This week, join John and Kailey as they sit down with Tyler from Tundra Tactical to talk about the importance of keeping comedy alive in the gun community, staying motivated in the fight for the 2A, tips for coming out on top, and the differences between YouTube and Rumble.

Follow Tundra Tactical: https://www.youtube.com/@TundraTactical

Links referenced in this episode:

• rumble.com
• tundratactical.net
• blackdiamondgunsandgear.com

Welcome to Gun Owners of America State of the second podcast.

I'm Kaylee.

And I'm John.

And today we're joined by Tyler from Tundra Tactical.

How are you, brother?

Hey guys.

I'm doing great, guys.

Thanks for having me on the show.

So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Your background, how you did this, this, that and the other.

Where do we start, man?

I usually kind of introduce myself to people who don't know us as the evil in the industry that has to exist.

Of course, that's a joke.

We are satirists.

My name's Tyler.

I.

Nor.

Yeah, I'll say.

I do this thing called Tundra Tactical.

I do it every day of the week.

It's my full time job.

We put out silly content that makes fun of stereotypes in the gun industry.

And I've been doing it, I don't know, with the team for probably eight years now.

Eight, nine years now.

Coming up.

Yeah.

So let's get into this.

We're going to start off with rapid fire questions.

So I'm going to ask you five questions.

You just say what comes to your head and we'll go from there.

First thing, pineapple on pizza, yes or no?

No.

All right, next, do you watch more TikTok or YouTube?

YouTube.

What is your most watched content creator?

Fat electrician.

Okay, last impulse buy yesterday.

All of that.

You see all that behind me?

All of that literally yesterday.

Most recent gun you bought.

Boy, this.

At the risk of sounding bougie, I haven't bought a gun in a long time.

People send them to me so I haven't had the need for it.

But shoot PSA AKV in 9 millimeter is probably the last gun that I actually bought.

And then top three guns for the zombie apocalypse.

Oh, all right.

Keeping with the meme, my fans will understand this completely.

I will go for my long range gun, my 224 Valkyrie.

I will go with my baby build, my AR, my standard AR and 556.

But my build, I don't have it with me right now because it's in the other room.

Normally it's in the studio, but I just obviously built that yesterday.

So I don't have my guns out with me yet, but my AR, my 224Valkyrie.

And then I will say, because we'll stick with the bougie theme and go with an FK Brno field pistol in 7.5 with 95 grain hollow points and all the ammo I could ever want.

That's bougie.

Really bougie.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Would you like.

Would you like to hear a great story about that?

Yes.

All right.

So a while ago, Elvis, formerly of FK BRNO us, reached out to me and said, hey, you want to test out a psd?

And I just gotten done talking with Rob Pincus.

I think at this was before everybody realized Big Daddy was insane.

The company of Big Daddy Unlimited was insane.

And I was out at their shoot.

Already got it.

Thank you.

I was out at their shoot and talking to Rob Pincus.

And Rob's like, hey, man, have you checked this thing out?

Yes.

No.

What is this?

It's some European crazy pistol.

And I go, a European crazy pistol.

This is the greatest thing ever.

I'm so excited.

I cannot wait to shoot this.

Puts it in my hand.

I was like, what in the holy heck did you just hand me?

And he breaks me down or breaks down to me.

The idea behind the field pistol or the PSD in this case and the 7K being able, like it's the do everything handgun.

You got AK47 ballistics on a 95 grain bullet out to about 100 yards out of a 6 inch barrel pistol.

I mean, that's witchcraft if I've ever heard it.

So I immediately get hooked on the idea.

And when I get hooked on the idea, I passively sell it to everybody around me.

So fk Bruno us and I got very good friends very quickly.

Thank you.

Yeah, that is a.

That's where that, that's where that obsession with the FK comes from.

I mean, that is an interesting gun.

It's like a CZ75 had a baby with a Hudson and decided to put out the power of ak.

A nuke.

Yeah, just.

Just nuke.

Whatever's in front of you.

It doesn't exist anymore.

Kaylee, I kid you not.

This pistol will take down an elk at 300 yards.

They have video of it on their website.

That's awesome.

Like, this is insane.

So we're talking about, you know, who you are and you're talking a lot about your humor and things like that.

So why do you guys do what you do?

Your humor and the gun content that you make.

You guys are funny.

You're satire.

You make funny things up.

Like why do you do what you do?

First of all, beautiful leading question interviewer.

Why do I do what I do?

We felt it was necessary a while ago.

Not necessarily as necessary today, but back when we started 10 years ago, outside of FPS Russia.

And like Dugan, who was doing comedy gun content, very few people were, and very few people were doing it on a successful scale.

So the original idea of Tundra came from wanting to be creative and wanting to have.

Have an outlet to express creativity in the firearms world, because I went to school for audio engineering.

So originally I wanted to be a musician, and I wanted to work with microphones and, you know, tune rooms to sound and.

And.

And, you know, I don't know.

I get to meet Coolio when I was in school, which was kind of dope.

And I was like, that's.

That was fun.

I want to do that again.

Turns out the music industry is totally screwed, and.

And I walked out of school at some point in time, but I wanted to continue to express that creativity, and Tundra effectively became the outlet for it.

So I knew very quickly that I was way better at being stupid, way better at being dumb and funny than I was at trying to convey serious information.

And so I figured, well, I like to entertain people.

I like to.

I like to put a smile on people's faces.

What better way to do that than get a camera, talk to it, learn how to talk to it, because believe it or not, that's a freaking skill.

And, I don't know, just try to make people laugh.

I came across just very serendipitously, a former 82nd E5 sergeant.

Things are falling off my walls.

Wonderful news.

And he ended up starting to write for me.

Brilliant writer.

Actually, he writes for, like, four magazines now.

Brilliant writer.

Started off with me, put together scripts in, like, 20 minutes, and they were just golden.

His original idea was to make a script for me.

Did this in, like, 20 minutes.

Make a script for me on how the high point C9 is, or the C45 is the worst pistol of all time.

But he had to write it in my voice in a way that I was delivering it perfectly, seriously, so that people believed I was an idiot, right?

