What Is Demolition Ranch, the YouTube Channel on the Gunman’s Shirt?

The last shirt worn by the 20-year-old man who attempted to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday was a T-shirt officially sold by Demolition Ranch, a gun-themed YouTube channel.

On Saturday, Demolition Ranch’s Facebook account posted a picture of a camouflage-clad law-enforcement officer standing over the gunman’s body with the caption: “What the hell.” Just visible on the gunman’s shirt was the American flag on his right sleeve and the partial spelling of DEMOLITIA, a word commonly used in the channel’s merchandise and branding.

The shirt’s description on the website that sells Demolition Ranch merchandise calls it “the official DEMOLITIA T-shirt,” inviting people to “buy yours today and join the DEMOLITIA.”

Matt Carriker, the creator of Demolition Ranch who has been making YouTube videos for over a decade, said on X that he was “just in disbelief” following the assassination attempt and the appearance of his apparel in the news media.

“Sucks seeing articles about this and they are naming 3 people,” he posted on Sunday. “The shooter, trump and somehow me.”

Little was immediately known about the shooter’s relationship with guns. But Demolition Ranch is a well-known YouTube channel with over 11 million subscribers, one of many similar channels known as guntubers. Videos include gun-themed experiments, like shooting watermelons or ballistic dummies, and slick Hollywood-style videos that almost look like action movies.

As military-themed gun content, including video games and movies, lost their appeal as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, guntubers formed a sort of online bridge between military-themed footage and lighthearted content.

Now, some guntubers make thousands of dollars per video as they