Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Turning the page

To a new era.

Guns magazine, regular readers know, posts pdf files of their old editions.

It's now 50 years ago. 1965. A watershed year by my lights. Somewhere around now the country descends into madness. Before this the veneer of adulthood remains

That Lileks fellow sorta agrees.  "The Twilight of the Grown Ups."  He likes the 50's part of the 60s.  Before it turned into fashion sensibility madness.

And the madness will descend further into the ennui of the 70s. 14 good years followed by 14 bad years

And the feel of gun magazines are changing.

They are worried about gun control. More and more of the magazine is devoted to it.

The Kleins sporting goods ads of Chicago are changing, too, in Guns Magazine.  See page 7.   Partly from Klein's connection to JFK getting killed two years prior, and certainly from the availability of surplus arms to sell. Now the cheapest gun is no longer a Carcano, but an inhouse sporterized Lee Enfield. Kleins put glass on lots of stuff for you, before you bought it.  Now, radios are getting ad space instead of S&W Victory revolvers.  In a gun magazine.  Like they are concentrating on 'sport' instead of the perfectly legitimate 'firearm'.  Because it is out of 'style.'

2 comments:

Old NFO said...

Hadn't looked at it quite that way, but you're right!

ASM826 said...

I had the same thought. I have been following the PDF release of the old magazines every month for years and knew this was coming.

I can remember my grandfather talking about it in '65 and after. He thought it was the beginning of the end of America. And now I think he was right.