Like, just the people watching, the whole goal was to make them laugh at me and continue watching because they thought I was dumb.

And then there was a statistic that we referenced that was so obscurely ridiculous that they had to realize that the joke is now on them for thinking I'm stupid.

And so we like playing little tricks on that to the audience.

Nothing harmful, nothing crazy.

And then it evolved into the roasting.

And the video that put us on the map was Eric's idea, the what your pistol caliber says about you video.

And then from there, Tundra was effectively born.

We.

We took that Idea.

We ran with it and now we're here under 120,000 subscribers later and last month, 2.2 million views on Rumble.

Wow.

So you.

You're doing all this funny stuff and we.

We see the gun industry is very, very serious.

Like, a lot of us take ourselves very seriously.

How has the reception from the industry been?

I adore the industry.

I really do.

I genuinely love you guys.

Every single person who has ever worked with me before, I owe a massive thank you for taking the risk on because I thought the gun industry was going to hate me.

I thought.

I thought I'd show up to shot show and people were going to punch me in the face.

I was dead serious.

I was that scared deep down inside.

Like, if I was brut.

If I'm brutally honest, I was.

I was terrified about doing content like this because I'm looking at all of the examples.

What's the example of a gun tube channel?

Right?

Gun tuber receives gun from sponsor.

Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.

Two, three thousand rounds.

Right?

And I didn't want to do any of that.

I had fun roasting these things.

I'm like, what company is going to pay me, send me product, and then have me make fun of them?

There's no company under the sun.

And it turns out companies like CMMG have a hilarious sense of humor, and they absolutely want to do that.

So we ended up like making a business off of it.

And it turns out there are a lot of people in the gun industry that I'm not going to say appreciate my humor, because effectively it's not my humor, it's my writer's humor.

But who appreciate my writer's humor, my delivery, and they have a good sense of humor about laughing at themselves.

So we appreciate companies like that.

I think it's super important as a gun community, as honestly just people who respect the Constitution, that we don't take ourselves too seriously.

Because humor is a very powerful tool of persuasion as well.

And it is.

I've never thought of it like that.

That's an interesting take.

Yeah, well, because the hardest thing is to take, to take facts, to take figures, to grapple with hard concepts like a constitutionally protected right and break it down and become human again.

And I think so much of the battle that we face within the gun community kind of dissipates once you go back to the humanity of like, hey, we're all people like, we, we all have likes and interests.

We're not.

I was take out the politics and put a human face to gun on her.

Yeah.

And, and I think that's one of the things that's great that we've seen with, with you and, and a few others that are talking about things in a humorous way that, that have comedy about them is it humanizes the individual so you don't feel like you have to be this person that only wears tactical clothing and that has, you know, tens of thousands of dollars in gear to be a gun owner and to be a respectable gun owner.

You can just be an everyday person and say, hey, you know, I spent a reasonable amount of money.

I own one gun, maybe I own five.

Whatever is your thing.

And I belong to this group too, and I don't have to wear tactical pants to do it.

And I think comedy allows for the space to grow in a way that facts and figures never will.

We, we take a bit of that very much to heart.

It's interesting that you bring up like the, you know, the clothing option or like the visual choice, right, that, that either members of the community choose to put, you know, forward facing, public facing, or gun tubers choose to put forward facing.

Usually.

It's exactly what you were talking about.

100% spot on.

There's a, there's a bit of a joke we make that we're the.

We're the only gun channel on the Internet right now that doesn't do any actually shooting.

And if you ever do see me shooting, it's an AI construct.

My fans have built up this whole fan fiction about me actually being an AI construct.

There's a whole story about it.

And so I never actually go shooting.

I totally spaced.

Where was I going with this shoot?

What were you just talking about?

Close.

If you do catch a shooting video where my AI construct is shooting, you'll notice that I wear a lot of dad gear under my plate carrier.

Like I've got New Balances on.

Or like.

So like, I always make a choice from like a wardrobe perspective.

If I'm on the range, I always make a choice that's completely wrong and it stands out for that exact reason is just like, oh, look, he's running like a Spiritus kit, you know, nice AR helmet, nods.

And then New Balances, like, it's just weird, right?

And that's funny to me.

That is funny to the one or two people out there.

It's a joke for like two people because two people are going to see it and they're going to be like, ha, that's great.

And if only those two people see it, I've done my job.

Yeah.

I think that there's a, there's a false perception that we don't want to fall into as a gun community where a.

It's the perception is we're not welcoming or two that you have to have X number of dollars just to enter.

Sure.

Like it can be.

Our community can be very gatekeepy and.

And so I think channels like yours and the more conversations that we have about it, the more options there are.

I don't know if you've noticed, I'm a five foot female.

Hey, you're then my wife.

My wife is also like just as a general rule of thumb, clothes are, I have to get everything hemmed.

I'm very short.

I don't fit the stereotype.

And I wonder if I hadn't have had the experiences that I had that led to my gun ownership if I would have done it.

And I, I'm curious, I'm curious.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna reverse the roles on you and play interviewer for a second.

What were those experiences?

Because you, you teased it very, very well.

I don't know you all that well and I would love to learn that about you.

I think that's very interesting the way you said that.

Yeah.

So, grew up in East Tennessee.

Parents had a shotgun revolver.

It's kind of like standard issue in East Tennessee at the time.

But we did not, we were not a big two A family.

We were not a big hunting family.

It was on the outskirts, but it was not everyday life.

I go to a university.

I decide my sophomore year I'm going to get a apartment off campus because I wanted to be able to cook food and have some autonomy.

And within a month of me moving there, roughly, there was a shooting and a stabbing at the apartment complex.

And I have an apartment with two doors.

And I'm like, I don't, I don't like my odds.

I, you as a five foot female kind of have a very clear vision of the fact that you will most likely lose every fight you ever get into if you're reliant solely on my strength, especially at this time in my life.

I weighed like, you know, 115 pounds, like I was teensy tiny.

So I, for my 21st birthday basically spent every dollar I had to buy a Bursa 380.

And the gun was, I kid you not, on the clearance rack and I, I purchased it, I got some training and Then that's when I found out I couldn't carry on campus and I had to get a permit and I had to jump through all these hoops to do all these things.

