Are Gun Magazines Boring?

[Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933]

Years ago I use to have subsriptions to a half-dozen gun magazines. Now I have none. The only magazines I get in the mail are the SASS Chronicle and The American Rifleman and that is because they are a benefit of membership. Every month, just as an excuse to get out of the house, I go to the magazine store to look at the magazine rack. A few years ago it was "stores" but Borders and the other chains have folded leaving only Barnes & Noble. Aside from a couple of specialty magazines like Muzzleloader or Handloader all the mainstream magazines seem to be duplicates of each other. The covers are almost allways virtually identical. All they feature are the so-called black guns. Every edition of every magazine seems to discuss the latest AR clone from a new company in Butt Crack, Montana, or a new 1911 clone from East Jesus, Nevada. Each article then dutifully describes in detail how to take down the guns but they all seem to take down the same as every other AR and 1911. They then note how all the parts interchange with all other ARs and all other 1911s but these are better because the handguard on the AR beling reviewed has 48 holes in the handguard whereas the competitors only have 46 in theirs. Or, the "latest" 1911's slide has eleven serations instead of ten found on another brand so it is decidedly superior. Yawn. I seldom buy gun magazines any more and when I do it is because there is one article in there that I want to read. I read that one article and somewhere between six and eight bucks goes in the trash. Am I in a rut or are you other old foggies noticing the same thing?

[Blastmaster]

Gun magazines are boring. As well as all the self defense based magazines.

 

There purpose is to educate the newbies.

[Gold Canyon Kid #43974]

I feel the same way. Let all my subscriptions lapse. Now CC and A Rifleman only. I did feel it necesssry to get one 1911 several years ago and one AR last winter. Had lots of other non cowboy guns. Have yet to shoot the AR,just got it to piss off Obumber. Will get around to do more than bore sight the AR optics. Did load up a bunch of 30 round mags tho, just because I could. Been giving several guns a year to my sons I no longer use. Why wait til I die for them to get em and use em

[Springfield Slim SASS #24733]

I haven't bought a gun mag in years. Same problem with motorcycle mags, unless it has been a couple years since the last one ya read, not all that much changes.

[Mad Dog Jack, SASS #77862]

Your critique is spot on. I also used to read several, now...not at all. Guns Of the Old West was the last read for me, but it too lost interest for me.

[Rye Miles #13621]

I get Handgunner magazine, American Rifleman and The CC, I used to get GOFOW which I loved! Yea, I agree gun magazines are the same old stuff over and over again! Not much info in there at all and I agree it's all black plastic guns, AR's etc. Handgunner is probably the best since they at least have articles about revolvers.

[Ace_of_Hearts]

Once upon a time a long time ago I received an commission to write a series of articles for Guns and Ammo Magazine. That particular magazine, at the time, was at the top of the must read list along with the American Rifleman and Field and Stream. <This was right around 1968> I was flattered to join such noted gun writers as Elmer Keith and others.

The American Rifleman always had great articles on older model long guns of all types. It was always interesting to read about single shot 22 rifles to elephant guns and drillings. Discover how they were made and details on disassembly and reassembly. Not so anymore.

Guns and Ammo always had great hunting articles, articles about gun dogs, equipment reviews, tips and hints for keeping things ship shape.

My articles about gun dogs were all rejected <I did get paid> and were never published as the magazine was going another direction <post 1968 gun law>

 

You are correct. It is either a "black gun" or a semi auto handgun inside. I peruse them at the magazine rack and place them back where I found them. Not even the advertisements are worth anything to me. Even the occasional hunting article look like they are stock photos of the trophy with the proud hunter standing next to the harvest and how they used the latest long range cartridge and 200 power scope with auto range compensation to shoot from state the neighboring state.

 

Sigh........................

 

ACE

[J-BAR #18287]

Take out a subscription. Let it lapse. You will start getting discount offers in your mailbox. I have subscriptions for a year's worth of magazines for $8. If nothing interests you, donate ' em to your barber shop.

[Colorado Coffinmaker]

I can only add a simple answer. YES!!

[Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933]

Take out a subscription. Let it lapse. You will start getting discount offers in your mailbox. I have subscriptions for a year's worth of magazines for $8. If nothing interests you, donate ' em to your barber shop.

Barber shop? Haven't seen one of those in years.

[J-BAR #18287]

Barber shop? Haven't seen one of those in years.

