Gun Week Marks 40th Year At 28th Annual SHOT Show
February 1, 2006
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
In 2006, Gun Week will be celebrating its 40th anniversary as the newspaper of record for the firearms community and industry.
Started by Amos Press in Sidney, OH, in 1966, purchased by Hawkeye Publishing in 1979, and later acquired by the Second Amendment Foundation in 1985, Gun Week has been driven always by a commitment to inform the entire gun and hunting community in a way that no other publication before or since has ever equaled.
Our beat has been more than firearms legislation, court cases and regulations. Over the years, Gun Week has covered many related but equally important fields beyond everyday firearms politics. We’ve been first with factual, in-depth reporting of controversial regulatory proposals advanced by the Interior, Agriculture, Justice, Treasury and State Departments, proposals that directly affect the future of American hunters, shooters, collectors—and the industry that serves them.
In some instances during the past 40 years, Gun Week has even played a key role in determining the outcome of political and organizational history. On occasion, when the firearms issue becomes front page news for most newspapers, The New York Post and the Associated Press have referred to Gun Week as “the newspaper of the gun lobby.” Activists within the gun community have called us “the conscience of the gun lobby.”
Such accolades are only one indication of Gun Week’s unique commitment to serving our audience honestly and objectively, or of our ability to influence events. Over 97% of our readers vote regularly; slightly more than 90% write to officials after they are elected, and almost 48% write letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines. Without getting into a litany of numbers, we can safely say, based on our research, that hefty numbers of our readers use information from Gun Week in e-mails, letters and speeches. Well over half hunt, more than six in 10 target shoot, and an almost equal number—64.91% have home state concealed carry licenses.
Our readers are influentials, not just in politics but in their outdoor interests and recreation, and they know they can rely on what Gun Week reports, often information that is seldom available accurately in daily newspapers, newsweeklies or even many websites, and is often behind times in gun-related monthlies.
Gun Week is not just a political journal. Throughout its history, Gun Week has also covered the full breadth of the shooting sports, handguns, rifles, shotguns, blackpowder, airguns—even the occasional paint ball feature. We’ve covered all the accessories in detail: ammunition; optics; leather; accessories; cutlery, and, above all, new trends and technology, especially in handloading. We have always been first among national publications reporting the results of major competitions, including—when available—the guns and ammunition used by the winners. In addition, we provide regular reportage on a variety of special interest shooting organizations.
For collectors and the average gunowner, we’ve provided a comprehensive national gun show calendar that is updated three times a month as well as feature articles on collectible guns. For the industry, we have reported the latest regulatory and court news, as well as mergers and acquisitions.
We have been in at the beginning of many important events involving firearms and firearms owners, or the industry.
John Amos, an avid shotgunner who was concerned about the mid-1960s push on Capitol Hill for Connecticut Sen. Thomas Dodd’s anti-gun legislation was a pioneer in the firearms civil rights movement. And when he hired his first full-time editor, it was the late Neal Knox, who spent a lot of time in Washington, DC—not just as a journalist but as a knowledgeable citizen testifying at congressional hearings and speaking with lawmakers.
This was seven years or so before the National Rifle Association (NRA) board authorized the formation of the Institute for Legislative Action. It was about five years before the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and the Second Amendment Foundation were established. Of course, Gun Week reported on the formation of these politically driven gun rights organizations.
And when the Dodd bill was passed as the Gun Control Act of 1968, Gun Week was already on the job, providing the first details anywhere of a restrictive measure that took effect almost immediately.
We were also in Cincinnati, OH, in 1977 for the historic NRA members’ meeting when the venerable shooter’s association was transformed into a social and political force.
Among the many award plaques that decorate the walls of the Gun Week offices is one from the National Shooting Sports Foundation which recognizes the “outstanding contributions” of Gun Week to the first annual “Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show and Convention” held in St. Louis, MO, Jan. 9-11, 1979. Gun Week had played a key role in getting the first SHOT Show off the ground as a major, international trade show, which will be celebrating its 28th year in Las Vegas, NV, Feb. 9-12.
The original SHOT Show was only three days, and I have to admit that I was not in attendance, although July of that year, I became Gun Week’s editor. And I have attended and/or exhibited at every SHOT Show since the 1980 edition in San Francisco, CA, whether three-days or four-days in duration.
While SHOT Show has become the world’s largest trade event for the firearms and outdoor industry, it is more than that. It is an essential component of the entire firearms community, a place where people trade gossip, information and new ideas. It is a place were manufacturers, importers, dealers, gun organizations and the gun press network and build for the future.
While the SHOT Show is not a consumer show, it is the place where new products and services first appear, and that is why we provide so much information on new products before the show and in the balance of the year.
For all of the reasons above, Gun Week is relied upon by dedicated firearms rights activists in and out of government. It explains the extraordinary influence this relatively small but timely tabloid has on so wide a non-subscriber audience. It is read and passed along by members of Congress, by lawmakers in state capitols, by college professors and policy wonks in many gun and non-gun organizations, as well as at gun clubs, shooting ranges, police and sheriffs departments, business and professional offices.
Significantly, Gun Week is also read by many editors and publishers of larger monthly gun and outdoor sports magazines. They do so to keep current on the news in the world of guns, but often to get ideas for feature product stories they will publish later.
Even in the current age of cable television, Internet websites, on-line news sources and blogs, Gun Week continues to provide essential news that is accurate and reliable three times a month. (Of course, we also have our own website at: www.gunweek.com.)
Throughout Gun Week’s history, many now large and successful firearms industry firms cut their marketing teeth in our pages with regular advertising investments, often with small ads. With some brief absences, many of those firms are still regular Gun Week advertisers, especially when they’ve got a product or other message that needs to be communicated quickly, where our short deadlines make such a difference.
As this issue is going to press on Jan. 17, we are already tracking a story about the future of Winchester Arms. It may only be rumors, but signs point to a bigger story. As always, we’ll be the first to have it in print.
Anyone exhibiting or attending the SHOT Show who would like to visit will find us at the Second Amendment Foundation Booth No. 5198. Staffs of Gun Week, Women & Guns, The Gottlieb-Tartaro Report, The Journal of Firearms and Public Policy and the Foundation will be in attendance.
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