Everytown for Gun Safety Releases Investigation into YouTube’s New Efforts to Stop Gun Sales

WASHINGTON — Today, Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund released a new report looking into changes made by YouTube after the company started to take steps to meaningfully enforce its longstanding prohibition on content with links to firearms sales, finally assigning strikes and channel bans when video creators link to or otherwise direct viewers to a firearms company. Around the same time, YouTube implemented policies to restrict some firearm content for viewers younger than 18 and ban videos that demonstrate modifications and features on particular firearms.

Everytown analyzed a large data set of YouTube videos uploaded by roughly 500 gun-related YouTube channels from 2023 and 2024. The analysis found that YouTube’s revised enforcement approach is making a significant dent in the problem; Between the announcement of the renewed enforcement of the prohibition on content with links to firearm sales in August 2024 and the end of the year, the daily average of videos with violative links was nearly a third lower. But despite this positive development, months after the supposed start of the renewed enforcement, thousands of videos that violate YouTube’s firearms guidelines were still available on the platform.

“YouTube has historically played host to a lot of dangerous and easily accessible gun content, and it’s crucial that they take the implementation of their policies seriously,” said Justin Wagner, senior director of investigations at Everytown for Gun Safety. “Just like a speed limit without traffic cops, social media safety policies that lack proper enforcement will be ineffective and ignored — and we hope that YouTube will continue to make the necessary improvements to protect kids and live up to the commitments they made.”

Read the full report here.

Key Points

• Starting in September 2024, Everytown compiled a list of more than 78,000 videos (including channels’ “shorts”) uploaded by roughly 500 gun-related YouTube channels from 2023 through 2024.
  • The descriptions of those videos were reviewed for links to nearly 90 websites that offer the sale of products listed in YouTube’s Firearms policy: firearms, high-capacity magazines carrying more than 30 rounds, or accessories that enable a firearm to simulate or convert to automatic fire.

• Everytown’s analysis identified 3,259 videos posted across 84 channels between January 2023 and December 2024 which linked to 50 different sites that sell items prohibited under YouTube’s Firearms policy.
  • Because the collection of videos began in September 2024 and continued on through the end of the year, that meant that the videos were still available after YouTube’s renewed enforcement of this policy was public.

• The monthly number of newly uploaded videos with links to sites where firearms or prohibited accessories can be purchased last peaked at 215 in April 2024 and decreased through the end of the year.
  • From January 2023 until the public confirmation of the renewed firearm policy enforcement in August 2024, there were an average of five videos with violative links posted every day. 
  • Between the announcement and the end of 2024, the daily average of videos with violative links was nearly a third lower.

• However, months after the supposed start of the renewed enforcement, thousands of videos that violate YouTube’s firearms guidelines were still available on the platform — and this is not just an issue of old videos not being taken down.
  • More than 400 of the violative videos identified were published in the few months between the announcement of the renewed enforcement and the end of 2024.

• Of note, three-quarters of all of the videos with violative links between January 2023 and December 2024 were posted by just ten channels.
  • One channel, Gun Stock Reviews, accounted for nearly one-third and even after the announcement of the renewed enforcement, was still posting a video with links to sites that sold prohibited items nearly once a day.

Over the last several years, Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund has advocated for YouTube to do more to make its platform safer. As reported by The New York Times, “in June [2024], under pressure from Everytown, a gun safety advocacy group, YouTube announced it would restrict certain firearm content for viewers younger than 18 and ban videos that demonstrate modifications and features on particular firearms.” 

At the same time, YouTube started to take steps to meaningfully enforce its longstanding prohibition on content with links to firearms sales, finally assigning strikes and channel bans when video creators link to or otherwise direct viewers to a firearms company. This is also a reform long championed by Everytown: These pathways to direct gun sales from guntube videos not only help the gun industry sell guns, but they help toxic guntube creators rake in sponsorship money from industry players.