FPS Russia (courtesy dailydot.com)

TTAG’s in it to win it. Every single damn day of the year we’re here, blogging our brains out on your behalf. Truth be told, we’re obsessives obsessed with firearms. And make no mistake: we were born to blog. Hard-wired for the job. As our endless electronic marathon continues into its fourth year, we’ve seen the rise and fall of a number of competitors. Mostly rise. The gunblogosphere has been mirroring the rest of the firearms industry, surging from strength to strength. But some have fallen. One gun guy in particular has fallen right off the eMap: FSP Russia. Ever since person or persons unknown executed FPS’s business manager (Keith Ratliff), followed by an ATF raid on the FPS “compound,” our all-time Irresponsible Gun Owner of the Day award winner has posted less and less content. The faux Russian uploaded his last video four months ago. Given the extraordinary amounts of money generated by his site . . . what’s up with that? Our calls to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation have met with no new info. Anyone seen or heard of Kyle’s whereabout lately?

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72 COMMENTS

    • He’s been active on FB since as of last week. His last post on Aug 27th said

      “I recently filmed a new video with a shoot house, and hummer, Im filming several more next week, and beginning uploading after edits are finished. The goal is to get back to a REGULAR schedule but the last thing I want to do is stutter step or come back half assed again. Thanks for your continued patience!”

      He’s alive and kicking it seems. Or his PR person is at least.

    • That’s what happens when the ATF doesn’t like you. They shoot your FFL in the head and then raid your home. It is certainly not beneath them – given their past discretions. If Kyle had a dog, a son, and a wife with a infant, the ATF would have shot the dog, the son, and the wife, and left him the infant.

  3. He’s been on facebook last week talking about a few new videos he’s filmed, but nothing posted up yet. Assuming they’re still editing and such. Mentioned a bullpup 12 gauge, 8mm tracer ammo and some other stuff.

  4. I can only imagine that the unsolved execution style murder of a business partner, and I assume, friend, together with the notoriously dickish ATF gettting all up in your face, is bound to make one focus on things other than fun gun vids. Personally I would like to hear more about what is being done about that homicide.

  6. Who cares. His videos fail to entertain. I’ll take MAC any day for gun-centric videos that aren’t hokey and lame. He also consistently violates safety rules in his videos. Not cool.

    • Agreed. I sub to a lot of decent, informative gun channels on YT and FPS just isn’t one of them. YMMV.

      • Same time last year, every commenter on an FPS Russia post was crowing about the guy’s right to ignore safety rules and how we should all mind our own business. Now more people are talking about how, regardless of his what his rights are, he has a responsibility to not be a moron and expose his crew to unnecessary danger in pursuit of videogame-style gunplay. His videos are a gateway to guns like The Matrix is a gateway to Karate.

        It’s just incredibly sad that it took a horrific massacre and looming totalitarian gun legislation for us to finally pull our heads out of our asses and treat the four basics with the gravity they deserve. The Call of Duty geeks can have FPS Russia, but people of the gun have no business taking the fool seriously.

        • Well I wasn’t among them. His posts have always been lame and unsafe. I never, ever wrote anything defending his violations of the four rules.

    • +1 on MAC having better videos that are more professional and not “unsafe” like some of FPS’s videos. Sooner or later those unsafe practices (and the ATF) will catch up to you…

  10. It makes sense that if he’s been dealing with an ATF issue, he’d have more important things to do than make videos. Also, even if the ATF thing wasn’t keeping him busy full time, going through all of it would probably take some of the spice out of wanting to do videos.

  11. FPSRussia and Zombies lead to NutnFancy and TTAG.

    Without someone like Kyle, it’s going to be difficult to get kids from slave states thinking that guns can ever be anything but implements solely used by criminals and psychos.

    I hope RatedRR can pick up the slack, but there are only so many cell phones you can shoot before it gets real old, real fast.

    Instead of knocking FPSRussia, we should be putting our heads together to help him. He’s the best gateway drug we’ve got.

    • Yeah, I’m not a fan of his videos, but I’ll admit I watched them ’til I learned better. Now I watch MAC and Hickok45, and skim Nutnfancy. Among others.

      FPSRussia is the walking definition of a gateway drug.

    • Absolutely. Sure the guy does some outrageous and downright dangerous stuff, but it’s still stupidly entertaining. Glad to see him having fun with his guns—and making a buck off YouTube in the process. But haterz gonna hate.

      Besides, he regularly updates his Facebook page, so he’s hardly fallen off the map. Wishful thinking by Robert Farago, maybe?

      • Compared to his prolific output prior to last few months, and the fact that I don’t Facebook, he has effectively dropped off the map for me.

