Post by Admin on Aug 9, 2019 3:01:58 GMT
Collecting Gun Books
Starting a firearms book collection isn’t for every shooter or firearms enthusiast. Not everyone reads a lot these days (offline that is), and the price alone is a strong deterrent. You can’t really attach the Collector Grade Publications “The Black Rifle II” to the rails of an AR, or jam Ian Skennerton’s “The Lee Enfield” into your No.4 Mk II. I recently went to some used book stores in Washington state and bought over 400 dollars worth of firearms books. With that amount of money I could have bought a good amount of ammunition, a scope, or even a decent hunting rifle. So I’m not amiss when I say this post isn’t for everyone. Another big thing is that a lot of the information I have in my firearms books can be found online through the internet. But if you have a good collection of books already, or want to get into collecting gun books, then read on!
A recent buying spree. The blanket, I swear, isn’t mine. In this day and age it is a great idea to compile a list of all your books so you don’t get duplicates. The World War One machine gun live fire book above the Flintlock book I already had. And I hadn’t realized it at the time, but the blue book above the WW1 is a book about Mannlicher rifles and pistols that is actually included in the top blue book.
Part of my fascination with books comes from my uncle who is a military aviation historian. Whenever I would visit him, we would go to all these used book stores and scour the shelves, him for aviation books and me for firearms. One thing that is great about collecting gun books is that they are a very niche market. So unless a book store is devoted to military history or firearms, it’s quite easy to walk into a bookstore and clean them out of their firearms section because usually all they’ll are maybe a handful. Nonetheless, I would recommend to still specialize in what you want because if you just go out and buy every gun book you find, you’ll never have a full library because your interests will be all over the place, just like with a decent firearms collection. For me, I’ve chosen to specialize in military small arms of the 20th and 21st centuries. Sure I’ve got a bunch of books on civilian firearms, a couple on hunting, some on long range accuracy but mainly I’m interested in the small arms, historical and present guns that arm the world’s militaries. But regardless of what you choose to specialize in, there are some general categories out there to know and understand.
Before we go any further, the need to seek out experts in the field of firearms is essential to any firearms book collector regardless of what the book is about. Some authors that stand out are Ian Hogg, Ian Skennerton, Bruce Canfield, Robert Bruce, Maxim Popenker, John Walter, Dolf Goldsmith, Anthony Williams, and Frank Iannamico are just but a few who are extremely well established. Buy a title written by any one of these guys and you can’t go wrong.
Part of my fascination with books comes from my uncle who is a military aviation historian. Whenever I would visit him, we would go to all these used book stores and scour the shelves, him for aviation books and me for firearms. One thing that is great about collecting gun books is that they are a very niche market. So unless a book store is devoted to military history or firearms, it’s quite easy to walk into a bookstore and clean them out of their firearms section because usually all they’ll are maybe a handful. Nonetheless, I would recommend to still specialize in what you want because if you just go out and buy every gun book you find, you’ll never have a full library because your interests will be all over the place, just like with a decent firearms collection. For me, I’ve chosen to specialize in military small arms of the 20th and 21st centuries. Sure I’ve got a bunch of books on civilian firearms, a couple on hunting, some on long range accuracy but mainly I’m interested in the small arms, historical and present guns that arm the world’s militaries. But regardless of what you choose to specialize in, there are some general categories out there to know and understand.
Before we go any further, the need to seek out experts in the field of firearms is essential to any firearms book collector regardless of what the book is about. Some authors that stand out are Ian Hogg, Ian Skennerton, Bruce Canfield, Robert Bruce, Maxim Popenker, John Walter, Dolf Goldsmith, Anthony Williams, and Frank Iannamico are just but a few who are extremely well established. Buy a title written by any one of these guys and you can’t go wrong.
This is what I mean by regurgitating information. On the right is the “Weapons of the Special Forces” entry for the SVD sniper rifle, on the left is Hogg’s “Military Small Arms of the 20th century” entry for the exact same rifle. You’ll learn even more about the SVD and its variants from Hogg than from the special forces book.
This is what I mean by regurgitating information. On the right is the “Weapons of the Special Forces” entry for the SVD sniper rifle, on the left is Hogg’s “Military Small Arms of the 20th century” entry for the exact same rifle. You’ll learn even more about the SVD and its variants from Hogg than from the special forces book
I can’t name many bad gun writers but Patrick Sweeney is an example of a writer who’s books are written more like extended magazine articles. His opinions flood the pages and he sometimes goes off on a tangent on things that have nothing to do with the gun. For example in his Gun Digest book of the Glock, he spends an entire chapter on nothing but competitions. I’m sorry, but although I compete as well, I don’t want to read about competition in a book about the Glock pistol, I just want to read about the Glock. In addition I stay away from books that are politically charged such as anything from Wayne Lapierre (I won’t find serial number charts in Lapierre’s books about gun rights). There’s been a book written about Glock by Paul Barret and another one about the AK47 by Larry Kahaner and studying their political impacts. I’m not a sociologist, I don’t care how African nations benefitted from the AK in their struggles for independence. However I do care about knowing the difference between early AKMs and late production AKMs.