And that actually started in.

Into the gun advocacy.

But what scared me was my very real realization that I probably need to have something.

Sure.

You bring up such an interesting point about the challenge for, like, if you don't fit the mold or if you don't.

Maybe, for instance, like, if you're not a college student.

Right.

If you're not, like a poor, broke, young college student and you got a bunch of money, sure, firearms are easily accessible, training easily accessible, permits, easily accessible.

But when you are that new kid starting out, first time away from home, 18 to 21 years old, and you, you find yourself in that situation, it's unbelievable to me as an American citizen that you are not allowed and afforded the opportunity for the first time out in the wild, alone, by yourself, to protect yourself with a firearm.

I think that's absolutely asinine, and I feel horrible that you had to feel that way and go through those experiences that you did.

But fortunately, it seems like it defined you and it pushed you into, like you said, the advocacy.

Sorry to interrupt, but those are my thoughts.

I think it's awful that you had to go through that.

Well, I appreciate that.

I'm kind of glad that it put me in the direction that it did, because you could.

I feel like in those moments, you can choose.

You're going to be the victim or the victor, and there's no.

That's a good line.

I should go on a T shirt.

There's no real in between.

And so for me, I decided I'm.

Yeah, I'm not going to.

I'm not going to play around.

And so that started into gun ownership and then gun advocacy, and then, you know, many years later, I'm here at gy.

So, like, you know, it's funny.

It's funny.

Time flies, right?

Time flies.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

Well, thank you for sharing that with me.

Well, it's funny you say, you know, you found out all about all these loops that you had to go through and all these hoops you had to go through.

I've heard that so many times.

When I was working behind the gun counter, people were just like, I'm just coming in to buy a gun.

Well, here's your paperwork.

Well, I thought the news told me there I didn't need paperwork.

Well, the news is wrong.

The liberal media is reporting wrong.

There's not.

It's not like as easy as you think it is to get these things.

You have to jump through so many hoops to go through this.

And which is really what it comes down to is that they're suppressing our constitutionally given right.

Yeah.

And I think that one, you have to be willing to know what you don't know and start out somewhere.

Yeah.

Dunning Kruger effect is a real thing.

And so you do the next right thing.

And thankfully the guy that sold me the gun, he was a very interesting guy.

He realized how broke I was and actually gave me a box of training rounds.

And I met a different guy in a field to have some base level training because I had never shot a pistol before.

I had only shot my dad's revolve revolver.

So like there was like some very like basic level things that that had to happen.

But it's taking that personal responsibility that I think is so important for people to do.

And I'm so happy when I see channels like yours lower the entry level, lower, you know, make it.

I've always.

It's so weird you say that.

I've always thought we were the perception of us to people not in the know.

Like if you're a brand new gun tuber.

Not gun tuber.

Excuse me, viewer of gun tubers.

If.

If there's anyone out there that doesn't understand the term gun tuber that I'm using, I.

I use it a lot and just meaning like somebody like myself, like a gun YouTuber, a content creator in the firearms world commonly referred to as gun tuber now kind of just the thing.

Thank you, Brandon and Kentucky and all those guys who effectively came together and became the big gun tubers and had that.

It's a fun.

It's a fun thing to say, but I just add myself out of my point.

What was I saying?

Entry level on ranch.

I remember what it was.

Yeah.

I was always afraid that when like new viewers or new shooters would come and watch our videos.

The last thing I want to do is hurt the firearms industry.

Like I love making fun of it, but I do it with so much love and I do it like as savage as I can be or as my writers can be.

And in savage, as savage as I can be in the delivery.

I adore the firearms community.

I don't want to hurt.

And so I have always been afraid and I'm sure this has been the case that we do have a bit of a prickly on the surface demeanor.

I do try to turn it up to 11 so people realize right away.

It's a joke, but it's the Internet.

People are idiots most of the time.

Hello, useful idiots.

And he probably want to beep that out and.

Yeah, so, like, I've always been afraid that people would just see us as the devil or like the gatekeeping, you know, idiot who doesn't really know what he's talking about.

And whatever it's.

I'm interested to hear you say there, I'm happy to hear you say that because that alleviates.

I've always had imposter syndrome when it comes to this.

It's just, it's been crippling for me over the course of the years, and as we've grown and grown, it's alleviated a little bit.

But, you know, no matter how much you try the, you know, the comment section will get to you eventually and people will say, like, how dare you do this?

All these new people are going to turn away from the gun industry because of you, you devil.

And I'm like, bro, time out.

Like, go watch the video again.

Understand what I'm saying?

Yeah, I don't think that's, that's how people take it at all.

Because satire and humor and comedy is endearing.

Right.

I feel like for the average person, though, it can go way over the top.

Yeah, of course, that makes me sound elitist.

And I don't mean it that way.

I mean, sure, I'd imagine with anybody who dabbles with satire or comedy in general, there's going to be a certain amount that it goes over their heads.

But I don't know, I feel like the comment section is that buffer zone, right.

Where people and you got to, you got to build thick skin too.

Yeah.

And so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I think comedy is a powerful tool and I think you're using it in a powerful way.

And I think as a Second amendment community, the more we can build an on ramp, the more we can build different avenues where different people find what they like to watch.

And it's not.

Again, it's not.

You should be.

You should have a variety.

Right.

I mean, at the time I created the channel, there were three things.

There were three gun videos.

You had.

You had nut and fancy right out there.

I use this as like a general term, like the nut and fancy style video where it's 47 minutes of all the information you could ever want on this firearm in pieces form that you have to defend at the end of the video, otherwise, God help you.

Nothing fancy to show up at your bed at night.

And slay you, right?

If you don't do the nothing fancy videos, right, you're done.

So there was that video.

Then there was the guy, you know, Jimmy from work, who propped his iPhone up two lanes over and then just shot for 20 minutes and didn't say a word to the camera.

And then what was the other one, hands down, view, like the.

The Tabletop review, where you just see somebody's Vanna hands.

You know, they're doing the van a white move and.

And showing you how to.

All these videos are great.

I'm not criticizing them in the least bit.

I'm just saying they were all the same.