    • Before I knew any better i saw his AA-12 video and that lit a flame of interest that has since turned into a raging inferno. I’ve now got what the news would report as “An arsenal of assault weapons” and “Thousands of rounds of ammo”, a CCW in a constitutional carry state (I like getting out of the gun stores quickly with my new tools and the CCW lets me bypass the NICS check each time), and belong to every gun rights advocacy group I can find. I’m now a safety nazi and love MAC and Hickok45 test out their lasted acquisitions. While I don’t advocate for his dangerous behavior, his presentation that guns are FUN were a giant part of my entry into the world of responsible gun ownership.

  12. Good, hopefully this yt channel and the other over the top gun channels and shows which are fun to watch(not really) but give the industry, and this great hobby and right a bad name, will be gone baby gone.
    Good Riddance.

    Watch Hichok45, an actual firearms channel that teaches us something about firearms most of the time and is not just about excessive madness like that fake Russian guy and his supporters who do nothing but give guns a bad name. Even us gun rights folks can be hypocrites. We demand our rights and respect yet some of us support the reality show mentally of guns that does us more harm than good. Thanks to much of the garbage out there not only do we have larger numbers going against us but we also are getting an influx of new irresponsible gun folks who just have no business with firearms at all.

    • People aren’t going to watch Hickok unless they’re already interested in guns. He’s really, really boring to non-gun nuts. We have to have someone preaching to the uninitiated.

      • I have to disagree. I learned a lot about firearms watching his videos when I was just getting started. His style is also very open and friendly, good for people who may be on the fence, as I was.

      • Well, guess what, Bleh? FPS Russia never happened. There, it’s not so funny now, is it?

        More broadly, if someone thinks obeying proper safety measures is “boring,” then we’re much better off without them; they’re eventually just going to end up on here as an Irresponsible Gun Owner of the Day, some innocent friend or family member of theirs will have an extra hole somewhere, and lawmakers will have yet another excuse to ram more emotionally-based bills through the legislature.

      • Who can pick up ANY gun and hit the 80 yard gong.

        When aiming, he does have that thing that goes up… and down and up again.. bang-BONG

  13. I don’t understand inter-blog rivalry. That’s like American Rifleman going against Guns & Ammo or Better Beagling taking on Hunting Houndsmen.

    • I also dont get it, and the arrogance of a lot of people in the gun world whether they be gun store guys or bloggers has gotten very old for me.

    • And while I like TTAG a lot, at least OTHER blogs aren’t taking advertisement dollars from people who want to pop up modal prompts to install Candy Crush on my phone every couple minutes while I read their sites.

      Seriously TTAG please vet your advertisements

      • I just block all the ads. Get yourself some of the plug-ins for browsers to get rid of the noise.

        The single best thing about being an IP-saavy guy? I get to program my computer to say “No.”

        • I am running adblock on my android phone. whatever it is, it gets through. obviously i dont have this problem on pc where ad blocking is easy. i am new to android so there is that. just extremely annoying tohave my PHONE throwing up modal advertisements that i have to dismiss. never happened with ios.

        • I don’t know what a “modal ad” is, but I’m not running any kind of adblocker on my phone, and I’ve never seen an ad on the desktop version of the site except the static banner across the bottom (of the page, not the screen), and the mobile version of the site has no ads whatsoever.

      • Gun writing isn’t a money maker. You have to either be independently wealthy coming into it, or you have a side career. RF was a journalist and has other blogs. Jeff Cooper was a Marine and instructor. Ayoob is a cop and instructor. Even the older guys like Elmer Keith had side jobs; he was an inspector at an arsenal during WW2.

        I don’t like the ads, but I know why they’re there.

        • I agree with both of the comments above me, but at the same time, ads should just “be there.” If they’re invasive and blocking content, or worse, have security issues, then those things definitely need to be brought to the attention of the site managers, so they can get the ad people to fix it. Ping [email protected] for that stuff. Screenshots are helpful.

      • You can “take the bull by the horns” and do your own ad-blocking (as well as “banners, 3rd party Cookies, 3rd party page counters, web bugs, and even most hijackers”) by downloading and “installing” (actually, just put it in your system subdir, there are how-to instructions on the page) this “hosts” file.

        Right now on the right-hand side of this page, I see white boxes containing, from top to bottom: nothing, nothing, NEWSMAX, Search TTAG, TTAK ad, FateOfDestinee, nothing, nothing, TTAG Gun Reviews, Recent Comments, tall nothing, Categories, Meta, Shooters USA ad, tall nothing.

        You’re welcome. 🙂

        • FYI: This hosts file is a searchable plain text file, which makes it a dandy tool for vetting ads. (a fact also mentioned on the page.)

          You can also sign up for an automatic heads-up when they update the file.

          Take Responsibility, folks!

