The National Shooting Sports Federation recently spoke out about its take on the YouTube fiasco. Unsurprisingly, it’s not thrilled with the video-sharing website’s desire to kill certain content.

YouTube’s announcement this week of a new firearms content policy is troubling. We suspect it will be interpreted to block much more content than the stated goal of firearms and certain accessory sales. Especially worrisome is the potential for blocking educational content that serves an instructional and skill-building purpose. YouTube’s policy announcement has also served to invite political activists to flood their review staff with complaints about any video to which they may proffer manufactured outrage.

Much like Facebook, YouTube now acts as a virtual public square. The exercise of what amounts to censorship, then, can legitimately be viewed as the stifling of commercial free speech, which has constitutional protection. Such actions also impinge on the Second Amendment.

Facebook Precedent

In what we see as a parallel situation, Facebook has repeatedly shut down the pages of legitimate and reputable firearms retailers that were following Facebook’s own rules. The interpretation depended on the reviewers, the vast majority of whom have little familiarity with our business practices, let alone our products, and many of whom do not even do their work from American soil.

Both First and Second Amendment rights are essential to the liberty we enjoy as American citizens. In a very real sense, the de facto curtailment of First Amendment right of its firearm related business users, YouTube is edging toward simultaneously infringing upon the Second Amendment rights of the customers of these affected businesses.

Commerce in Firearms is Essential

As Circuit Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote in his 36-page opinion, “Our forefathers recognized that the prohibition of commerce in firearms worked to undermine the right to keep and bear arms.”

This argument can be logically extended to social media platforms. It is time that social media platform management realizes its broader collective responsibility since it commands so much of today’s virtual public square. Suppressing the expression of First Amendment protected political speech and of commercial speech is wrong, even if they think they are acting in the public interest. The resulting impingement of lawful commerce in firearms that brings with it the infringement of Second Amendment rights is equally wrong and it should stop.

Tell YouTube that this new policy is a cause for concern. Ask that its implementation and review process be fair, fully informed and respectful of your business. Please be polite and remember that the person on the other end will likely know little about firearms. Provide comments directly to YouTube.

It’s worth noting that as a private organization, YouTube is free to make whatever rules it wants. However, it’s not immune from the ramifications of those actions.

This act by YouTube may not be government censorship, but it is censorship. And it’s just as wrong as if Uncle Sam did it.

If YouTube wants to restrict certain kinds of speech on its platform, then they have to understand how that precedent will be turned around on them. Soon, people will be pressuring YouTube to quell all kinds of other speech, speech that some people find offensive but not everyone. And some of that will come from each side, and for understandable reasons.

But more than anything, they’re encouraging the growth of new, freer options. They’re laying the seeds for their own destruction, and they’ve also removed any incentive for any of us to give a flip.