They were all derivative.

And I don't know, back in the early aughts, which I love saying, by the way.

Can that just be a thing?

But back in the early aughts, it was not changing.

And then all of a sudden, there's FPS, Russia and Dugan, and gun content became fun.

Like it was.

You're like, wait a second, Wait a second.

We can have a good time while shooting.

We can do skits.

Are you joking me?

And I immediately get on the phone, I start calling people up, and I say, I've got so many ideas.

Who wants to help?

And everybody said no.

Everyone's like, you're an insane person.

And out of the blue, this is a story of serendipity here.

Out of the blue, I get a phone call from a guy I hadn't seen in probably 18 years, who was my childhood best friend.

My parents or his parents.

And my parents dated growing up in high school, split, went separate ways, married other people, then came back.

And there those couples became best friends.

So I grew up.

I grew up together.

I've known this kid since I was, I don't know, two years old.

Hadn't seen him for, like, 18 years, and he calls me up out of the blue.

Now, bear in mind, I'd spent 11 years in the military at this time.

I have a big freaking beard.

I look totally different.

Well, maybe not big a beard, and I look totally different.

He calls me up, he goes, tyler, just quest.

That's it.

And I go, bryce.

And he goes, tundra.

And I go, yep.

He's like, I'm in.

And that was it.

That's.

That was the first.

He was the first official kind of partner.

He helped me brainstorm and bring this thing from the ground up.

And.

And, oh, I add myself out of a point again.

But that's where, that's where the kind of the beginning of it all happened.

And he was the one who took the chance, him and a couple of other folks.

And oh boy, we started, we started off going every which way.

We didn't have any direction.

We said we want to do comedy and skits and short films and all this.

And then we realized, because we had to teach ourselves camera work, I went out and spent, you know, a couple thousand bucks on cameras and lenses.

And then after I got them in, I realized I don't know how to use any of these things.

I'm a shooter, but not on cameras.

I don't know lenses.

What's an F stop?

How does ISO work?

And so I learned videography.

I taught myself over three years videography.

And I taught Bryce.

Turns out he is one.

I would put Bryce, my bus driving camera guy, I would put him toe to toe with any professional camera operator on a red or on an Ari or anything in this industry.

And I bet you Bryce would hang with him.

That's how naturally talented he is.

And he's the ultimate grinder too.

I have a lot of respect for the people that's that that have donated their time to me, but this guy filmed in 105 degree heat for me at an event with a giant shoulder rig camera.

He was running ammo in his backpack and all this stuff for 12 hours in 105 degree heat with 102 degree temperature.

Never complained once.

Wow, that's an amazing grinder.

So he helped, he, he put the Tundra Nation on his back.

He allowed me to be creative and he filmed everything.

And that's like I said, that's where it all started.

I'm just going back through like this is like the big thank you tour, I guess for all the people who helped me out.

That's awesome.

So I want to pivot very quickly to our from the Soapbox segment because you guys have done something that I think is very interesting to a lot of people on the consumer side and that is you have been really pushing Rumble and the adoption of Rumble and X and other more free speech platforms.

And there's a lot of people who disagree with that, that viewpoint or think that we need to be everywhere and always.

And I want to kind of give you the floor to kind of share your point of view and your, your perception.

Sure, I will, I will advance apologize to whoever's editing this and say, sorry, but I'm going to go and we're going to rant now.

So Rumble, start there for Me.

Rumble has been simultaneously, over the course of the last year, the best and worst thing that's ever happened to me.

More best than worst.

But not, not worse than, like, a terrible way.

Just worse in, like, a stressful way.

Here we go.

Six months ago.

Rewind the clock.

I am.

Eight months ago.

Whenever the, Whenever the, the big.

Not even, like, what, three, four.

Whenever the Hickok video came out.

Adpocalypse 2.0.

You guys know what I'm talking about.

Whenever the Hickok came video came out, and he said, oh, they're coming after the sponsors.

And I'm like, well, I'm almost did it.

I'm screwed.

Sorry about that, editors.

Anyways, yeah, so I said, I'm screwed.

Well, time to pack it up.

And I said, wait a second.

That's what they want me to do.

And once I realized kind of the psychological mind f there that they were trying to do for us, I said, no, I'm not going to let people do that to me.

I'm not going to let people manipulate me and try to drive me out of an industry and out of a job, out of a business, out of my own business that I have spent years and years, almost a decade at this point, building and creating.

And to have somebody arbitrarily flip a switch and say, nope, you're not cool enough anymore to be on this platform.

Uh, we're not gonna kick you off.

We're just gonna not let you be seen to other people.

I said, no, doc, that's probably not gonna work.

We're gonna do a lot of stuff to make your life miserable.

And so I, I, I remembered that all of these people in the comments section been, Tyler, Tyler, why aren't you on Rumble?

What's going on, man?

You're doing all this complaining about YouTube, and you're not doing anything about it.

And that hit home to me.

I said, you know what?

Holy crap.

I am.

I'm being a gigantic B word here and saying, oh, the industry should do this, and the industry should do this, and the gun tuber should do this.

But it should be Brandon doing it.

Or it should be Kentucky Ballistics doing it.

Or should be Demo Matt doing it, not old Tundra.

Because once again, imposter syndrome I don't like, I always have this.

It's getting better, by the way.

But I just never think people listen to me, so I just, I always thought it should be somebody else.

And I think that's the way a lot of us feel about a topic like Rumble is we're established, we're protected.

We know YouTube is the devil we know, right?

To an extent.

I mean, obviously they do some wild stuff, but the content creation platform that we're on, whether it's YouTube, whether you're an Instagram or whether it's Rumble or X or wherever, the challenges that you face there, you become intimately familiar with because they're, they're your whole life when those challenges get in, get in front of or affect your paycheck, especially the amount of money you can put onto your family's plate.

I have a beautiful, adorable five year old daughter who is my entire world.

And I hope you can see that in my face when I say it.

She is just everything to me.

If I don't, if somehow I woke up one day and I didn't have her anymore, my life just wouldn't be worth living.

And I do everything that I can in my power to provide her with the best opportunity that she can.

