Larry Vickers: gun influencer still platform after guilty plea
Gun influencer Larry Vickers faces possible prison time after he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to import machine guns. Online, his star hasn’t fallen.
Larry Vickers, a popular creator of YouTube gun videos, may get a prison sentence after he pleaded guilty in October to two federal crimes including a conspiracy to import illegal machine guns.
But his admissions of guilt have done relatively little to dent his profile on YouTube, Facebook or any of the other internet platforms that helped make Vickers famous within the online gun community. He’s still posting updates to his fan base of 415,000 followers on Facebook while he awaits sentencing, and the hundreds of videos featuring him using various machine guns are still available on YouTube.
The criminal case is intertwined with what Vickers has posted on YouTube, where he has over 1 million subscribers. In several YouTube videos, Vickers showed off machine guns that match the descriptions of weapons mentioned in court documents as illegally imported before he made the videos, according to a review by NBC News. It’s not known if they were the same weapons. If they were, Vickers was in effect exhibiting evidence of the conspiracy on YouTube.
Other videos that he posted to YouTube and Instagram showcase the Russian firearms company Kalashnikov, maker of the infamous AK-47. Those videos are connected to the second criminal count against Vickers: that he violated U.S. sanctions on Russia by providing Kalashnikov with “promotional videography” and other services. Vickers has 179,000 followers on Instagram.
As of a few days ago, YouTube was still running pre-roll advertisements on his videos, according to a review by NBC News. On Friday, after questions from NBC News, YouTube said in a statement that it had suspended Vickers’ YouTube channel from its paid-partner program, meaning the channel could no longer make money on the platform. YouTube cited a policy requiring paid creators to remain responsible online and offline and avoid behavior that harms others. The company said such behavior by paid creators is rare.
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