A theoretical study has been made of the structure of so‐called gas‐ionizing hydromagnetic shock waves propagating into “cold” argon in the presence of realistic nonequilibrium effects. To satisfy the definition of these waves, it must be postulated that electrons are created solely by thermal ionization within the front. Comparison of the magnitudes of viscous and magnetic Reynolds numbers indicates that if such structures exist, they will consist of a narrow hydrodynamic (viscous)shock, followed by a much larger region of ionization, relaxation and magnetohydrodynamic interaction. For fronts with this architecture, a modified Zeldovich‐von Neumann‐Do¨ring approximation applies. Moreover, in this approximation it is impossible to construct nontrivial steady‐state structures for “fast” gas‐ionizing shocks. Solutions are found, however, for “slow” shocks and these are presented for a family of hydromagnetically oblique gas‐ionizing fronts at a Mach number of 20 and Alfve´n number of2−12for parametrically varied values of the upstream electric field.