John Lott tried to correlate gun ownership with crime with gun magazine readership. He found some figures from the audit bureau of circulation for 1999 that seem to relate to subscriptions rather than total paid circulation. The NRA magazines are fairly close to what they are now.- adding up to the NRA Membership. Guns and Ammo was at 590,000 and dropping, Petersons Handguns was growing at the time and had 148,308 subscribers -much higher than the 12/2003 total paid circulation. Both of these were bought out by primedia and the industry rumor was that they were up for sale at that time. The prediction was that the news stand sales would plummet due to loss of support from the hugh number of periodicals fielded first by peterson's publications and then by primedia. Apparently the sale did not happen but the numbers fell way off anyway.
American Handgunner, at that time was claiming 190,000 paid circulation and showed total subscriptions at 147,100. Now they are claiming (12/03 171,000) AVERAGE paid circulation while their auditors put the total number at 107,000.
Their use of the term "Average" seems to be a attempt to get around the current reality and make it appear that the actual circulation is larger.
In the early 1990s there were a few more titles out there. Shooting Times had a Handgun magazine that folded due to low numbers, Larry Flint was into the game with Modern Gun which also folded. Myron Fass had a number of Magazines with changing titles and his creditors finally caught up with him.
