Jack Flash has touched upon the solution.

Basically, what we've got is a perspective problem. Worse because those posting here have a fairly well focused set of interests. My own problem is I'm interested in S&W handguns. I've just arrived at the conclusion I'm not going to learn anything new about them from currently published magazines. If you want to know and learn about them, go to a gunshow (a big one) and handle a few hundred. Or post here and get a wealth of answers.

Yes, I fit the demographic of other S&W posters. I'm old, I've been doing this stuff for all of my adult life, and most of my youth. I have very well defined biases. I know what I like, what I don't like, and I won't waste my time on ****.

But I do have a basement junk room. And we have a ground floor library. Both are filled with old magazines. Dad got home from WWII with a subscription to AR. So did my FIL. I've got almost all of them, still. By the late 1950s I discovered I could con my father into buying an occasional Sports Afield or other magazine with a cool article. It cost an enormous amount at the time, probably 35 cents. He sprung for them, I guess because he could blame the waste on me and then read them himself.

I subscribed to a lot of magazines in the 1970s, 80s, etc. I still have most of them. Waste not want not. If I paid for it, I'm keeping it.

When I yearn for the old writers, I just go to my basement and find the articles. They're as good today as they were then. Yes, I pick out errors. But the basics are there. I have almost no interest in black rifles, or modern semi-auto handguns. Maybe I own one or two....

The simple fact is that if you want to read fiction, the old stuff is as good or better than anything written today. And its because the subject matter is about guns we know and love. Many of today's kids grew up with Glocks and think they're well made. They have the right to be misinformed.

If you want technically accurate information on S&Ws, you've come to the right place. I'd venture a guess that we have more knowledgeable people posting here than all of the gun writers in magazines combined. Sure, we're an isolated situation on an arcane subject. But if you've read what has been written here, its pretty good. And we're interactive and nearly instantaneous.

Yes, I still read Skeeter. I have the original magazine articles (the ones I waited each month for, knowing about when they would appear in the mailbox.) And I have his books. Even the ones his kin published after his early death. Too bad about that last.

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Dick Burg