Wait — so there are gun influencers? 

There are a lot of them.

A sprawling network of influencers — including military veterans, demolition experts, gun rights activists, and professional shooters — have built large audiences specifically interested in firearms and gun culture. According to a 2020 report from the defense, weapons, and firearms marketing group Danger Close, the top 40 gun industry influencers across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter that year boasted between 400,000 and 10 million followers each.

Shifting toward subtler, grassroots marketing campaigns enables gun companies to both dodge the platforms’ ad policies and reach younger, more impressionable audiences, Koskoff said. “Advertising is so much more decentralized today than it was once upon a time,” he told The Trace. “Until the advent of the internet these companies had to market their products through parents — now that’s changed.”

The change has been a boon. Kyle Clouse, the head of marketing at the gun safe company Liberty Safe, referred to industry influencers as “the goose laying the golden egg” for the firearms industry in a 2019 interview with Vox. Their work keeps the companies top-of-mind for a target audience who might not otherwise see traditional advertisements published in industry magazines.

— Champe Barton in Why Are Gun Ads So Uncommon?

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45 COMMENTS

  4. “Why are gun ads so uncommon?”

    I thought they were a relentless, ubiquitous scourge warping the minds of our children everywhere they look? Hence all the stupid legislation targeting them.

  6. Buffman range on YT is great for a lot of oddball armor and ammo test pairings …..also watched with some nervousness from some agencies that cheaped out on equipment.

  8. lol
    It’s STILL going through parents.

    The overwhelming majority of the minors that might (maybe) getting influenced in either direction are ONLY there because the parents are giving them access by the computers, tablets, laptops, and cellphones. Sometimes this equipment comes from schools, other family members, or even government but it’s still being green lighted by parents.

    Now with that said;
    These people that are being referred to as “influencers” are primarily individual adults with a heart felt passion for a very American and totally legal activity in life not any different from other hobbies like classic car collecting. Biden too could be considered as an influencer just like AOC could be. Trump too. You can’t tell me that Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw didn’t influence people. Personally, I find this term to be born of the modern internet and social media and is just plain ridiculous. Just like this slang term of ‘boss’. I’m not sure how many people realize it but the absolutely ARE bosses out there that want the job but are vehemently against the concept of being referred to as boss. This to me is crazy. If that isn’t what you want then you have no business having that job.

    For The Trace to be just now recognizing all of this just serves to prove how out of touch they are.

      • I think you hit the nail on the head. This is just an extension of the left’s program to silence any political or social disagreement with their agenda.

      • The answer to that is to strengthen them by amplifying their presence. This is where I think TTAG (and other pro2A gun related sites) really needs to be providing a platform for people like IV8888, Colion Noir, The YankeeMarshall, Hickok45, The Gun Collective, and The Liberty Doll among others. Capitulating to the demands of the few companies in control of social media (who themselves are controlled by the Democrat left) is a social agreement to allow pro2A advocates to wither away on the vine (as it were).

        • They do have platform’s. I look at a few of your list every day. Mostly for information. Rarely for entertainment but then again I’m not an impressionable kid. It’s too bad a platform like Rumble doesn’t get more traction because fakebook & Youtube are fascist pukes!

        • @former water walker
          They would all get more traction if TTAG and others in the gun community would help promote it. I’m talking about working together to lift eachother. This is what happens on the left and why it usually feels like they are the majority when in reality they aren’t. The Democrat party has a unity and cohesiveness that we lack. I’m talking about changing that.

    • Prndll:
      Once upon a time I had a field installation supervision job, and it made me cringe when the millwrights called me boss. I think they were taught to do that to stroke me; it didn’t work. Anyway, both they and I knew that only “boss” around there was their blankety-blank union business agent.

      • That kinda what I mean.

        The person in charge us the boss. If the union agent is the boss then you become 2nd in command meaning your NOT the boss.

  9. “Wait — so there are gun influencers?

    There are a lot of them.”

    Wait — so there are anti-gun influencers?

    There are a lot of them.

    A sprawling network of influencers — including, well, they want to call them experts but they aren’t that really as they have demonstrated in every case in court in the last few years, gun control activists, paid-schills, paid-researchers-who-write-what-they-are-told-by-anti-gun-interests, pretend journalists, and other professional liars — have built duped and violent and emotional and grossly mis-informed audiences specifically interested in banning firearms and gun culture and the constitution and killing/injuring-if-they-can gun owners and dancing-in-the-blood-of-innocents-killed/injured by placing them defenseless in ‘gun free zones’ that grantee-by-law defenseless prey for violent mentally ill killers.

  10. “Nature forbid the enemy have equal access to the great unwashed…just who do they think they are? What, do they believe in some cockamamie bull-hockey like ‘free speech’ in our brave new world, or something? Perish the thought!”

    Or I imagine something to that effect.

  11. The only influencer I trust is myself.
    I generally do not watch videos. Some are so bad they are cringe worthy. I prefer to buy gun periodicals. Does that make them any better?
    No.
    But I just like them better.
    And, clearing out the gun room the other week, came across a pile of old gun magazines, some over a decade ago. Neat to see what was “trending” back then.

  12. “Kyle Clouse, the head of marketing at the gun safe company Liberty Safe…”

    We’ll, THERE’S one influencer who may have lost some influence…

    The nice thing about being “seasoned” in the whole firearms “experience” as well as the RTKBA issues for 50 years is that influencers, via advertising and glorification on other platforms actually have little affect on me. Guns, regardless of actions or calibers, as well as humans, regardless of race, creed, gender and political affiliation generally all work the same, and have throughout history.

  13. “Kyle Clouse, the head of marketing at the gun safe company Liberty Safe, referred to industry influencers as “the goose laying the golden egg” for the firearms industry in a 2019 interview with Vox.”

    Ya mean the Liberty Safe company whose leadership donates to the anti-gun democrats in congress, and could hopefully have a federal mandatory ‘safe storage’ bill that would have specified a safe that only Liberty Safe would make and maintain a data base for government use of ‘backdoor master combos’ for each of those safes (even though it did not turn out that way) where one had to give up their fourth amendment rights when they bought a gun by agreeing on a 4473 to the federal government coming in at any time they wanted to access the guns in that safe without warrant or cause (even tho0ugh in the end it did not turn out that way) and had to register your guns and prove you had the Liberty Safe safe (even though it did not turn out that way in the end)? Yeah, that Liberty Safe – the very company that says ‘buy our safes for your firearms to keep them secure’ while at the same time for years has been simply handing over the master code combination to law enforcement for any reason simply because they asked warrant or not.

    Not a real good example to use there.

    • Liberty safe is owned by an investment company. They’re not gun people at all. Eventually, they will go the way of Remington, which was also owned by an investment company, not gun folks.

      • The company that owns Liberty Safe, the management, is solid left wing and donates to anti-gun democrats, but Liberty Safes upper management is also solid left wing and donates to anti-gun democrats who believe the country should be under a tyranny.

        Despite their hype and waving the American flag around, Liberty Safe’s upper management is not 2A or Constitutional rights or America or Constitution friendly.

  18. I know a lot of people like the gun channels. I like them too. But I prefer watching the ammunition channels. More ballistic tests in gelas well as water bottles.
    The gun industry never matches the ammo to the gun and the mission.
    Lucky gunner and Gun Sam revolver aficionado. Are two of the best at ammo testing.

    • Reminds me to look and see if there are reloading channels…….and already figuring not many would post much beyond basic stuff for safety concerns.

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