Looking back into the future - Campfire Tales

Guns Magazine, March, 2002 by John Taffin

At one time, many, many years ago, I knew almost everything. Most teenagers do. But as I grew older and somewhat wiser, I began compiling a list of Things I Do Not Understand. In the ensuing years the list has become longer, not shorter. Close to the top of the list is the question of why so many shooters actually take pride in the fact that they are somehow above reading gun magazines. How do they ever learn anything? How do they ever know about new products? How do they know of the better firearms and equipment?

Perhaps my background is different than theirs. I grew up in that wonderful Happy Days time of the early 1950s. Information was not easy to come by, and newsstand gun magazines didn't exist. Then one wintry day, I traveled to town to take in a movie, stopped at the magazine rack, and my heart nearly stopped as I discovered the very first issue of GUNS in January 1955. My life was now complete!

Over the next few years I saw the advent of three other gun magazines. It was about the same time -- 1959, still in my teen years -- that I got married. This pleasant situation often changes the focus of many shooters with the lame excuse that they can't afford to purchase gun magazines. It was always understood by my wife that gun magazines were a vital part of the grocery list. That has never changed.

I also hear the excuse that there is "too much junk in gun magazines." I don't necessarily agree with that; even if I did, I would consider myself smart enough to be able to separate the "junk" from the good stuff. As one who does all the grocery shopping these days, I'm faced with gable to distinguish junk food from good fond with every trip to the market. I can certainly do the same thing when it comes to reading material.

I have "read" every issue of every gun magazine published since 1955. By my count, the total number of different gun magazines is well over one dozen, and at least three of these are no longer in publication. I use the word "read" in quotations because I haven't read every single article in every single magazine, hut there has never been a gun magazine printed that didn't have at least one article I learned something from. Over the years, that learning has come from such men as Elmer Keith, George Nonte, Jeff Cooper, Skeeter Skelton, Charlie Askins, Kent Bellah and Walter Rodgers, to name a few. They wrote about many 41 including the advent of the Magnums, .357, .44 and .41; and the Super Magnum, .454 Casull; as well as articles on the .44 Special and the .45 Colt. I began to discover the potential of heavyweight bullets in the .45 Colt from an article written more than 30 years ago.

It has also been my habit to cut and file with a single four-drawer file cabinet full of folders containing articles, and two more filing cabinets holding every issue of several magazines. Over the years, all of this information, along with hundreds of books I have gathered, has become a most valuable resource. This past week, with the weather being wetter then I care to have for shooting activities, I found myself going through the files to do some organizing. I used up 500 clear plastic sheet protectors, holding 1,000 pages, and organized articles and columns from Elmer Keith dating all the way back to 1925, and Skeeter's writings from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. This information should never be lost, and these will someday go to the grandkids along with with copies of everything I've ever written.

As I was going through each folder, I found a great deal of interesting reading that I had forgotten about. One such piece that immediately caught my eye was written by Col. Askins 25 years ago as he looked forward to "Handgunning In The Year 2001." That piece has been in my file since 1977 and hadn't been pulled out since that time. I find it extremely interesting, almost eerie, that I did not look at it again until the year 2001.

The Colonel was always a gutsy guy, and it takes a great deal of intestinal fortitude to prognosticate 25 years in the future. Or perhaps he figured he would be gone by now and not have to worry about standing by his predictions. Let's take a look at what he foresaw from his vantage point in 1977. And to be totally fair to him, I'll also point out whether I agreed or disagreed with him in 1977.

I'd speculate that by 2001 there will be no calibers larger than the .45, as we've gone just about as far in that direction as anyone cares to travel!

In 1977, Dick Casull and his .45 Magnum were just starting to be known, and I do believe I would have agreed with Col. Askins on this point. Of course, we were both wrong. We've now seen the advent of truly big-bore wildcat cartridges in both sixguns and single-shots as well as factory offerings in .475 Linebaugh, .480 Ruger and .50 Action Express. In talking about a new .30-caliber cartridge for semiautomatics, he made this statement:

I cannot be very optimistic about a new round of whatever caliber for any of the cylinder handguns.

Again, I would probably have agreed with him, and again we were both wrong.