I'm not going to hold her hand and I'm not going to pay her way through life or anything, but I'm going to teach her the valuable lessons that were not taught to me so that she can grow up in her own unique time instead of challenges, I'm sure.

But she'll learn how to become her own woman.

But hopefully one day I'll be able to hand over this channel to her when she turns 18 or 20 or 21 or I decide to retire and I get to hand her over a million dollar paycheck every year.

That's what I want.

That's what I want for her.

That's the whole reason I do this.

I mean, I love the second amendment.

It's, it's phenomenal.

It's the best thing ever.

But this is getting into dangerous territory.

I don't want to say she's more important because our constitutional rights should be the most important thing on the face of the planet.

But you have, you have to have motivation.

You have to have motivation to defend that.

Because what the left is going to do is they're going to get you death by a thousand paper cuts.

They're going to take you down a peg or two.

They're going to, they're going to kick you in the shins 200 times to the point where you say, ow, that's starting to hurt.

I don't want to do this anymore.

And you quit.

So you have to have that extra motivation to fight through those painful moments when the chips are freaking down, you got a deadline to meet and you look at your YouTube earnings.

And they went from X number of dollars.

Shoot, I'll say it.

I'll put it out on the record.

2 20, 300 would be a good month for us.

Hickok video comes out a month later.

I was at 250 bucks.

Never changed my release schedule.

We got Shadow banned into oblivion because we immediately called YouTube on their BS and.

And just like everybody else did.

I'm sure we're not the only people that did this, but our videos went from getting 400,000 views a month, 400, 500,000 views a month.

Now we're under 100,000 views.

So I had to do something if I was going to keep that dream alive for my daughter.

We had to go somewhere, right?

And very fortunately, I'm going to give a little plug here to some friends who are not.

They're not so much part of the 2A community, but they're very adjacent.

It's another podcast.

You guys should reach out to them too.

It's called the I Came With Fire podcast.

It's run by a active duty green Beret who is, for OPSEC purposes, we'll just say indisposed currently.

But the co host is also a US Air Force Security Forces troop, Our former US Air Force Security Forces troop.

And they introduced me to the idea.

Not introduced me, but they, they sold me on the idea of Rumble.

And they said, holy smokes, buddy.

We hopped over.

We're having a ton of success.

We just had something like this.

They just had me on the show and we gelled really, really well, became very good friends very quickly.

And they said, hey, man, we met somebody over at Rumble pretty high up in the chain.

I'm not going to use names here, but you know who you are.

And they said, they're helping us out.

They want gun tubers.

They're asking us, do you know how to get a hold of gun tubers?

They're literally like, the executive team at Rumble right now is begging other podcasters and content creators to get in touch with this individual person and say, like, hey, YouTube's kicking us in the nuts.

We need to go somewhere else.

Where are we going to go?

And so ultimately they convinced me to give this guy a shot.

I give him a call.

He pitches me the idea.

He says, hey, you're a valuable asset to us right now.

We would like to help your channel by giving you a boost on Rumble, which we absolutely do.

I won't hide that at all.

We've had a Lot of success.

But they're also helping us out because they see us as a way to prove to gun tubers that there is a, an audience.

And I mean, when I'm getting 120,000 views in 24 hours, it's not just boosting, right?

Like there's an audience there.

120,000 views means there's a lot of interest in 24 hours.

So yeah, man, I'm excited, I'm happy.

It's been fantastic.

Boy, it's.

In my opinion Rumble, or an alternative content platform like that that is more focused on freedom of speech is, is going to be the future for everything here for us.

Imagine, imagine how nice it would feel to go to work with a sense of, the sense of understanding that you're at least relatively protected based on what you do and say that day, versus this wild west fear based retribution system, which is what I've coined it as, that YouTube employees, they don't tell you what you do wrong.

They tell you that you did something wrong, though.

They do tell you what you do wrong, but they don't tell you how to fix it.

And they don't go into specifics about the details.

It just says you violated this community guideline.

And you're like, okay, cool, submit for review, not dog.

Still violated.

We had somebody look at it, quote unquote.

And, and you're still, you're still in violation.

Well, what did I do wrong?

How do I fix it?

Don't care, don't know.

Your, your job to figure that one out.

And that's just, come on, it's like, come on YouTube that you really like, you're not going to help your content creators out at all.

And I'm saying this satirically once again, because we all very much know YouTube failed business model, hasn't made money in years.

And they don't give two craps about the type of content that's.

Excuse me, the content creators on their program or on their platform, they just give a crap about the amount of money coming in so they can mitigate the already enormous losses that they already have.

I mean, thank you for attending my TED Talk.

Yeah, that's the greatest TED Talk I've ever heard.

I mean, we saw success with Rumble at our convention and doing live streams.

I think Rumble is going to be the next great thing for gun.

I really do.

And not just because I'm invested in it.

I just, I, I want a space for us.

I want something for us where the next generation of GUN tubers can grow, because that's what they're threatening right now, they're not threatening us.

We're established we're here.

I mean, they're threatening our paychecks for sure.

But that, that's not the thing that's important.

They're, they're threatening the future of content creation for the second amendment and for the first Amendment.

And I think they know that.

I think they know if they cut us off at the next generation, we've got no voice in 10 years.

We can't let that happen.

Yeah.

And gun tubers have seen this.

I mean, we had what gun chant go?

Was it gun tube?

And then there was 4:30 and then there was this.

I think this is the one that's going to stick.

Rumble.

I sure hope so.

And I think it's because they're not solely like full 30 with solely focus on gun stuff.

That's it.

That's it.

That's exactly it.

I have an argument that I'm making.

Since this is soapboxy.

I think it applies when shoot.

Hold on, let me, let me try to form this.

Give me the last like 10 seconds of point you were trying to make.

I'm already feeling my point.

Talking about there have been other platforms that popped up, but like full 30 was strictly gun stuff.

And now Rumble is not good.

Good, good.

Okay, so here's, here's the thing.

This is, this is a pipe dream for me, but I would love to be the face of a lawsuit against YouTube for the GunTube community or for, for just any sort of community that's associated with what YouTube would deem a controversial topic or what Google would deem a controversial topic.

