Much as it pains us to say it, guns aren't part of everyone's childhood. While many of us grew up hunting in the woods or just making trips to the range with our parents, a lot of people never got that.

I, personally, think it's a damn shame, but it is what it is.

Yet the truth of the matter is that youth shooting sports isn't a particularly dangerous activity. While misused guns can be incredibly dangerous, so can misused baseball bats, but the nature of shooting sports involves a great deal of safety discussions and rules. 

Unfortunately, it looks like YouTube feels different.

“We wanted to let you know our team reviewed your content, and we think it violates our child safety policy,” an email from YouTube received Christmas Eve announced. “We know you may not have realized this was a violation of our policies, so we’re not applying a strike to your channel.

They removed a family video I’d just uploaded after converting a Super 8 tape of a trip to Butte, MT, taken back in 1993 to digital.  Why?

“Content that endangers the emotional and physical well-being of minors isn’t allowed on YouTube.”

Cue Gary Coleman from Diff’rent Strokes:

“What’choo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?”

“We use a combination of automated systems and human reviews to detect violations of our Community Guidelines,” the email informed, without informing me of what triggered the ejection. They offered a chance to appeal if I believed it was a mistake by clicking a link (with no chance for Q&A), so I did, and am awaiting their response.

It also included a link to YouTube’s “Child Safety Policy” telling people how to report objectionable/illegal content, including “Sexualization of minors… Harmful or dangerous acts involving minors… Misleading family content [and] Cyberbullying and harassment involving minors.”

I haven’t done any of that. But it then states if this is a first warning, they’ll likely not penalize a “violator” more, allow him to take training to get a warning expunged, and that if he still doesn’t shape up, they’re going to ship him out. (I apologize to those outraged by my using a masculine pronoun. I’m from the “Yes sir/yes ma’am” no-question-about-it era, some habits now found hanging offenses by indignant cultural Marxists are hardwired into me, and trying to choose between xe/xir or ze/zir makes my head hurt.)

Still at a loss, further exploration tells me that due to a Federal Trade Commission mandate, “Failure to set your content appropriately may result in consequences on YouTube or have legal consequences under COPPA and other laws.” Of course I set it as “made for kids.” It’s a family video. About my kid. So, could I now be in trouble with the feds?

But what exactly could be the issue?

Well, there are a couple of things in the video, apparently, including a trip around town that happens to highlight a place where ladies of the night used to work in town--which might sound troubling, but since the town includes an all-ages, family-friendly tour of an old brothel, apparently, it shouldn't be--and then there's a bath of the author's young son, though nothing is remotely visible. The bath video seems weird to me, but that's just me. I'm a little sensitive over such things, though.

Finally, there was this:

There’s a third possibility, but first we need to get through taking our boy to see the local fire and police department community fairs, a trip to the local mall to see Thomas the Tank Engine (See? Made for kids.) and then a trip to a place we bought into years ago up in the Sequioa National Forest that gave them a taste of California beyond our beach city to include cabins, mountains, trees, deer, a lake with boats, fish, ducks and geese, horses and …  a gun range.

That's the one.

The truth is that I've seen all of the other stuff on YouTube. While one could make the argument that the author shouldn't have said it was made for kids because while it included children, it wasn't specifically for young people, that's not what he got hammered for. 

Trips to the gun range aren't "harmful or dangerous acts" despite all the anti-gun hysteria that would prefer you to think that it is.

YouTube used to be a pretty free place. Yeah, there were limits, but those limits were based on what was legal. Lawmakers, however, have bullied the service to such a point where they're hysterical, and this is just another example, at least in my opinion.

It's unfortunate that YouTube isn't overly responsive in telling creators exactly what the problem is, particularly tiny creators who are really just using the service to host videos they're sharing with friends and family. That means we're never really going to know for certain just what the problem was, but it's not hard to consider how YouTube has been about content involving firearms for years.

One of my favorite woodworking channels has nearly 2 million subscribers, but he's also a shooter, and he's had to build gun-related projects without us even being able to see the firearm because of his concerns that the service would lower the boom on him.

I'd love to say he's wrong to be worried, but he's not, and neither is this author.

Now, it's possible that the issue was the other content in some way, but I doubt it. We can gripe about the lack of specifics until we're blue in the face, too, but the fact of the matter is that more and more, YouTube is becoming hostile toward gun ownership and use. Yeah, there are some big channels still out there, still making gun-related content, but how many others aren't able to take hold because of crap like this?

YouTube likes to pretend that it wants to help creators. It has tons of training on how to make good videos, how to develop an audience, etc. It seems that they really only want to help certain creators.