#ShotShow

Just like Heckler & Koch USA, IWI US Inc. is relocating due to growth.

SHOT Show is the pinnacle of all things fun and tacti-cool about the firearms industry. For a week every winter, gun writers, manufacturers and firearm enthusiasts all gather out in the desert of Las Vegas to see what will be the new hotness for the year. This year will be the start of something entirely new for those who are able to attend the exclusive Industry Range Day and report on it for the rest of us. A new Less-Lethal category of products will be allowed to attend and display their wares for everyone to fondle and tantalize over.

In this episode of TFBTV James talks about street pornography, Patrick talks too much, Miles signs off with “Errrrp”, and Edward says eh and aboot several times.

I think it’s fair to call this a “Shot Show Secret” isn’t it?

If you noticed the green barrels in the FLIR video: we did too! We took Edward O and the camera crew over to the Falkor booth to learn about their new Dracos straight jacket barrel sleeve system. This barrel uses a composite sleeve as a heat sink to maintain accuracy even after thousands of high temperature rounds. 300 Win Mag and 300 Norma are usually considered barrel-burners, but Falkor guarantees the Dracos system for life.

To celebrate 10 years of the PMAG, Magpul set up an impressive display to show the development cycle of the PMAG. They had some really rare and interesting mags on display to include some of the very first prototypes. Just recently it was announced that Magpul would be the new magazine of the USMC.

It is so easy to get distracted by the free beer, booth babes, and multi-level displays on the main floor of SHOT. Too many attendees get caught up in the glamor of the big guys and entirely overlook the NEXT Pavilion. This is where the true innovation is hiding at the show, where innovators and new companies get their first chance to display their product at SHOT.

On the floor of Shot Show 2017 Remington demos their new RP9 striker fired handgun. Based on a modular trigger housing, there is currently only one model of firearm.

Vortex released a whole host of new products this Shot Show, rounding out their tactical lineup and taking an interesting step into the world of rangefinding binoculars.

American Tactical Imports (ATI) showed off their AR-15 shotgun chambered in .410 gauge a few years back, well they’re finally coming out. I was walking through ATI’s booth to go fondle their MP-40 replica chambered in 9mm when I stumbled on the Omni Hybrid .410 shotgun. The new shotgun uses ATI’s OMNI Hybrid Mil-Spec, multi-caliber, polymer and metal lower receiver. The lower also uses a standard AR-15 6 position stock. The upper has a 2.5″ chamber and an 18.5″ barrel, 13″ free float rail with Keymod slots and a full length Picatinny rail up top.

Recently, it has become a priority for manufacturers of new striker-fired pistols to furnish their offerings with triggers they perceive as “better” than the competition (generally meaning Glock, the still-reigning heavyweight champion of the striker-fired world). The problem with many of these efforts, in the eyes of this humble blogger, is that they prioritize only the weight of the trigger and not its other characteristics, like overtravel, reset, and especially creep. In many cases, these triggers feel little or no different than the familiar creepy, spongy trigger of a Glock, with the exception of the poundage they put out. While this might be some kind of advantage for a square range competition gun, to me it’s actually a minor detriment to a carry piece: The trigger has not actually been made better, but due to its lower poundage it has arguably been made less safe.

Nestled in the back of the first floor of the 2017 SHOT Show, in a 1900-series booth shared with another company, was a solitary representative sitting behind two very interesting looking precision rifles, both bolt-action bullpups. This was the booth – half booth, really – of Polish arms manufacturer  Zakłady Mechaniczne Tarnów (ZMT for short). The factory was founded as a railway plant almost exactly 100 years ago, during World War I in 1917 – though there was no sign of this centennial at the booth. The rifles are variants of the Polish “Bor” sniper rifles, one in .308 Winchester and the other in .338 Lapua Magnum, and their military counterparts have been in use with the Polish armed forces since 2008.

With the Kel-Tec RDB’s arriving on store shelves and a healthy supply of RFB’s across the market, Kel-Tec has expanded the RDB-C line to include their new survival model.

In this episode of TFBTV, Edward O visits the range day booth of Yankee Hill Machine to see their newest suppressor offerings.

At Media Day on the Range we visited Tracking Point and shot their latest precision-guided rifles. New this year they’ve got a 300BLK model, and were demoing a set of Knights Armament SR25 rifles that have been outfitted with Tracking Point technology for use with Air Force para-rescue units.