Some of us still have hair! 😀

[Cat Brules]

I used to subscribe to a couple gunsmithing publications but didn't renew because one repeatedly had wrong or incomplete information and criticized some brands of firearms for some vaguely defined personal reasons.

 

The other one refused to answer repair questions I asked by email, regarding 2 specific firearms, claiming the information I asked for was proprietary, intellectual information! Color my subscription to that one canceled, too

 

The other magazines on the rack, as you say, bore me to tears with their foolish articles, essentially duplicating 100 similar articles from the past.

 

New AR? No. Same AR with a camo paint job, but a new round of "testing" and full AR data dump.

PLEASE! If I had a free subscription, I'd cancel it. Grrrr.... :-) ;-)

:-)

:-)

[Gold Canyon Kid #43974]

Gun magazines are competing with gun TV shows and the internet. Very little new that can be printed. Magazines of all kinds are a bad place to invest your retirement money

[Yul Lose]

Yep, gun magazines are pretty boring in Kalifornia now, they're limited to 10 rounds

[Tennessee Jed]

Yep. Buy Muzzleloader on a regular basis. Other than that, not much else. Occasionally I'll get the urge, or a particular article or two will appeal to me, but that doesn't happen often.

[Big Sage, SASS #49891 Life]

Same comments for me. I get the AR from NRA and trade with my son who gets AH from NRA. Surprising how much is the same in both of them. I get one hunting magazine. Used to like SHOOT magazine, in fact I have every issue and reread them once in awhile. The rest are not worth my time. I do get True West which I really like. Got it after SHOOT went under.

[Ventura Slim, SASS #35690]

Its all going online now. What are your favorite forums?

[El Hombre Sin Nombre]

Yep, gun magazines are pretty boring in Kalifornia now, they're limited to 10 rounds

Haha good one

[Warden Callaway]

The articles have become filler material for ads. I use to chuckle at the women's magazines on impulse buy racks at the grocery store checkout line. They were made up of 90% ads. Now all magazines are mostly ads. Often the main article in the magazine is essentially an ad accompanied with a full page ad. I feel like I'm paying for advertising.

 

One reason I quit buying magazines is the new ink they use stinks to high heaven and it really bothers both of us. The new CC is really stinky. We take it out to the local pawn and gun and let the loafers there enjoy it.

[Tennessee Trapper Tom]

I agree. I receive The American Rifleman, Concealed Carry and Cowboy Chronicle because of Memberships. I occassionally buy Handloader if it has an article that catches my interest. Too many repeat stuff and ads,ads,ads.

[Henry T Harrison]

I subscribe to two shooting magazines Guns and Ammo because I got it for a ridiculous price and Shooting Times since I have been getting it for about 45 years.

How many reviews can you read concerning the latest and greatest AR-15 or new incantation of the 1911?

Do the editors think that all they are writing for is millionaires. How many of their readers can afford to even dream about most of the guns that they write about? The first thing I read in an article is the little grey box with the MSRP. When it's half a months pay I keep on page turning, try as they may you will never convince me that the latest version of a 1911 at over 3k will significantly outperform any good 1911 from any good manufacturer at a third of the price, and why the hell would I have any use for a 2k scope.

I started to read an article on the 458 SOCOM until I saw the ammo they were testing was $3 a round or with tax a $100 a magazine full, what a joke.

If you really want some interesting reading dig back into that box of magazines from the 70's or 80's that you tossed into the attic and see what long ago wonder gun succeeded and which failed, look at what magic new round no longer exists.

Most articles are essentially infomercials anyway, the writer seldom(read never) tells the truth about how big a piece of garbage the gun or scope they are reviewing is anyway.

[Blastmaster]

This topic is singing to the choir, but that is OK.

 

Gun magazines are boring to this Forum because the majority of readers have 40,50,and even 60 years of experience with various firearms that have ever remotely interested us.. In other words, we have been there and done that for the most part.

 

Magazine articles are geared toward the interest of the generations that haven't done it all. Black pistols and rifles are the guns of interest.

 

When I want to investigate a firearm, I tend to search Hickok45 Youtube channel for a free review.

[Hashknife Cowboy]

I'm wth you...other than CC and Am Rifleman everything is the same. Its all about tactical and lots of plastic. I'm not against the black plastic stuff but I prefer beautiful wood and and blue steel. I guess I don't really care about MOA at 500 yards or how much stuff I can bolt onto an AR. Im just old school I guess.