They have so much control over what we see.

And I just did it again one more time, buddy.

Gun to rumbles.

Full 30.

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay.

Okay.

We'll get there right now.

Full 30.

Okay.

So I'd love to be the face of like a lawsuit associated with this.

I don't know if you guys remember this, but they sued YouTube based on their complaint or their argument.

Was YouTube the left running or the left leaning company leaning was suppressing Prageru's right leaning conservative beliefs.

And while we all know I'm not going to make an argument that that wasn't happening.

We all know that was happening.

We all know it's still happening.

But YouTube made a more effective argument in the courts.

Shocking that they weren't, they weren't suppressing and so the case was thrown out.

Well, I don't know, about six weeks ago or six months ago, I started having this thought.

I was like, what if we, what if we made it not a left versus right issue?

And I know that's not terribly popular.

I know a lot of people are looking for a fight and they want it to be a second amendment issue.

They want it to be the left is suppressing the right.

They're looking for that fight and more power to you.

If that's the fight you're looking for, great, go nuts.

But I think if we want to have any success, we have to not compromise, but we have to be creative.

Just like they're trying to get creative about how to take away our rights, we need to get creative about how we fight back.

Here's my proposition.

The next lawsuit courtesy of the gun tube community or affected content creators.

I think it should be formatted like this.

It shouldn't be in left versus right.

It should be an us versus Them.

Here's why.

How many times in the last week to everybody listening, this is my challenge to you.

How many times in the last week, week and a half have you been watching content on YouTube or on Instagram or something and you've heard this from phrase or a derivative of this phrase?

Man, Mr.

Viewer or Mrs.

Viewer.

I would love to cover that topic.

I would love to show it to you.

I know a ton about it.

In fact, I'm probably an industry expert on it.

But I'm afraid it would get me demonetized by YouTube or Instagram or I'm.

I'm afraid we get ad restricted or some form of this.

Right.

It happens all the time now.

Go outside of the gun tube community.

It's starting to happen more and more there too.

That fear based retribution system that's been used to attack and not cripple but you know, sting our industry and our voices a little bit is now being.

You're seeing Linus tech tips say stuff like that.

I mean he's weighed in.

Have you guys checked that out?

He's weighed in on YouTube's attack on gun tubers.

There is.

On his wan show he did an in depth.

John Patton from the Gun Collective does an absolute great video.

Check it out.

Somebody can link it.

Hopefully there's an absolutely great video on this actual topic that does a way better job of explaining it.

But I mean that's the shtick.

Like come on, YouTube is running rampant.

They're doing what they want to do.

They're arguing that they're a public forum and then they're restricting content on that public forum, which is against the freaking law that eliminates their protection from the.

What is it, five, not five oc.

I can't remember it.

Can't remember it off the top of my head.

But it eliminates their protections under those public forum laws.

I don't even know if they're laws, but hopefully somebody can help me out.

Put something up on screen.

I'm referencing a specific protection there under.

In the either tax code laws, something like that.

It's something that they consider themselves not to be a publisher.

So they're not held to the same scrutiny.

Are you a publisher or a public forum?

And that's, you know, I definitely, I think that whatever is the next iteration, we have to be.

One of the things that I agree with your point about Rumble not just being guns is a good thing is because again, we as a second amendment community need an on ramp.

You have to have people with different interests.

You need the person that was, you know, just watching a video on how to make sourdough bread.

Exactly.

And go to the next, you know, the next thing down the rabbit hole that that ends up.

Exactly.

There you go.

It's not just that, but also like we talk about a lot about gaming and guns.

You know, it's the same thing.

Rumble has been really big on doing video game live streams.

Well, and I'm actually, I'm very lucky to say that in our transition over to Rumble, we have kind of naturally become not naturally.

With Rumble's help, we've come one of the bigger gaming creators over there too.

I stream video games on Rumble every single day of the week.

Tundra Gaming Live, by the way, for your viewers, if they like games over on Rumble.

But we're talking about, that we've talked about in the past with, with when we talked to John Bailey from Eotech is how many people have transitioned from.

That's a really cool thing.

I really want that setup or I want that gun or I want this and driven into that community.

And I think that's what Rumble's doing really different compared to the other platforms we've seen in the past.

Because that's always been the excuse from guntubers is, well, this XYZ platform popped up and it died.

Or this xyz.

And that was me.

That was me.

I'm guilty of this.

And Rumble is really expanding outside of that very quickly too.

And yeah, and here.

Go ahead, Go ahead.

Sorry, please.

All right, here's.

Here's my shtick on, on exactly what you were just talking about there.

I Believe to have any form of success with a third, not a third, but a new content platform like a Rumble, you need to have.

You need to win two out of three battles.

Okay?

You have three major pillars of the gun tube industry.

You have, in my opinion, the.

And this isn't.

Not just like, you know, I don't know, this is going to sound.

I'm trying to, like, find a way to say this without cursing.

I don't want to be the guy that's like, trying to, like, butter people up, but to the audience, they're the number one most important people in, like, they're the number one important, most important group in this.

Without viewers, there's no content creators, Right?

So you have to have viewers to have content creators.

That's what we're talking about.

A lot of content creators don't want to go to Rumble because they don't see the opportunity.

They don't think there's a viewership.

And I am here to tell you there absolutely is.

Absolutely.

120,000 views in 24 hours is not an accident.

It's not, you know, it's not like gnarly crazy.

I don't want to say, like, bots or something like that.

It's the real people watching.

Here's here's Son of a Gun.

I'm so sorry, guys, I'm losing my point so far and so fast.

This is the ADD coming at me.

What was I just saying?

Viewers.

Oh, my goodness.

Audience, yes.

Okay, so three pillars.

So number one most important pillar is going to be the audience.

Without the audience, there's no content creator.

The number two most important pillar is going to be at least not most important.

But the number two pillar is going to be now the content creator.

The third pillar is your sponsor, your advertiser.

You nail two of those three, audience creator, you bring the sponsors over.

So you only need to win two of those three battles.

So if the content creators see the opportunity over at Rumble, or I'm not even gonna say see, but if they're aware of a state of opportunity over at Rumble and there's an audience over at Rumble, now we just need to get people to start migrating and testing the waters.

