Trump DA Alvin Bragg celebrates as Jim Jordan fumes over YouTube's gun mod crackdown

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has already enraged House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) for successfully convicting former President Donald Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Now, Jordan is furious at Bragg for another reason: his purported involvement in getting instructional videos on how to make illegal gun modifications yanked off YouTube — and Bragg is celebrating his victory.

According to The Daily Beast, "Last week, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee sent the site’s parent company a letter demanding to know the story behind YouTube’s recent decision to block videos that provide such content. Jordan’s letter is a legal request for Alphabet’s communications regarding its 'interactions with the executive branch and other entities regarding changes to its firearms content policy.' It also called out Bragg by name, given that the prominent prosecutor publicly pressured YouTube in April over his concerns about the proliferation of how-to videos of 'ghost guns,' homemade firearms that aren’t stamped with a serial number and are virtually untraceable."

However, this week, according to the report, Bragg's office released a statement to The Beast saying, “The office stands by any efforts made to encourage companies to act responsibly and prevent children from accessing tutorials to manufacture dangerous guns that can be used in violent crimes” — a seeming acceptance of credit for Bragg's role in the videos' removal.

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This is not the first time YouTube has faced pressure over the gun content it allows on its video platform, noted the report: "In 2021, the policy group Everytown for Gun Safety called on YouTube to take down videos that serve as detailed step-by-step instructional manuals on how to build unserialized pistol and rifle frames. Everytown warned the company that this trend 'allows potentially dangerous or prohibited individuals to manufacture and own untraceable weapons without serial numbers or background checks.' There’s even a danger to experienced firearms enthusiasts who otherwise pose no harm to the public, given that 3D-printed guns are sometimes made of plastic that can’t withstand the explosion of a fired round inside the chamber."

The Supreme Court this term voided a Trump-era federal regulation passed after the Las Vegas concert shooting, prohibiting the sale of bump stocks that convert semiautomatic weapons into machine gun-style rifles, arguing that Congress did not give the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms the authority to do so. This has led to a redoubled push in Congress to pass such a measure in statute, which Republican lawmakers are resisting.