#ShotShow

During SHOT Show 2017 Industry Day at the Range, I dropped by the IWI USA booth to see what they had for attendees to shoot. Besides their highly competitive Galil ACE 308, they had also brought the 5.56mm variant of the ACE, which is just now making it into the country. I got a chance to fire these two rifles side by side to compare them. Sadly, IWI’s reps tactically operate their booths with touchscreen-baffling gloves on, and since I ride solo at shows like this that meant I got no photos of me actually shooting the rifles. Oh well, we’ll have to make do with some glamor shots.

In this episode of TFBTV Edward O tries the Pulse on the range at Shot Show 2017.

Colt’s Manufacturing was on the firing line at the SHOT Show 2017 Industry Day at the Range, showing off their new handguns and rifles. Center stage was Colt’s re-entry to the double action wheelgun market, the reinvented Cobra. Unlike the previous Cobra, the new gun is all-steel, doing away with its nominal predecessor’s aluminum frame. This makes it closer to the old stainless fourth series Detective Special than the older Cobras, and therefore puts it in the same bracket as the S&W 640, Ruger SP101, and the new Kimber K6s.

In this episode of TFBTV we take a look at the new VP9 tactical model from HK, setup with suppressor height sights and a threaded barrel.

Dear Readers,

SHOT Show is soon upon us. The yearly NSSF industry gathering in none other than sunny (but often cold this time of year) Las Vegas, Nevada. Its an absolutely massive, crazy, fun, exciting, nerve-wracking, work-heavy, play-heavier week of near out of body experiences. For those who love guns, its The Promised Land and for those that don’t, its a blast regardless.

After the Wednesday round of the 2016 SHOT Show, I sat down for an evening of quiet work, to finish up a few articles I had from the day’s show-trekking. Less than an hour later, I was standing in a crowd at Battlefield Vegas, watching a Chieftain tank crush a sedan.

The Ithaca Gun Company may have gotten its start in 1883 but they didn’t begin producing their best-selling shotgun for another fifty years. That gun was none other than the Ithaca Model 37, a gun that itself had a long history. It got its start back in 1915 when John Browning entered a patent for a 20-gauge shotgun that would be sold as the Remington Model 17. Years later, Ithaca decided to produce a shotgun and opted for waiting for the patents on Browning’s gun to run out. They had believed the patent was set to run out in 1933 so they named their new shotgun the Model 33, but then they discovered it wouldn’t actually run out until 1937. Four years past the date originally hoped for, the Model 37 went into production.

At SHOT Show 2016 I stumbled upon the Scavenger 6 Multi-Caliber Rifle from Tim Ralston. It’s a survival rifle that can shoot up to 21 different calibers. If you don’t remember Tim Ralston is the guy who shot himself in the thumb on the Nat Geo show “Doomsday Preppers”, but he’s also the guy behind the X-Caliber system we posted about a while back.

Industry Day at the Range 2016 at the range this year was an awesome experience for the TFB & TFBTV. TFB was an official sponsor of the day and that sponsorship came with advanced access on Sunday, the day before the actual event. Our advanced access was how we were able to immediately start publishing blog posts and video at 8:30am on Monday, the moment the gates officially opened.

At this year’s SHOT Show, Winchester celebrated their 150 year anniversary. To celebrate they gave out these playing cards. Each card highlights a product or person in Winchester’s 150 year history.

The Glock 43 single stack pistol is becoming a very popular option for conceal carry use so it’s no surprise that the aftermarket is releasing new parts for it every year. While browsing the American Tactical booth at the SHOT Show I noticed they had a threaded match grade barrel for the 9mm Glock 43 on display. There are a few other threaded barrels on the market for the Glock 43 out there, like the XCaliber Firearms threaded barrel, but American Tactical claims theirs is the only “match grade” threaded Glock 43 barrel out there.

Attaching your smartphone to your gun is nothing new, Inteliscope has their pretty cool system and app that they released a few years back, there was also the MeoPix for spotting scopes. I ran into iScope at the SHOT Show and they had a very interesting adapter. It’s a pretty simple setup, the iScope attaches to most rifle scopes on the market. It attaches to your scopes eye piece up to 48mm via four felt tipped screws. Attached to that is an adapter that holds your smartphone in place, turn on your phones video recorder and start filming your hunt or range day then upload it to YouTube, Instagram whatever.

There are a couple rifle mag loaders out on the market such as the Three Point Innovation’s Box-to-Mag AR-15 Speed Loader and the  Caldwell’s Mag Charger, I stumbled upon this interesting new speed mag loader for the AR-15 from the folks at MIT USA called the Mag Pump. They were demonstrating it at the SHOT Show and it looked really easy to use. It’s hopper fed, just dump .223, 5.56 NATO or .300 Blackout rounds into the top, load in any Mil Spec AR-15 mag and work the lever. They demonstrated it with both Magpul PMAGs and standard metal USGI mags. There’s no need to put the ammo in a certain direction, the Mag Pump automatically sorts it and loads it in the correct direction. It features a mechanical interlock that prevents damage to the ammo by pausing actuation until the ammo is in place and aligned to the mag. Once the mag is fully loaded it will stop loading anymore rounds.

Last year Mesa Tactical partnered up with Beretta to make accessories for their shotguns. Well Mesa Tactical just released their new telescoping and hydraulic recoil stock kits for the Beretta 1301 semi-auto shotguns. Their stock kit is actually available in three different variations, you can get just the adapter where you can add your own AR-15 pistol grip, buffer tube and stock of your choice. The second option is their kit that includes the adapter, a Hogue rubber overmold pistol grip, aluminum mil-spec buffer tube and an M4 polymer stock. The third option includes their telescoping hydraulic recoil system that reduces felt recoil by up to 70%.