And if I can show them the same level of success through my means and through the same programs that I'm using with Rumble, well, then I think a lot of people are gonna be very happy very quickly, and you're gonna see a lot more content creators jumping over a hundred.

Like, I.

I'm.

I'm gonna use this number a lot during the show.

But 120,000 views in 24 hours was the original number that was quoted to me.

I did a spit take while I was drinking a.

A pumpkin beer.

Spit it all over my damn monitors.

When Chris from the I Came with Fire podcast told me about this, and I said I was middle of the live stream, too.

Put my.

Or put my mouse down.

Walked away from my computer and said, you've got my attention.

And I said, megan, can you go, can you do the live stream for me?

Wife stepped in, did a live stream for, like, two hours, and we hashed the sleep out.

I thought he was lying to my face.

I said, there's no way.

Absolutely no way.

Very skeptical at first.

And I.

I said, I'm not going to bite on this, like, site unseen.

Give me a phone number to the person that you're referencing and I will give them a call.

He's better yet, he already wants to talk to you.

I already set up a meeting Monday, 9 o'clock in the morning.

I said, sweet, let's do it.

I get on the phone call.

Let's just say they did a very effective job at proving to me the opportunity was real.

They didn't quote me a single number.

They didn't say, we're going to do this for you.

They said, hey, we're going to put you on the front page of Rumble for one day, load a video.

I'm not going to give you a number.

I'm going to show you the number.

And I gave them one video, and that was 220,000 views in 48 hours.

So you know that that got me hooked.

And I said, all right, now are all my videos going to do that?

He said, yep.

I said, okay, cool.

How, like, how does this help me long term?

Because if you just get a boost all the way through, like, I'm not gaining natural audience members.

This doesn't solidify anything for me.

He's like, no, I mean, we're gonna.

We're gonna put you on the front page, but we're not putting anybody towards you.

The clicks you're gonna get are because of your thumbnail and your title, just like any other content platform in industry.

And so I was like, okay, prove it, I guess.

Prove it.

Put the video up.

And like I said, 220,000 views in, excuse me, 120,000 views in 24 hours, and then about 280,000 views in 48 hours.

So it actually picked up a little bit after hour 24.

And.

Which is really strange because if you launch videos on YouTube, you know, the first hour to two hours of the video is where a ton, a good chunk in percentage of your videos go.

And this thing, man, it was doing a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand views an hour, six thousand views an hour, seven thousand views, and it was just going up every single hour.

So I adore those guys for what they're doing and giving us the alternative option.

It is huge.

I encourage you guys to check it out.

If you have any questions, you can reach out to me.

It's tylerundertactical.net.

I love a couple things that you brought out and then we can kind of give the floor over to you for any last minute things that you want to push.

But it isn't that we are abandoning ship at.

Oh, this is a great point.

Yes, this is a great point at YouTube.

It is not that we're leaving potential people behind because that's not the intention.

There's something that I think we always want to find whatever is the governmental solution and we want to hold people accountable and just as a general rule.

But that's not always the solution.

And what you're going to see as Rumble grows and as more content creators and sponsors move over to a Rumble, you're going to see things change at YouTube is my prediction.

Because they're not going to want to lose the eyeballs.

Because guess what?

If I can now go to Rumble and I can watch all of the gun youtubers, I want all of the gamers, I want all of the cooking shows that I want the whatever the niche thing is that I'm looking for in a content creator platform and I'm now spending all of my time on their website and not the other.

All your eyes are going to their.

Advertisers, not to you as a company.

You're going to have to pivot, you're going to have to change not everything.

So wouldn't you love to know it?

In my opinion, I don't think they care.

In my opinion, I don't think YouTube cares about that.

I thought that way for a long time.

I said, how are they gonna, how are they gonna isolate and subject an entire industry, a constitutionally protected industry, effectively or constitutionally protected right that's based, an industry that's based off of a constitutionally protected right.

Excuse me, how are they going to do that?

Because like, if I was an advertiser, let's say I owned Ford, right?

Ford.

Or a truck company, not even Ford, because I'm going to get roasted by a Chevy guy.

Or whatever, who cares?

Whatever your favorite truck company is, you own that, right?

You as you, as the individual listening, you own that, the Entire company, Fortune 500 company.

And you get approached by YouTube to start advertising with them.

Well, let's say you're also a gun tuber and you say, wait a second, you very obviously agree or disagree ideologically with some people that I watch as an owner of a massive company.

Why would I invest money in you if one day arbitrarily you decide that my trucks are causing more global warming than you're comfortable with or you know, whatever you believe.

Who.

Just pick, pick something, right?

Pick something that YouTube would hang another industry to try to shut them down.

Why would I invest millions, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to a company that I don't know I'm going to have security with?

And so I thought that for years and then they just did it anyways, regardless of that.

So maybe I'm not as smart business wise as I thought I was.

That's probably the, the actual option.

Or they just don't really care about the money.

Yeah, I think it's as much, as much.

I think it's, they're too big to fail in their own eyes.

Yeah.

And you know, it's not a surprise that YouTube is the second largest search engine.

And, and so, you know, when you, when you have that power and you have the backing of those sort of things, I do think that you probably look at things way different than the average business person.

But I think en masse, as people choose to move over, they're going to have to at least recognize, modify or die.

And.

Yeah.

And so, you know, will it happen overnight?

No, no.

But do I think that it will come back to bite them?

I do.

I would hope so.

I have to believe that that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

And once people realize the suppression that they've allowed to exist, because I don't know how many people even realize the suppression level that exists and what content that they're.

They're even.

Sure.

I wonder how many people realize that and the combination of the fact that they're a public forum and they're not allowed to do that.

I wonder that's, that's my real question is how many people are okay with them doing that.

How many viewers out there would hear me say, YouTube has argued that they're a public forum and they shouldn't be able to suppress content, but they're doing it anyways.

I wonder how many view of their viewers, what percentage of Viewers would actually have an issue with that.

And I think there's not a lot.

I think that percentage is probably a lot lower than a lot of us, like, you know, red blooded 2A, 1A, you know, that type of people.