        • Rich, that may be do partially to your penchant for frequently commenting on your own comments. You’re effectively having a conversation with yourself, and while that means you’ll never lose an argument, in real life that sort of thing tends to make people hug the far edge of the sidewalk when they pass you.

        • Matt: So, has any one of the folks who are always sniveling about the spam ads ever even LOOKED at the hosts file page?

          And the BBS S/W only allowing two levels of response doesn’t help much either.

          Oh, well.

  14. Maybe the murdered dude was the brains and organization behind the videos? Maybe Kyle is just a kid with the keys to the candy shop. Without adult supervision he’s not getting much done.

    Or just maybe the trauma of losing a close personal friend to murder was enough to send him into a tail spin. We go off on rants about how dangerous certain jobs are as compared to others.

    But I have lost friends and coworkers to accidents and to acts of violence. The moments of violence leave a deeper mark on you.

    • This right here. So you’re business partner and assumed friend gets murdered, and you’re just supposed to say “OK, back to work.”??? Different people deal with grief differently.

  16. He posted a few days ago on his Facebook page that he is currently shooting numerous videos He said that within the next few weeks he is going to be editing and posting the videos.

  17. I seem to be in the minority, but watching videos of other people shooting guns isn’t terribly entertaining to me. Guy fiddles with camera and gun for a little while, then there’s a big bang, something far away blows up or falls over, and that’s it. Shooting is an incredibly fun activity, but watching someone else shoot is dreadfully dull.

    • That’s how I feel about golf. As for guns, these guys shoot guns that I never will, heck they shoot guns when I can’t find or afford ammo, so it has a passing interest.

    • To a certain extent I agree that it’s like watching golf. However, I don’t watch golf or gun vids indiscriminately. I’ll watch certain golfers or certain matches. Likewise I watch a limited number of gun vids sorting by who does them (Paul, Hickock, MAC, Noir, to mention a few of my subscriptions) and if the topic interests me, but by no means do I watch all of their output. However I do appreciate the time and effort that goes into the videos that I choose to watch.

      Was never a fan of FPS, though.

      • I don’t know if I’m weird or something (well, I know I am, but that’s a different story) but I’ve immensely enjoyed our friendly “professional Russian” doing crazy sh!t with extreme guns. And he does always say, “Kids, I’m a professional Russian, so don’t try this at home.”

        I especially enjoyed watching that AA-12 full-auto 12-gauge with practically negligible recoil. I guess it appeals to my inner slavering knuckle-dragger. ;-D

  18. Not to worry, FPS is still making a boatload of cash on his channel. I know how much I’m making each month from my very humble channel and total views and let’s just say if I’m making as much as I’m making, FPS is making a LOT on his channel. Try seven figures for his total annual take. Seriously.

    What bothers me, as has been mentioned previously, is his flagrant disregard for any modicum of gun safety. We all slip from time to time and give one of the Safety Sallies out there something to grip about, but …. FPS is a poster child for “How Not to Handle Firearms and Explosives Safely.”

  19. Which do you expect we’ll see first?

    1. A new FPSRussia video;
    2. An arrest in the Keith Ratliff murder;
    3. The official police report on the Newtown shootings; or
    4. A documented, public visit by extraterrestrials to the UN.

    • 5. Someone else remembering that ‘FPS’ means “Feminine Protection Spray” from the bad old days of furry beavers, and their inherent stench.

  20. I oppose his persecution but could care less about his videos. Maybe if I was a twelve year old I’d feel differently. But hats off to him for making a living this way.

  21. I actually knew a guy that would go out on patrol wearing an OD T-shirt with a 10-ring target drawn on it with a sharpie, he was an E-5 so an E-8 came down on him so hard he walked funny for a week, probably saved his and his Team’s life(s)
    Lesson is: paint a target on yourself and PPL are gonna start looking for ways to Ping you (and your friends, co-workers)
    Bad JuJu- all way round

  22. Just putting in my own two cents, but I kind of wish he was not coming back. Mainly because of the way he handled safety but also part of me believes he was if not the one that pulled the trigger was at least there when his friend was killed, just because how odd the circumstances of his friends death was. I mean tied to a chair, and shot in the head execution style, is not something that normally happens (unless his friend was involved in some sort of crime organization), coupled with the fact that they have shot similar scenes for his video, makes it seem like it was suppose to be a staged scene for a video that went very wrong.

    I figure with out FPS Russia there more people are watching Richard Ryan, who is a more positive influence. On top of that he is friends with a lot of the famous big geek/nerd YouTube producers, and gets them to go out shooting, which is a very good thing for us. Even if those people never become actively pro gun, at the very least it will at least greatly decrease the chances of one of them going on record as anti gun or worst yet become actively Anti gun, because some of those other YouTube producers reach millions if not tens of millions of young people.

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