On July 13, 2024, a gunman fired multiple shots at former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump was mildly injured, as one bullet grazed his right ear. One rally attendee was killed and two others were critically injured. The assassination attempt shook United States civilians and politicians alike, on both sides of the political aisle. Days after the event took place, there are still so many questions about the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was also killed during the event. But one of the larger conversations sparked by this tragedy actually had to do with what Crooks was wearing.
According to the BBC, at the time of the shooting, Crooks was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Demolition Ranch.” Demolition Ranch is a YouTube channel that shares content about guns and explosives, with most of its videos getting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views. To many, this T-shirt points to a larger concern about gun culture in America, especially among young people who spend a ton of time consuming content on the internet.
Demolition Ranch’s channel has over 11 million subscribers and 2 billion views as of July 2024, with videos featuring information about firearms and demonstrations of military-grade weapons in use. And although the channel’s “about” section reads, “not your average gun channel,” it is actually far from being the only channel with this type of content.
In fact, “GunTube,” as this subsect of internet content is known, is quite prevalent, and has been around for a while.
What is GunTube?
Like many subcultures that exist on the internet — think “Bookstagrammers” or “RushTok” — GunTube is a corner of content creation made by, and for, firearm fanatics. According to a report from Mother Jones, while the majority of GunTube’s content focuses on the weapons, some accounts also weave in themes of capitalism, right-wing ideology, and Christian nationalism.
Like Demolition Ranch, many GunTube creators have millions of subscribers who watch their content, which can cover anything and everything related to firearms, including how to use them, modify them, or “win gunfights.” Many accounts link out to websites where users can actually purchase weapons.
Concerningly, there is even content about how to do super-illegal things like assembling “ghost guns,” aka homemade guns that are put together by separately purchased pieces, which makes them untraceable — and although YouTube tightened its terms of service in an effort to keep these types of videos off its platform, many videos are still accessible and continue to rack up views, according to NBC News.
Statistically, Gen Z wants stricter gun laws — so why is GunTube so popular?
According to Statista, as of May 2022, 96% of Gen Zers had a YouTube account. And per SimilarWeb, more than 56.% of YouTube’s audience are either millennial or Gen Z. So, while there isn’t an exact breakdown of the ages of people who are on GunTube, it’s safe to draw the conclusion that at least a large chunk of the audience is made up of young people.
This may seem puzzling to some, considering gun control is one of the top issues concerning Gen Zers in the U.S. In two Her Campus surveys of Gen Zers about the upcoming presidential election — one conducted in late 2023 and another in the spring of 2024 — gun control was ranked the second-most important political issue among those who participated (right behind reproductive rights). This shouldn’t be a surprise; Gen Zers have grown up in a world where mass shootings are, unfortunately, extremely common. March For Our Lives, an organization created after the 2018 Parkland shooting, was co-founded by Gen Z students who hoped to make a difference, and many Gen Z political leaders in federal and state governments have centered their platforms around promoting gun control to prevent further tragedies.
But Gen Z, like every other generation, is not a monolith. Even though many Gen Zers have been publicly fighting for gun control, other members of the generation feel otherwise. In fact, a 2022 study published in Pediatrics found that the handgun ownership rate among adolescents rose by 41% between 2002 and 2019. For some, guns are baked into their culture. A 2023 study by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that youth from rural areas tend to perceive guns as “a fact of life.” As such, it would make sense that many of these Gen Zers who have interest in firearms would at least be curious about — if not active viewers of — the content shared on GunTube.
Is there a safe way for GunTube to exist?
On July 15, Matt Carriker, the man behind the Demolition Ranch YouTube channel, posted a video addressing Crooks wearing his business’ shirt during the shooting. “We were shocked and confused to find this out,” Carriker said, while clarifying that he did not know, nor was he affiliated with, Crooks, and that he must have purchased the shirt online, like many other fans of the channel have. “This channel is never meant to incite violence or hate.”
Still, the question has to be asked whether the glorified gun content found online plays a role in people like Crooks committing acts of violence. Gun violence is considered an epidemic by many health and safety experts in the United States. And while there is currently no research to confirm the theory that specifically watching GunTube videos leads to individuals committing gun violence, childhood exposure to gun violence (in real life or in fiction) has been shown to increase the risk of violent behavior in adulthood, according to a 2021 study from the University of Michigan. At the very least, these videos are not just normalizing the use of lethal weapons, but also making it easier than ever for young people to access information about them — including how to use them.
The world may never definitively know Crooks’ motivation for committing such violent acts at that Trump rally, but there are certainly patterns that lead to the U.S. being such an outlier among other countries when it comes to gun violence. GunTube, appears to be both a symptom and reflection of the pro-gun culture in America — and as such, it’s hard to unsee the potential links between GunTube and the destructive acts of violence that happen all too often in this country.