[Sedalia Dave]

I only get the digital version of American Rifleman. Got them to quit sending the paper version as they took up a lot of space waiting for me to get around to actually picking one up and even then I only read 1 or 2 articles at most

 

Not a gun magazine per se and not really a magazine as it is printed on newsprint, but the only subscription the wife and I have is to the Chronicle of the Old West.

 

Definitely nothing about the latest AR, 1911or any other semi-auto firearm as all the articles were originally printed in actual news papers during the same month during the 1800s.

 

They also put out a this week in history email with one short story about old west history. This weeks was about Victorio Chief of the Warm Springs band of Apache.

 

Their website also several recipes that were actually published in the 1800s.

 

Check it out.

[Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933]

The magazine industry like a lot of big box retailers is in big trouble. Sad to see. The local Safeway has shrunk its magazine section to less than a quarter of what it was six months ago. CVS and Walgreens have about a dozen titles in a small rack. There was one store locally that still had a lot of magazines with some titles on a lot of interesting topics. I go there once a month to see what is new. Went today and NADA, NUTTIN! The shelves are full of back to school paper and notebooks. They are out of the magazine business! Here is a shot of just part of what they use to have. I am depressed. You can still see some of the topics glued to the wall.

 

[Blastmaster]

Another entire business(publications) that is about extinct. Besides the actual publication companies, all the other businesses(printers, paper suppliers, writers, distribution, etc) that go along with it are squeezed, right sized or eliminated.

 

Don't fear, a few new internet techie jobs will be created to fill the void.

[Desert Pete SASS #42168]

Yup, they are boring. They all are almost always marketing fluff. On the range I hear that gun X is junk. I pick up a magazine and it says gun X is the the greatest gun that they have ever held in their hands. I trust my parts more than some writer who needs to pay his bills.

[Roger Rapid]

Larsen - you're right on target! Editorial content in the gun mags has become rather ho-hum and it's obvious that the publishers are working harder to entice the advertisers and to drive ad revenue than they are in driving reader interest. And, the publishers will do whatever possible to get and maintain subscribers because their ad rates are based on "cost per thousand" (CPM) - how many thousand readers they have at any given time. I subscribed to Guns and Ammo for one year, and I think I received it (and a million renewal notices) for a full year, if not more than a full year after I let it lapse. It was better (financially) for them to keep my name on the list - from a CPM perspective - than to let me expire. Ugly, but a great way to start campfires!

 

And... while not a "gun magazine" - if you're into history of the Wild West (and some gun stuff) I think True West is a rather good mag!

 

LP: Looking forward to seeing you this week at the SASS Western Regional!

 

RR

[Allie Mo, SASS No. 25217]

Yes, most magazines are boring; too many ads.

 

I don't buy any magazines now. The only one I ever paid for a subscription to was The Old House Journal. I quit taking it when we moved out of the old house. In one of the later years they went from paper to glossy and with that change came the ads.

 

Some magazines should be free with all of the ads they have.

 

I do like and read The American Rifleman.

 

Regards,

 

Allie

 

PS I forgot I subscribed to a Ski magazine for a while.

[Hurricane Deck 100366]

I've had lots of subscriptions from all sorts of magazines from Aviation related stuff to "The true west" - Heck, I even got the red bull magazine after tickets to the race in Dallas a few years ago, but they've all been allowed to lapse because they all regurgitate the same info all the time. Even our Alasakan magazines have been allowed to lapse.

 

To date, the only magazines I still get are Aviation related. Every one seems to have at least one good useful article. Then again, there are lots of changes happening in the field right now, so there's lots to write about. And heck, who doesn't love spectacular photography of beautiful aircraft, right?

[Nimble Fingers SASS# 25439]

Well I am sorry but I disagree with all of you! Perhaps you all got your education of guns from being gunsmiths or dealers, but to the rest of us it is the only education we can get. I won't say they are perfect, and again there could be even a little more down to earth explanation of terminology, but GUNS, Guns & Ammo, Shooting Times, Firearm (Shotgun) News, GOFTOW, and a few others that escape me at the moment have educated me since I was 10, and I just past my 61st last Wednesday. I also like American Rifleman but find it more of a political magazine than a firearm one. My son always asks me where did I learn so much about shooting, different guns & calibers, pricing and so on, and I tell him, I read. I have seen a lot of you post with much more knowledge than I have on certain subjects and again I am sure you all had other avenues to learn, but for us without those resources, gun magazines have been it! Boring, not for me! Unfortunately I do find the CC now boring as it isn't into articles on how to get started, how to choose equipment, alias' and clothing styles, or old west stories, it just seems chock full of various regional shoots and photo ops of all who were there. Now how to put on a successful shoot, either monthly or a regional shoot, that would be interesting, how to get people involved, what parts have to be prepared, how do you write up scenarios, how close to put the targets, how do the safety tables work? Or how to you get community interest, like going to your local Bass or Gander stores during their hunting classic and ask to set up a table and do demo shoots with the ones with ranges! That's what used to be in the CC, I only look to see what new toys are available and from whom.

