I wrote previously about the hullabaloo concerning Dana Loesch being on the cover of Guns & Ammo magazine, the first woman since November 1961 to appear on the cover.

Looking at some other covers of Guns & Ammo recently I realized that people in general don’t appear on the cover of that particular magazine. You can find an occasional man, as with the guy testing .22 LR ammo on the September 1961 cover or the elephant hunter on the August 1969 cover. But most G&A covers just have pictures of, wait for it: guns and ammo.

I wondered how this compared to other gun magazines, so I checked out the archive of Guns Magazine online. For the first volume of that magazine, published in 1955, 7 of the 12 issues had people on the cover. And 2 of those 7 were women.

The July 1955 issue even asked, “Can Women Outshoot Men?”

Also, for the December 1955 cover story on  “How to Choose a Gun for Your Youngster,” a female rather than a male model was used.

I find looking at old magazines endlessly fascinating because they are a time machine for visiting certain aspects of the past. As I noted previously, they remind us that it’s all too easy to get caught up in the present and forget that women were also a part of Gun Culture 1.0, even if they took a back seat to men.