{"id":9058,"date":"2025-12-30T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=9058"},"modified":"2025-12-24T14:30:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T19:30:14","slug":"a-brutal-year-for-gun-magazines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/a-brutal-year-for-gun-magazines\/","title":{"rendered":"A BRUTAL YEAR FOR GUN MAGAZINES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I had known beforehand that <em>American Rifleman, <\/em>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\u2019s other great magazines, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.shootingillustrated.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shooting Illustrated<\/a> <\/em>and the one devoted entirely to gun owners\u2019 civil rights issues, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.americas1stfreedom.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">America\u2019s First Freedom.<\/a> <\/em>It was still painful to see \u201cFinal Issue\u201d emblazoned on the cover of the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not just about the National Rifle Association\u2019s 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, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/gunsmagazine.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">GUNS<\/a>, <\/em>and the first magazine dedicated solely to pistols and revolvers, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/americanhandgunner.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">American Handgunner<\/a>, <\/em>which debuted in 1955 and 1976 respectively<em>. <\/em>The departures all hit home. I\u2019ve been reading <em>American Rifleman<\/em>, a publication for NRA members only, since I was a little boy, buying used copies for a dime apiece at Bill Dunn\u2019s Sport Shop and Sprague\u2019s 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 <em><a href=\"https:\/\/gunsmagazine.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">GUNS<\/a> <\/em>since the late \u201870s, mostly their handgun column, and for <em><a href=\"https:\/\/americanhandgunner.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Handgunner<\/a> <\/em>from its first issue to its last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All continue as digital, online publications. But somehow, it\u2019s just not the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019s other great magazines, Shooting Illustrated and the one devoted entirely to gun owners\u2019 civil rights issues, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9058","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9059,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9058\/revisions\/9059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}