 

Nimble Fingers,

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

Well I am sorry but I disagree with all of you! Perhaps you all got your education of guns from being gunsmiths or dealers, but to the rest of us it is the only education we can get. I won't say they are perfect, and again there could be even a little more down to earth explanation of terminology, but GUNS, Guns & Ammo, Shooting Times, Firearm (Shotgun) News, GOFTOW, and a few others that escape me at the moment have educated me since I was 10, and I just past my 61st last Wednesday. I also like American Rifleman but find it more of a political magazine than a firearm one. My son always asks me where did I learn so much about shooting, different guns & calibers, pricing and so on, and I tell him, I read. I have seen a lot of you post with much more knowledge than I have on certain subjects and again I am sure you all had other avenues to learn, but for us without those resources, gun magazines have been it!

Nimble Fingers,

I also got a lot of my knowledge from gun mags. I'm about the same age, (62) as Nimble Fingers, and agree with most of what he says.

However, I have to agree with the O.P. and most of the other posters. The last few years, it HAS been Black Rifles, the latest Glocks, and the newest 1911. Don't get me wrong, I have an AR-15, and one of my daily carry guns is a 1911. But More of the Same just doesn't interest me.

I also don't really need to read Massad Ayoob's, or any of the latest crop of "expert's" latest opinings on how to get through a large scale shoot out. I don't shoot three gun, IPSC, or IDPA, and so am not interested in the latest accessories, optics, holo sights, or other rail add ons for them.

I also agree with other poster's that it would be nice if the gun testers would write an article that listed the problems with a gun, as well as how great it is without making excuses for the problems.

In my misspent youth, I used to read most of the monthly gun mags that came out. When I was in the Infantry in The Marines, I was the Go To guy for gun questions. I taught Officers to shoot. When I left the Infantry for the Air Wing, I became the unofficial instructor on small arms for my Squadron. And when anybody wanted to know about a personal weapon, they came and asked me.

I guess that my observation is that they just don't have the same kind of articles that they used to. Maybe it's that I've just outgrown them.

[Hurricane Deck 100366]

Well I am sorry but I disagree with all of you! Perhaps you all got your education of guns from being gunsmiths or dealers, but to the rest of us it is the only education we can get. I won't say they are perfect, and again there could be even a little more down to earth explanation of terminology, but GUNS, Guns & Ammo, Shooting Times, Firearm (Shotgun) News, GOFTOW, and a few others that escape me at the moment have educated me since I was 10, and I just past my 61st last Wednesday. I also like American Rifleman but find it more of a political magazine than a firearm one. My son always asks me where did I learn so much about shooting, different guns & calibers, pricing and so on, and I tell him, I read. I have seen a lot of you post with much more knowledge than I have on certain subjects and again I am sure you all had other avenues to learn, but for us without those resources, gun magazines have been it! Boring, not for me! Unfortunately I do find the CC now boring as it isn't into articles on how to get started, how to choose equipment, alias' and clothing styles, or old west stories, it just seems chock full of various regional shoots and photo ops of all who were there. Now how to put on a successful shoot, either monthly or a regional shoot, that would be interesting, how to get people involved, what parts have to be prepared, how do you write up scenarios, how close to put the targets, how do the safety tables work? Or how to you get community interest, like going to your local Bass or Gander stores during their hunting classic and ask to set up a table and do demo shoots with the ones with ranges! That's what used to be in the CC, I only look to see what new toys are available and from whom.

 

Nimble Fingers,

 

Sounds like you have a whole heap of ideas for the Chronicle, when can we expect your first article? I know they're always looking for excellent content!

[Warden Callaway]

One reason they are boring is the new guns are boring to me. I walk past the magazine rack and see all the tacticool stuff on the covers and move on.

[Flatbush]

I just let one gun magazine subscription lapse, and replaced it with a subscription to Popular Mechanics. We'll see how that works out.