By Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor

On the hottest day on record in Buffalo, NY (actually it was the hottest night-but trust me, it was hot), just back from our Firearms & Fiction seminar in Atlanta (also hot!), I was proofreading my dad's Hindsight column for the Aug. 10 issue of Gun Week.

Gun Week (online at gunweek.com), our "older brother" magazine, has been in business since 1966, when it was started by Amos Press in Sydney, OH.

I enjoyed a hearty laugh as I read my dad's first sentence, and as it had been a long, hot (have I mentioned that it was hot?) week, we were just back from a trip and the office was in the throes of a computer "upgrade," my normally good-natured Pop snapped out a peevish, "What?" in response to my laugh.

As originally written, his first sentence said: "With the publication of this issue of Gun Week, I begin my 127th year of editing this publication."

Tee-hee.

"Dad," I said, "it only seems like one hundred and twenty-seven years some times."

But, when the issue was done and gone, as we say around these parts, I had to reflect that his anniversary was also mine-twenty-seven years ago I started out at Gun Week, and have worked my way through circulation, advertising, deck-swabbing, proofreading and other miscellanea to arrive in my own editor's chair.

"Wherever you gothere you are," reads a Mary Engelbreit greeting card.

"What a long, strange trip it's been," sang the Grateful Dead.

Well, whatever. It's probably a very good idea not to spend a lot of your current time thinking about past times.

Still, as we round the corner on another year, getting ready for another Gun Rights Policy Conference (I hope to see many of you in Charlotte), emailing contributors not to forget that their Holiday Gift Guide copy is due long before the last tomato is picked, a little looking back creeps in.

When I started out a score and seven years ago, I doubt if anyone could have predicted many of the big changes that were in store for us all. Not all of them have been good, but many of them have. For example, given our recent computer woes, I gave an extra careful reading to Dave Workman's piece on the pros and cons of double shotguns.

I'm not sure, for example, how many states had right-to-carry laws in 1979, but it surely wasn't the majority of states. As I write this only two states-Illinois and Wisconsin have no provision whatsoever for citizens to carry concealed firearms.

And, my lands!, you wouldn't believe just how downright bizarre the notion of a women's firearms magazine seemed just 17 years ago! Why, you'd have thought a man had walked on the moon or something! In the beginning, I sometimes felt we spent more time explaining the magazine than actually producing it.

I was reminded of that recently when I got a thoughtful, albeit chiding, email recently from someone objecting to an image in Women & Guns. (EK, by the time you read this issue you will have gotten a letter from me). When we first started the magazine, nearly ever single image seemed to get on somebody's nerves-sometimes the mainstream media, sometimes the readers themselves.

One of the things I'm proudest about Women & Guns is that almost every single woman who appears in it-young, old, short, tall, etc.-is a shooter. Image is important, especially our self-image, but the sheer numbers of us is great, too.

But as in many cases, time has a habit of leveling things out. What "once was shocking now doesn't seem to be," as Cole Porter wrote a half century or more ago.

It's okay to be shocked by change, I think-just not surprised.

Peggy Tartaro

Photo © Copyright 1998 Nancy Floyd, used with permission.