I think that percentage is significantly smaller, if we're honest with ourselves, than we think it is.

So, you know, you're talking about too big to fail.

That's a great, great way of putting it.

I think that they have so much confidence in the stupidity of their viewers that they're just going to.

They're going to say, hey, we've been doing it this way forever.

We're not going to change.

We're not going to change.

It's, believe it or not, the classic conservative belief.

I like the thing I have now.

Don't change it.

Right.

They're being very conservative in this regard, which I've never made that point before.

That's the first time I'm writing that down.

That's funny.

That's going to turn into a joke.

You just watched it happen right here, folks.

The writing process is going down right now.

No.

And it's rare, by the way, when I write a joke.

Thank you, writers, by the way.

And I'm going to make one last point and then we'll wrap up.

But we saw this in the First AD pocalypse, YouTube was pulling away from beer company ads.

If I remember correctly, that was the first thing.

And I remember a lot of people going, well, YouTube, you can control what ads go on what videos.

And they're like, no.

Yeah, isn't this the best.

Yeah.

They're like, no, we can't control that.

I'm like, the whole argument for this whole time about with gun tubers is why the gun companies are not allowed to advertise on YouTube because YouTube doesn't allow it.

But if the YouTube would allow gun companies to ever put advertising videos or ads in gun tubes thing, and they can control where those ads go, but they say they can't control where those ads go.

I've got such a good story.

It's so good, it's ridiculous.

All right, so I don't know, maybe three months ago I ran a holster ad on one of my videos.

My video got flagged, reviewed, and confirmed that it was not suitable for all advertisers.

Right.

And so I'm like, okay, of course, you know, I was trying to push the boundaries, you know, give YouTube a giant middle finger and say, you know what?

I don't care what you say.

I'm running firearms and firearms adjacent ads in my videos Anyways.

Don't care, you know, Disobedience.

Yay.

It's so much fun.

And I went back and audited.

I audit all my videos from, like, a viewer perspective from a different computer, so that my computer and, like, my Internet in the house isn't just, like, feeding me tailored results.

I just go onto a fresh computer.

I look up Tundra Tactical, I watch a couple of videos to make sure I look good.

Sound good?

You know, we're putting out a decent product.

So I audit our content every now and again, and, boy, howdy, would you love to know the ad that I got was a holster ad for the video that I got demonetized on for putting a holster ad in.

So they're cool.

We're not cool enough as gun tubers.

That's why I say they don't give a crap.

I almost cursed again.

They don't give a crap about the content creator.

They don't at all.

They're willing to break their own rules.

The only difference is it was a different company, but it was a holster ad.

So I got flagged and told that I'm not cool enough to run ads in my videos or minimal ads in my videos because it's got a holster in it.

And now they're running holster ads.

Now you can make the argument that, oh, well, okay, that's the per.

You know, that's the limited ads, right?

But come on, guys, you know that YouTube is running ads in those videos at the same rate that they would normally.

They're just feeding you different ads and they're not paying you for it.

So they're taking pretty much 100% of the profit away from that.

They are telling you you're not cool enough to put the same exact type of ad.

Mine's better, by the way.

Same exact type of ad in your video.

And because it has your name attached to it.

Oh, now you're breaking the YouTube guidelines.

You're breaking the terms and conditions.

Well, how about you go sit on a fatty and flower your nuts?

YouTube.

Sorry, I.

I get a little passionate about this.

It bugs me.

It really bugs me.

Well, on that note, let's go ahead and wrap up.

Thank you again for joining us.

This has been fantastic conversation.

I love this.

Where can people find you?

Go ahead and shout out all the socials, all the stuff.

Sure.

So every single day of the week, you can find me on Twitch and Rumble under the term or under the name of Tundra Gaming Live.

You find bald guy with a beard Looks like me probably wearing the Zinda Wind shirt.

You will be in the right spot.

By the way, if you want to pick this shirt up, check out Black Diamond Guns and Gears Fat tech dot com.

Look for the.

The merch stuff.

All of our official tundra merch just moved over there.

So thank you, Josh.

We love you.

Where else?

Rumble.

Rumble's the big one, guys.

Come on over.

Test the waters.

It's just fine.

Tundra Tactical over there.

All of our new videos go up a day before YouTube so you can get them early.

There's a bit of an incentive and, and I will be doing Rumble exclusive chats, live streams just like this.

So if you want a close connection to the gun tuber industry, please come over.

Check us out there.

We have a discord as well.

You can ask for those links.

It's all fine.

I'm not going to post them here.

So.

And YouTube if you want to be a wiener about it.

Because we don't like YouTube, go watch us on Rumble instead.

And by the way, also if you are going to.

Here's, here's a.

This is from a content creator's perspective.

I am going to beg your audience.

I don't know how many this goes out to.

I don't know how many people watch this on average, but I am going to literally beg your audience.

Don't.

Don't do this to me.

I don't.

I'm not begging this for me.

I'm going to actively challenge you guys to go out.

A lot of you guys support gun tube creators either through Patreon, either through donating monetarily while they're doing a live stream or some other way.

Stop doing that through YouTube.

Stop it.

Stop it, stop it, stop it.

No more super chats, no more Patreons, no more nothing.

Go to Rumble and support them there.

Support the places that are giving your content creators, your favorite content creators the best chance to succeed.

Please stop feeding the beast that is YouTube.

Granted, not every content creator is going to make that jump.

And if that's the case, help them out.

Don't cut off your support of them.

That is not what I'm trying to say.

And please don't do this to me.

I don't care if you come over and watch my channel.

I want you to go watch John Patton.

I want you to go watch Kentucky Ballistics.

I want you to go to go watch this show on Rumble or wherever it ends up being that's not on YouTube.

A it'll be so a number one.

It'll be so much better for you in terms of, like, freedom.

It's helping the content creator, it's helping build the platform that will inevitably either take down YouTube or cause YouTube, like you said, to become more competitive and move forward.

And that's all I got.

Awesome.

Well, Tyler, again, we appreciate you joining us today.

Thank you all for watching and have a great rest of your day.

Bye, folks.