You’ve seen the headlines about Brownells losing its YouTube channel temporarily, about England forcing a gun supporter off internet, and about liberal bias at behemoth social media site. The answer, proposed by A1F contributor Frank Miniter was simple: We need our own YouTube site. Well, guess what? It exists.
Outdoorsports.video provides a gateway for gun owners to share the love of their pastime with other like-minded people, and they won’t have to worry about getting booted off the site.
Now, to be fair, this site isn’t yet monetized to the degree YouTube is in that you’re not going to get rich by having millions of people click on your video. But it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
Denny LeFevre is the mastermind behind the plan. He currently funds the site with his retirement check (he is a retired master sergeant in the U.S. Armed Forces).
The site, still in its infancy by most standards, started by legally embedding 3,000 videos from YouTube, LeFevre wrote in an email to A1F. That number has since dwindled to 600 as YouTube continues to cull its offerings that offend its liberal sensibilities
To make up for the diminishing returns associated with YouTube, outdoorsports.video is encouraging people to upload original content. One goal, of course, is long-term growth, which could ultimately lead to a better payoff for those who post there, provided the site gets advertising support.
But even now, LeFevre reports that the site is viable enough that the video owner who generates the most views every month gets a check for $50. As was mentioned earlier, you’re not going to get rich off it right now. But if enough gun backers thumb their noses at YouTube and invest their online time with outdoorsports.video, it will at least offer a way for believers in the Second Amendment to exercise their First Amendment rights as tbey pertain to guns.
A cursory glance at the site shows a mix of hunting and defensive videos. If you’ve got video clips you’d like to share, the sign-up process looks pretty straightforward.
