I had known beforehand that American Rifleman, the publication of the NRA, was going to go quarterly from monthly, but it was still a bit of a shock when it happened. So was losing a couple of the NRA’s other great magazines, Shooting Illustrated and the one devoted entirely to gun owners’ civil rights issues, America’s First Freedom. It was still painful to see “Final Issue” emblazoned on the cover of the latter.
It’s not just about the National Rifle Association’s internal issues and attendant reduction in membership. The whole periodical publishing industry is feeling the impact of greater printing costs and other overhead issues. Fourth quarter 2025 saw the last issues of the first newsstand gun magazine, GUNS, and the first magazine dedicated solely to pistols and revolvers, American Handgunner, which debuted in 1955 and 1976 respectively. The departures all hit home. I’ve been reading American Rifleman, a publication for NRA members only, since I was a little boy, buying used copies for a dime apiece at Bill Dunn’s Sport Shop and Sprague’s Gun Shop, both of which are also long gone. I became a member of the NRA in my teens and a life member shortly thereafter. I wrote for GUNS since the late ‘70s, mostly their handgun column, and for Handgunner from its first issue to its last.
All continue as digital, online publications. But somehow, it’s just not the same.
The loss of gun magazines, combined with YouTube’s prejudicial censorship, makes it even harder for new gun owners to acquire detailed information on maintenance, repair, reloading, etc…
My understanding is that the Rifleman will still be monthly but in a digital format. The quarterly issues will be a rollup of three monthly issues in dead tree format. The NRA also says that some of the features of Shooting Illustrated which was my magazine will be incorporated. We’ll see on that. For the record, I am precisely 9 days younger than you so don’t go calling me a digital native. SI was the only periodical I was still getting in dead tree so it was pretty much inevitable. For that matter, about 90% of my books are now digital.