Good to see ya, Dean! Glad you could make it on over, and hope to see you again.
Thank you, Dave… nice to catch up with you, as well.
And, appropriately, under the "Social Shotguns" thread… you used to spend some time with them on the wall, didn't you?
Zoosh's original position is legitimized by Mr. Speir's sarcastic and contemptuous remarks.
O, for the love of Peter G. Kokalis, Romulus, do you ever listen to yourself? (What are they running in this Forum, McCracken, advanced courses in political correctness and pontification? Ye Gawds and 00 pellets!)
Gun Rags is an accurate description of many of the current mags. They lack real content any more.
Romulus introduced the word "contemptuous" into this discussion, and I find "gun rags" to be the most compemptuous term in the entire thread… mostly because it sneers at those who read them while suggesting that the writer does not, and more often than not (by a wide margin!) this is utter hypocrisy.
I absolutely concur that content is sore lacking in virtually all of the gunzines today… and has been for some time. One publisher of a whole lotta firearms/rugged outdoors titles has long joked: "Articles?!? Aren't those what we try to squeeze in between the advertising pages?" (Talk about contemptuous! But then he's been making so much money for so long that he could afford to shrug off a multi-million dollar embezzlement last year, so he must have the formula down pretty pat, eh?)
Few writers with any credibility have their bylines appear in the gunzines anymore, except where it is important for ancillary reasons, to keep their names before the firearms community. (But then there are a lot of scribblers with Z-E-R-O credibility who do it for the same reason, because the critical thinking skills of the garden variety gunzine reader are somewhere below their real world tactical (ah!, there's that buzzword again!) ability.
One of the best gunzines in the past decade, with some solid information and extrmely knowledgeable writers on staff, was
Tactical Shooter. It folded and is attempting to re-emerge as something which advertisers will support. (And, yes, I very much respect the three which Gramdring cited… you are pretty dialed in there, sir.)
Now, Zoosh, you impress me as being something of a stand-up kinda guy… I salute you, but at the same time I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree.
I don't think this is a "let's scare the liberals" kinda thing at all. Sure, there are some out there who
are of that mindset, and others who, having barely withstood the oppressive environment of the Clinton years, are taking an easier breath for the first time in ages, and having some "payback" for all the crud to which we've been subjected.
I appreciate the implications of your long-term thinking… tactical, m'boy, very tactical! But I'm not very much into the "PR thing," I'm afraid… particularly in a firearms forum, although I have little doubt that
TFL,
GT and others (especially
AR15.com and
AK47.net) are routinely monitored by the forces of darkness. But then they're one entity where no PR battle will ever successfully be prosecuted.
Just as I will never agree with NSSF's annual edict that no silhouette targets may be displayed by S.H.O.T. Show exhibitors, nor will I eschew the term "social shotgun" just because it might offend one of the uncommitted. In this regard, to borrow from Lillian Hellman's celebrated response to the McCarthy Hearings in 1952, I decline to "cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."