This seemed the best place to ask this. I just got a junk mail from “Gun Tests” magazine and they bad-mouthed several guns. Anybody know if they are even somewhat unbiased?
Gun Test tries, but honestly their reviewers seem extremely limited when it comes to firearms knowledge. It’s a lot like letting 4th graders rate the 10 best tanks in the world.
Small Arms Review is the only periodical I still subscribe to, and honestly their reviews must be taken with a grain of salt and the knowledge that they are reviewing the “free rifles” that are sent to them. I mostly read it for the firearms and notable individuals historical articles.
Seems like most gun mags fit the label “gun porn.” They’re good for drooling over the glossy pictures but the copy is seldom worth reading.
And Gun Tests doesn’t even have glossy pictures. :sad:
I have to limit my intake of bullshit to SAR. Occassionally I will get others simply if I am bored or need something to look at when I am away.
I too pick up SAR from time to time. They have a lot or articles on some pretty rare shit you cannot find anywhere else.
I like the UK’s COMBAT and Raider, reminds me of SOF which I will still read once in a blue moon. Hot Brit girls modeling kit and video game reviews too, what else you a guy ask for? 
Most all of them I will thumb through on the shelf but will rarely buy.
I read GUNS, and American Handgunner, but only because I get complimentary copies since I used to advertise in their Annuals. I do like reading Taffin’s musings and Ayoob’s reconstructions of shootings. The gear reviews I take with a big grain of salt but I do learn about the existence of new guns sometimes.
I read American Rifleman because it comes. All of these sit next to the “Throne”.
I also get two industry magazines, again, because they come.
SAR is the only one I have paid money for in the last decade and I currently do not have a subscription. But their pieces on historical pieces are interesting. As well as the pieces on the personalities.
Gun rags are like the newspaper (to me)
Its entertaining to read…but take things with a grain of salt.
I used to read Shooting Illustrated. Its 3 bucks and has some pretty cool facts and polls. The reviews are usually pretty accurate. I like that one.
I used to like Combat Weapons…untill they had a Rock River on the cover. Now they feature garbage.
Combat Tactics and Weapons & Tactics is pretty cool.
That is for Raider, but the other link is not the one I was referencing.
Here is a good link, the magazine’s acutal name is combat & survival.
http://www.combatandsurvival.com/
FYI, I usually find them on the shelf at my local Barnes & Nobles. Combat & survival was the first periodical to publish an article on the FN SCAR that I ever purchased. I believe they even had it out before any of the American magazines ran theirs.
I get SOF and the Surefire one at the local market.
I usually pick up “Surefire Presents Combat Tactics”.
The only decent gun rags are soaked in silicon as far as content goes. Most everything else is just good for the pics.
I was given a small pile of rags the other day… when I openned up one and saw LWRCi’s trash featured… I nearly puked.
That… and POF’s advertisement showing the Direct Gas system as an ancient fossil.
I can’t stomach flagrant retardation. Technical Mags like Handloader aren’t too bad. There’s just a lot of Fuddery in there. But that’s the only rag I subcribe to.
The only mags I read regularly (and have a subscription for) are American Rifleman and Handloader. And even with those, there is a certain amount of fuddery to sift through.
Stupidity pays the bills. I can recall that same POF DI “fossil” advertisement in the same issue of SAR where they talked to Reed Knight about the very same subject. I personally would rather flip past to fossil ad to have Reed Knight in print clarifying the issue in greater detail than anyone on the internet ever dreamed.
The danger of course is popular stupidity taking over and becoming the primary content of the entire publication. This plagued martial art magazines when I was growing up.
Black Belt was a mostly serious publication during the 60s and 70s. Then it became a magazine full of goofy ads that funded mostly decent content. Now it is no better than a WWF publication for retards.
There is a serious “no nonsense” martial arts publication called Journal of Asian Martial Arts but it is about $15 per issue.
Sadly, and what they have in common, is anytime anything enjoys mainstream popularity, the idiocy factor increases proportionally. And we haven’t seen anything yet.
Years ago the worst thing we typically had to endure was people regurgitating the same “opinions” of those on sources such as Tales of the Gun (often repeating them as their own experiences). With reality TV sources like Sons of Guns, Top Shot and American Guns being the new “experts” for source material it is only going to get worse.
Oh Lord. I cringe when I see those shows pop up on the guide.
I’m confused…Surefire Combat Tactics said in the mag before that the Bushmaster ACR was basically a turd, and now this issue says it’s the wave of the future. I think the writers need to get together.
I bought the new Surefire mag and was disappointed to say the least. The article on the BHI AR stated that they were being build (assembled) by former Army AMU guys. Yet, the use a 1/9 barrel and clearly mention that it stabilizes rounds from 55-69gr. Most of us know that anything over that is hit or miss.
There are also very good rounds in the higher grains which means you may or may not be able to shoot them.
The article about the so-called VSBR was aslo ridiculous. I appreciate the scientific aspects of it, but that’s about it.
I don’t know about decent, but these are free and online.
I subscribe to SWAT and usually pick up a copy of Combat Handguns for Ayoob’s article, Jeff Cooper’s Gossip page and the occasional article on a gun that interests me though, more for the technical data on how a gun works rather than the gun’s performance. CH’s reviews do mention some issues with the guns but it’s usually attributed to user error. :rolleyes: I’ll also pick up a few others on occasion when there’s more than one article that interests me or I’m just bored.