Would You Buy....?

While browsing the magazine rack in your local book store, your eyes automatically scan the section on handguns. There, amidst the bright, glossy photos of the latest plastic uber wonders and the flashy headers heralding "torture tests" or tips to improve your footwork when you shoot, you see it peeking out at you--a blast from the past. Picking the magazine up, you see a photo of a stainless Ruger Security-Six on the cover...no, two of them, the the other a sleek stainless version of a Speed-Six.

You pick up the magazine and notice that the ads are different. More white space throughout the publication. You find the cover article and it tells the history of the "Six" series of guns, beginning with Bill Ruger's decision to build a strong, solid .357 that could compete with Smith & Wesson and Colt, and which would begin with a blank sheet of paper. Towards the end, the article then briefly describes the development of the GP-100.

Throughout the rest of the magazine, you see brief reviews of new handguns hitting the market as well as articles highlighting both in-production and out-of-production handguns.

Questions: Would you be likely to buy or subscribe to such a magazine, and would you prefer to have the magazines published in b&W or color? Glossy pages or stock? Or do you prefer only to see magazines review only new handguns, or in-production handguns?

Thanks for your feedback!

Well, we may be headed for paperless magazines now, but the magazines I see on the racks now all look pretty much the same. In fact, my wife just brought up a couple of years worth of old gun magazines from 2011. "Get rid of the ones you don't want," she said, menacingly. "There are too many magazines downstairs."

I went through them all and ended up chucking them all. One after the other, they all seemed to be the same, look the same, and none of the articles were written well at all, but seemed, rather, to be filled in templates. Even though there's a photo of the gun that spans one and a half pages, the writers describe the gun as though we were blind! The days of Bill Jordan, Skeeter Skelton and others have evaporated.

There's not a magazine writer alive who will say, "This was a lousy gun. When it didn't jam, it shot twenty inches to the left of the point of aim." That's because their magazines get big buck ads from these companies, and if one gun doesn't work, the company sends another one right out. But as a good friend, a Beretta rep, told me when asked, "Well, you don't think we'd send out a gun without making sure it worked, do you?"

I also have a thing for black & white. I think photos of guns look better.

Now GUN TESTS is an exception to this. My problem with them is that they accept NO advertising. I'm not against advertising in magazines. It greatly helps in defraying the costs of the publication. There's no reason that BreakFree, motor oils, knives, magazines, silver/gold, flashlights/batteries, gun sights, holsters and similar items can't be advertised. Just not guns or ammo. And in computer magazines, I've seen full page ads for computers that have been thoroughly trashed by that magazine, so it's...complicated.