Ah, Gun Digest. When I was a boy I couldn’t afford to buy it out of my allowance – it was the price of a book, since after all, it was a book – but thankfully, the library in the city where I lived since age nine bought it every year. I had to read it there in the library, because they kept it in the reference section.
The 2025 edition, edited by Phil Massaro, is spectacularly good. There’s a trend in firearms journalism today for articles to be short on words and long on pretty “gun porn” pictures. While the 2025 GD has no shortage of the latter for visual pleasure, Massaro appears to have blessedly gone back to the old editors’ maxim, “Let the writers use as many words as they need to tell the story.” This year’s Digest has long, meaty articles. For example:
Jens Ulrik Hogh’s article “Sako: Finnish Soul in Steel and Wood” is the sort of deep dive into details of engineering and history that we gun nerds savor. Craig Boddington’s piece on the 100th anniversary of the .270 Winchester rifle cartridge, Nick Hahn’s piece on the classic Browning Sweet Sixteen semi-auto shotgun, and Wayne van Zwoll’s history of the .300 Holland and Holland Magnum are examples of that. So is Massaro’s own profile of the late Tom Turpin, who for many years entranced Gun Digest readers with pictures of beautifully engraved shotguns. You finish the article wishing you could have known Turpin and handled the fine firearms he wrote about so eloquently.
Master hunter and guide Phil Shoemaker is famous among handgunners for having killed a charging grizzly bear with a 9mm Smith & Wesson, admittedly loaded with special deep-penetrating bullets from Buffalo Bore. In the hunting world, though, he’s famous for his guiding expertise in bear country. When you read his recommendations on what to use against big bears (spoiler alert) he’s going to recommend something a helluva lot bigger than a 9mm pistol, and you’ll know that advice is spoken in the voice of experience. There’s even a reprint of the legendary Elmer Keith’s 1950’s article on his experience from a year of shooting the .44 Magnum revolver he helped bring into existence, and carried as a personal handgun for the rest of his life.
Bob Campbell’s overview of 1911 pistols is thorough and educational. And those are just a few of the uniformly excellent pieces you’ll find in the more than 600 pages of this newest Gun Digest. The catalog pages with specs and ballistics tables are of course valuable too. It’s worth its $39.99 (31.20 on Amazon) cover price…or you can ask your local library to get you a copy so lots of people can read it.
Unfortunately, I expect it’ll be a rare modern library that would stock the book.
I fear you’re correct on that count. Lucky to get a field and stream around here.
Many modern librarians are hypersensitive concerning “censorship.” Even the suggestion that they would refrain from stocking Gun Digest because they are censors of knowledge may push them into it rather than they get that reputation. Here on the left coast it works. You might try it where you live.
I live in Pinal county, AZ and they do indeed have it! But I think I’ll buy a copy – sounds cool. I’ll share it with my boyfriend.