Posted: 4/3/2016 2:17:22 PM EDT
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picked up the 1955 Gun Digest at the Minot gun show yesterday for $5.
Pretty interesting articles in it about the then new sport of bench rest and how the pretty much brand new .222 was one of the most accurate factory calibers. However what struck mw the most interesting was the choices of firearms available in 1954-1955 here in America. Quite honestly there wasn't a lot of new stuff on the market. Yeah Colt, S&W, Winchester, Remington, and Savage were making a good amount of stuff. However the only semi-auto centerfire rifle listed in the catalog portion was the Winchester Model 1907 in .351 Winchester. Even caliber listings in standard bolt guns of the day like the Winchester Model 70 and Remington 721 and 722 were pretty sparse Also at the point it was published in late 1954 the Ruger Blackhawk, .243 Winchester, and .44 Mag hadn't been released yet. Another thing is that the only single actin revolver list was Ruger Single Six which had debuted in 1953. No pistol caliber lever guns were present since the last Winchester 92's left the factory in 1941 and the last Marlin 94' left the factory in the early 30's Reading through that really shows that today honestly we have some of the best if not the best ever selection in firearms. |
Yeah, it's always fun to take a trip down memory lane.  It's been posted here before, but here's some pdf's of a decade of Guns mags from 1955 on:
http://gunsmagazine.com/classic-guns-magazine-editions/ |
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Quoted:
Yeah those old rags are fun to read. I wish I had some of my mid 80's shotgun news. Machine guns still legal to build and no assault weapons bans. There was some cool stuff available at great prices. Got an old Gun Digest that had a long article about the new Wildey pistol. 
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glancing through it and seeing the lack of caliber choices compared to today made me realize why wildcat cartridges became popular and also why so many Mausers, 1903's, etc were sporterized.
Today we are spoiled in the amount of caliber choices and even guns in general in regards to reliability and accuracy |