Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire NRA American Rifleman October 1945

Someone long ago gave my wife this issue dated October 1945. Inside on the first page is a letter stating this was to become a reference volume for the NRA. Magazine is in great condition, no tears.



Not much value but still pretty cool. Thoughts?

Rear cover:

Thoughts on what exactly?

Just general thoughts, this was a different Era. When men were real men.

I have a little collection of Rifleman mags, full years from 1932 to 1949. Fun to read and remember the "good ol' days". Technical writing vastly more technical and informative that today's magazine.

Very cool. A real piece of Americana from a bygone era. Four years and four months before I even showed up in this world. I love reading some of those old periodicals.

It seems like todays magazine consists of (a) one article on the history of some WWII firearm, (b) a bunch of articles praising some new guns whose manufacturers bought ads, and (c) a bunch of editorials about why we should reject gun control.

I don't know about 1945 but I think the content was much better in the early '60s.

The AMERICAN RIFLEMAN had a technical staff back then. Some of the guys on that staff also wrote articles, very good ones. Far, far better magazine that it is these days. They haven't had a good editor in about thirty years.

Think they are fascinating and enjoy looking thru the olde stuff, say 50’s and earlier. Same reasons others cited.

The one you pictured, can’t help but wonder, being just a few months after the end of the war what where the topics of the day, the mood/sentiment, people’s means to buy ammunition or firearms was at? People must have been a mixture of still weary, if relieved. Fabric of many families affected by war losses. In the cities, the domestic product manufacturing boom was approaching but not there yet. Surely wartime production was severely curtailed if not shuttered. Subsistence farmers like my family in the countryside, i doubt disposed of income to read the publication, and their modest use of firearms and ammunition for game i don’t think went up or down relative to the war period.

Random thoughts, but the stuff i try to read into by the articles and advertisements. Love the old artwork, particularly.

"Century Steak" - never heard of it - anyone else?

Although I haven't read it, you probably notice a few things about this magazine.

1. 100% less douchy bearded tactical "bros" in the advertisements
2. The articles are more in-depth and assume the reader is smarter than today's issues of "American Rifleman"
3. The writers do not seem obsessed with defending themselves from bad guys and are much more concerned with 10-shot groups or whitetails

Tell me if these predictions were right or not.

10 shot groups


Shut up dikhead and go play with your airsoft

I've heard 3 shots is getting a bit fussy and old-fashioned these days and a lot of people want to move to "best of two 2-shot groups".

I remember those pistol boxes on the back cover were common at ranges. They were generally owned by guys with various club and award patches covering most of their jackets and vests. And if I'm not mistaken that's a carbide lamp for blackening the sights. Cool stuff. And you're right, the articles were mostly about hunting and target shooting, not the best gun for shooting people. Of course, a lot of guys reading that had just spent a few years shooting and being shot at.


Whoever owns those four handguns could probably get several hundred dollars for them today...

My dad one of those carbide lamps (under the barrel of the revolver.) I found it as a kid back in the 50's while I was snooping around in some boxes in the garage attic. I never could figure out how it worked. I kept trying to light it by striking the flint with the roller.

Can’t remember where I got it, but I still have one of those old wood pistol boxes.

To be quite frank, much as I hate to say this but I have to disagree with with you on what Goosey said. There was no tactical stuff, at least in the form we see today. Many article were a great deal more technical than what is seen today. You even had real "how to do it" articles that are no longer seen due to scumbag lawyers and liability law suits. Read a few of those older copies and you just might learn something. Yes, 10 shot groups were what was use to determine the accuracy of a rifle from the lowly 30-30 to the vaunted Winchester M70.
I have a few copies of the Rifleman from 1936, 1937, all of 1938, 1939 missing in action and everything from 1040 to the present date. There's a hell of a lot of good stuff buried in those old magazines, and yes, I've read every last one of them.
Paul B.

is there a good gun mag anymore? guns and ammo used to be pretty good. i was just reading some from the 90's and early 2000's. i dropped all subs when it seemed like every magazine had 5 stories of craig boddington flying all over the fuggen place and blasting schit with his left hand guns. that and AR after AR after AR schit that i have seen 90 times.

I'm not defending the useless rag titled "The American Rifleman" that we have today, it's indefensible. But to correct the record, Rifleman staff when testing a long gun...use 5, five shot groups. There is not another rag out there that even comes close to that standard. So, that out of the way, as a man who has a pickup load of Rifleman dating to the early '60's organized into a reference library of sorts, by the mid '90's they started going into the trash where they belong...because they have absolutely no useful content whatsoever. In a reply to a rather heated but polite letter to them in the early '90's, they informed me that editorial policy was designed to reflect a support role for the firearms industry and press as a whole, and thusly not compete with commercial publications in content or advertising. I think that was around the time they built the glass and steel Taj Mahal headquarters.

Good issue: Bullets wounds by Keith and Rifle Action Strength….
I had this thought at 19…