When I wake up in the morning, I tend to bounce around social media for a bit. I hit Facebook and X, then eventually I make my way over to YouTube. Whatever I'm interested in at the moment seems to litter my feed, countless suggestions that sort of look like what I've been watching, but mostly not. There are usually a couple of nuggets, though, so I settle in to wake up a bit before starting my day.

Unfortunately, today, one of the bits in and amongst the chaff of YouTube was this:

Someone once referred to Paul as Guntube's Mr. Rogers, and I don't know that they were wrong, necessarily. I mean, this is a guy so invested in going right by his audience that he literally apologized for dying.

I first came across Paul's content ages ago while looking for some bit of information. I don't remember what it was, but I do remember that in a world where so many gun channels were trying to be extreme and/or ridiculous, Paul was steady and subdued.

I didn't agree with everything he ever said. I can't say that I agree with everything anyone has said. Yet through it all, he still offered a voice worth listening to. There was never any desire to just dismiss everything he said because something was so spectacularly wrong.

Sure, some people didn't like his content, but until someone tried to drag him into drama, he mostly stayed out of it. He just did his thing.

Unfortunately, as he says in the video above, he knew his time was getting short, though he was unsure how short at first.

The gun community knew it too. Paul never hid that from anyone, and the gun community rallied. They wanted him to see his channel hit one million subscribers, and he did. He got the gold play button YouTube awards creators who reach that milestone. At least, he "saw" it. I sincerely hope he physically saw it, since the channel hit a million back around January. YouTube is notorious for taking their time sending those out.

Either way, the gun community rallied and I was proud to see it.

The channel will continue on. For the last little while, Paul's brother has been making content and while it hasn't gotten quite the traffic that Paul's older stuff got, it's not doing too badly, either. It's worth giving it a watch and seeing if you still enjoy the content, for Paul if nothing else.

It's not easy to make sane, sober content on YouTube and find success. The algorithm seems to favor people being extra, and yet Paul managed somehow.

I never got the chance to meet Paul, but I'd have liked to. For a while, I figured that sooner or later, the possibility might present itself to rectify that. It never did and I never tried to make it happen.

Now, it can't happen on this side of Heaven's gate.

The gun community is a poorer place today. I expect the coming days to be filled with videos from others on YouTube expressing their sorrow. Some will be sincere while others will be trying to jump on a trend, but YouTube's gun community is poorer still, and I hope all of them know that.