Magazines: Glory of Guns

“A woman with a loaded, cocked revolver in her hand walked into a Flor ida police station,” reported the July issue of the American Rifleman. “To the officer behind the desk, she ex plained that she thought she had heard a prowler but was mistaken. ‘Now I can’t get it uncocked,’ she said. The officer helpfully eased down the hammer without firing.”

A reader is likely to conclude from this incident that the average house wife has no business monkeying around with a loaded revolver. But the American Rifleman came to a different conclusion. More women need to be trained in the use of firearms to protect them selves and their families against burglars and marauders, said the magazine. It then invited women in cities and suburbs to attend classes for regular shooting practice.

Do-Gooders & Psychotics. The arti cle was only one of many the Rifleman has been running lately, urging Americans to keep and bear arms and not let anyone take them away. Heretofore, the Rifleman, and some 14 other U.S. gun magazines such as Guns, Guns & Ammo, Muzzle Blasts and Precision Shooting, have published mostly technical articles on the proper care and handling of firearms and the most proficient ways to bring down everything from varmints to Viet Cong. But lately they have been devoting more space and fervor to a campaign against legal control of gun sales. No. 1 target is Senator Thomas Dodd’s bill, which would limit the interstate sale of firearms through the mail. Guns & Ammo called the bill’s supporters “criminal-coddling do-gooders, borderline psychotics as well as Communists and leftists who want to lead us into the one world wel fare state.” The latest issue of the American Rifleman insinuates that such backers of the Dodd bill as Defense Secretary McNamara and Senator Edward Kennedy are touting the Communist line.

American Rifleman is the biggest and most important of the gun magazines. The official publication of the National Rifle Association, it is published in Washington and distributed to the N.R.A.’s 800,000 members, who pay $5 annual dues and, if they are organized into gun clubs, also receive free ammunition and cut-rate weapons from the Defense Department. Since it is put out by a nonprofit organization, the Rifleman is taxexempt; in 1966, it earned a tax-free $1,365,054 in advertising revenue, 13% of it from mailorder gun houses.

The most restrained of the gun magazines until Ashley Halsey Jr., 58, became editor last year, Rifleman is now the leading crusader against gun controls. Halsey, a South Carolinian who was an editor of the Saturday Evening Post for 18 years, runs articles in every issue lauding the man with a gun. The July issue, which contains an admiring account of the military sniper throughout history, arrived in the mail just as snipers began shooting in the ghettos. Halsey has also expanded a regular feature called “The Armed Citizen,” which reports the derring-do of shopkeepers and housewives who have gunned down intruders. “Of course, the column omits stories of innocent people who are killed in these encounters,” notes Carl Bakal, author of The Right to Bear Arms, a book critical of the gun trade.

Sardonic Humor. Guns & Ammo, one of Robert Petersen’s string of Los Angeles-based sports publications (Hot Rod, Car Craft), has the second largest circulation: 222,384. Its specialty is sardonic humor. “I was reading the other day,” began a recent article, “about a gal in Baltimore who did in her boy friend with a nine-iron, and I’m here to tell you it’s about time lethal weapons such as this should be regulated by the Federal Government. First, there should be a nationwide registration of all golf clubs. . .” Echoing this wit, Guns suggested that since there is so much rape in the U.S., the registration of male genitalia should be considered.

The latest ploy of the gun magazines is to involve the whole family. “I weaned my boys on armadillo shooting,” began one article. “Teach ‘Em Young, Teach ‘Em Right,” was the title of a Guns & Ammo piece, accompanied by an illustration of a three-year-old girl getting instructions in the use of a revolver. This family concern is reflected in advertising. “Easy as pie,” says an ad in Gun World promoting hand loading. A comely matron is shown holding a plateful of cartridges as if it were a pie, while her three admiring daughters look on. “Today,” continued the ad, “a lot of wives and daughters have joined their husbands at the reloading bench.” For less well-adjusted families and individuals with a thing about weapons, the magazines advertise submachine guns, silencers, antitank guns, cannon, and Nazi insignia.

The gun magazine readers are un usually vocal. They write in to express their approval of the magazines’ stand on gun laws, and they swamp Congress with mail. One reason they are roused to such a pitch is that the magazines assure them that the Dodd bill will result in confiscation of all arms. During the hearings on his bill, Dodd charged Guns & Ammo Publisher Thomas Siatos with “maliciously misrepresenting” the bill. Siatos replied that he was merely “editorializing.” Nonetheless, the gun magazines feel aggrieved at their treatment by some of the press. The American Rifleman plans to establish a $3,000 scholarship for some young journalist who will document the press distortions on the subject of guns.