other social media collaborations are common.
Some top influencers do incorporate explicit political signaling. Brandon Herrera, best known for his attempts to build a homemade AK-style rifle capable of shooting massive .50-caliber bullets, mounted an insurgent campaign for Congress in Texasâ 23rd House District, which covers a predominantly rural stretch of the state along the Mexican border. Running on a far-right platform that painted the incumbent, second-term Representative Tony Gonzalez, as a RINO, or Republican in name only, Herrera garnered support from hard-line right-wing politicians such as Florida Representative Matt Gaetz. He came within 400 votes of winning the GOP primary.
Dan Trombly, a researcher who studies political violence and right-wing politics in online spaces, says that even though many GunTubers lean right, their individual ideologies are rarely coherent beyond a âgeneral disdainâ for liberal society and for mainstream gun culture typified by the National Rifle Association, which many online gun enthusiasts see as corrupt and more or less spent as a political force.
Bloomberg Businessweek emailed more than a dozen content creators and firearms industry executives whose products have appeared on YouTube shows. Few were willing to speak on the record. Others spoke briefly and then ignored repeated follow-ups.
Many GunTubers express a familiar version of online politics, where any actual views are hinted at only through many layers of irony, trolling and humor. âThis is a common dynamic in a lot of right-wing cultural spaces in the US,â Trombly says. âYou have a whole mishmash of ideologies that on their face arenât really compatible, but they have a set of common enemies and a shared desire to overturn the stifling norms of the space that theyâre in.â
This subversion comes through in an almost constant stream of small references, often with incendiary or racist undertones, such as inserting footage of Black Lives Matter protesters into a video on urban survival in disaster situations, making quips about antifa and trans people, or professing an affinity for the brushstroke camouflage once used by white Rhodesian nationalists. The name of one popular GunTube channel, Administrative Results, is a reference to Executive Outcomes, a South African mercenary group founded by apartheid-era death squad members. The channel sells shirts with an emblem of a bloody diamond with the slogan âSierra Leone Geology Club.â
âThereâs a desire to show that youâre going to get that kind of âa bit naughtyâ with the symbols and the ideas you want to engage with without having to make a coherent political statement besides having a hard-line perspective on the Second Amendment,â Trombly says. âAt the end of the day, theyâre making money off of this.â
For many, the money is good, even as YouTube has shifted its policy on guns. In 2018 the websiteâs parent company, Alphabet Inc., started cutting off ad revenue for large amounts of firearms content. This move prompted a widespread and successful shift toward direct advertising and sponsorships in the videos, allowing creators to make money without relying on Googleâs own ad platform. Many of the communityâs largest accounts share a marketing representative, Leviathan LLC, which has helped to standardize prices for sponsored videos and maintain relationships between creators and firearm industry contacts.
Today, a gun review video on a major channel will usually have several sponsors. Many channels that promise unbiased reviews purchase the specific weapons they feature, while accepting sponsorships from accessory brands, ammunition companies and organizations such as the Sonoran Desert Institute, an online gunsmithing school in Arizona. Eventuallyâthe timeline on YouTubeâs specific policies is a bit unclear, even to GunTubersâAlphabet reversed course, allowing firearm content to be monetized again. This step was crucial, as the popularity of demonetized videos is harmed because YouTubeâs recommendation system doesnât promote them. âWithout monetization, your videos really arenât going anywhere,â says Mike Jones, who runs the popular channel GarandThumb.
In addition to having a policy that requires gun-related content creators to adhere to specific guidelines to keep their videos advertiser-friendly if they want to monetize their content, YouTube updated its firearms policy in early June. The new rules added an age restriction on content involving fully automatic or homemade weapons, as well as further enforcement on content that links to or otherwise promotes firearms sellers.
âThe recent updates to our firearms policy are part of our continued efforts to maintain policies that reflect the current state of content on YouTube,â says YouTube spokesperson Javier Hernandez. âFor example, 3D printing has become more readily available in recent years, so weâve expanded our restrictions on content involving homemade firearms. Weâll continue to work with creators to help them understand this update and how they might manage its impact on their channels.â
In June, YouTube announced a slate of rules including age-restriction mandates for all gun content and a ban on showing fully automatic firearms being fired. Creators immediately pushed back, complaining that videos requiring a login to watch often get a fraction of the views as publicly accessible ones. Demolition Ranch published a video in early July titled âEdging YouTubeâs New Gun Rules,â in which Carriker ran through a series of scenarios deliberately designed to test the limits of the restrictions (many of which involved a fully automatic AK-47).
Like participants in any content industry, GunTubers see controversy as an opportunity to attract revenue-generating attention. Conflict with Big Tech, absurdist stunts, military cosplay and dog whistles to the far right all function as effective marketing and branding opportunities. In mid-July, the host of Administrative Results, who keeps his real name a secret, posted a video lamenting his failures at self-promotion. He started with the attention Herrera got for his congressional run, saying that Herrera would âbe called a whole bunch of bad things in articles, even the videos I was in ⊠they never mentioned me,â before listing a handful of online feuds he wasnât involved in and noting the notoriety Demolition Ranch was getting after the Trump shooting. âYou know who wasnât mentioned? Me,â he said. âIâm thinking Iâm cooked.â He didnât respond to a request for comment.
For some creators, the signaling and bigoted language commonplace on many big creatorsâ channels are a distraction from the real issue: guns themselves. âThese terminally online, transphobic, homophobic, far-right people do not make up the majority of the gun community,â says Jordan Levine, who runs a social media and podcast operation branded A Better Way 2A. âYou go to a gun range, a gun club, and most people are just happy that youâre there and patronizing their range.â
Levineâs channel is part of a smaller network of influencers who attempt to position their support for the Second Amendment as separate from right-wing politics, often claiming that gun rights are integral to equality for marginalized groups. âWhen you have these figureheads who have these big followings and people who are latching onto their message, I think itâs an issue,â Levine says. âIt definitely hurts us overall if our goal is to get more people into guns.â
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