Well, SHOT Show 2008 is over and sadly many consider it one of, perhaps the worst SHOT in recent memory. There just wasn’t much to see that was new and exciting. The event was spread out over two large halls as well as three temporary building-size tents. Each hall and tent had its own Law Enforcement, Firearms, Hunting, and other sections. It was completely chaotic. Even with four full days, there is just too much to see.
However, some interesting things were introduced for the pistol shooter, such as:
In the pistol world, the most buzz came from the new Ruger .380. Clearly designed to compete with the Kel-Tec P3AT, the Ruger is a near-lookalike but with the benefit of Ruger’s reputation of solid, reliable pistols. Expected to sell at a price point around $300 (or less), it is sure to take a big bite out of Kel-Tec’s dominance in the mini-pistol market. Reportedly, Ruger received orders for twenty thousand of these things in the first two days of the Show alone.
Smith & Wesson debuted a number of new pistols in their M&P (Military & Police) line. The new mid-size and compact .45’s were much anticipated, as was the new M&P9L … a sport-oriented long slide version of the M&P9 with 5″ barrel. Vastly improved over the early prototype shown at last year’s SHOT, the new 5″ gun benefited from the experience of the many national champions on staff at Smith. Sadly, the new Julie Goloski signature M&P was not ready for the show … shipping with both standard black and special pink backstraps, a portion of the sale from each gun will be donated to breast cancer awareness and research! Kudos to Julie and S&W for supporting such a worth cause.
Glock‘s new pistol is the G30SF, a mid-size version of last year’s G21SF with its ambidextrous mag catch and modified backstrap to reduce trigger reach. But the biggest treats at the Glock booth came in the form of celebrities. Not only could you get your picture taken with R. Lee Ermey of Full Metal Jacket and Mail Call fame, but Glock’s entire champion pistol team was there. Randi Rogers, Jessie Abbate, and countless-times National and World Champion Dave Sevigny were on hand every day to sign autographs and give shooting tups to anyone who asked.
Beretta had the compact version of its PX4 pistol on display. The compact utilizes a traditional tilt-barrel design instead of the rotating barrel in the full size gun … apparently the engineers at Beretta decided that the rotating barrel system would be more reliable for such a short gun. In addition, Beretta had their new “Elite III” pistol on display. It appeared to be little more than a M9A1 frame with a stainless 92FS slide. This is an unfortunate departure from Beretta’s previous Elite guns which used the much superior “G” decock-only mechanism. We expect sales of the E3 to be mediocre at best compared to the original Elite and E2.
Heckler & Koch had their new HK45 on display in various configurations. The pistol will soon be built at H&K’s new production facility in New Hampshire followed by a civilian version of the 416 rifle. It was also confirmed that earlier reports of H&K being bought out by Cerberus (the owners of Remington, Bushmaster, and Chrysler) were premature … the deal never made it past the earliest discussion stages.
SIG-Sauer had on display a variety of new P250 variants in various calibers and sizes, hopefully signaling an end to the years-long design troubles SIG faced bringing the gun to market. They also announced a .22lr conversion kit for the P226, which could be considered a must have item given current ammunition prices.
Speaking of .22 kits, Tactical Solutions, considered by many to be the premier .22 shop in the U.S., announced their plan to develop a 100% made-in-the-US series of conversion kits for the Glock, M&P, and XD. We look forward to getting our hands on an early production unit as soon as they’re available for test & evaluation.
This year’s SHOT Show also provided a great safety reminder. An employee at FN‘s booth took one of the deactivated Five-SeveN pistols on display and put a firing pin back in the gun to carry it one evening. However, he forgot about the hard plastic yellow safety tag in the trigger guard that is required for all guns on display at SHOT. When he put the gun in his holster, the tag caught the trigger and … **BOOM**. (as many of us noted, this was yet another example of why a hammer-fired gun is often safer than a striker-fired one)
Of course, a number of new accessories were also debuted at SHOT this year, and pistol-training.com hopes to report on a number of test & evaluation items in the coming months.
Train hard & stay safe! The pistol-training.com staff
It’s been close to three weeks since the shot show and none of big name tv or radio (gun) shows have reported on the “ND” at the shot show. We need to tighten up on our own safety standards. But I guess ” **** happens. Were under the eye of the press as it is,and this was a topic of note at our last local gunclub meeting. “SAFETY”