The inauguration of our new President went more smoothly than many professionals had feared, but then, those in public emergency services are paid to be pessimistic. The law enforcement network that coordinated the NSSE (National Special Security Event) was enormous, and it did its job well. You’ll get an idea of the scope of their task, and some of their obvious concerns, from the FBI’s own website, here.

In his inaugural address in its entirety if you haven’t caught it yet), President Obama said among other things, “We come to proclaim an end to petty grievances and false promises.” One hopes that he remembers the “promise” he promulgated throughout his campaign, that he wouldn’t take guns away from honest citizens.

However, his and his Vice-President’s support for making the assault weapons ban, which was a total failure throughout its decade of existence, permanent, gives one pause.

I suppose we law-abiding American gun owners must wait…and see…and hope.

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The SHOT show is over, and like most of the 48,907 people who attended, I’m pretty well shot.

Playing catch-up: that Springfield 1903A4 clone from Navy Arms uses original receiver and bolt, new Pedersoli barrel and stock, and Chinese copy of the WWII-vintage Weaver 330 telescopic sight. A blast from the past.

One reader asked for more details on the re-issued Model 58 .41 Magnum revolver, so I went back to the Smith & Wesson booth for another look. It’s not pinned and recessed. Nice gun, though. If you want pretty, get the adjustable sight Model 57 version in nickel. Just gorgeous.

A US rep for one of the Italian makers got with me today regarding a prototype revolver with the barrel set up to fire from the bottom chamber, not the topmost. This was last seen on another Italian revolver, the Mateba, and in years past the Russians have done something similar. Still a ways down the pike, but should be interesting. The lower barrel axis reduces muzzle jump. The Mateba was a good-size sporting handgun; I’m told the new concept will be smaller and more portable.

If you’re interested in the “tacti-cool” side of things, check out the thread on the SHOT Show at www.eotacforum.com.

The SHOT Show isn’t just about guns. You’ll see clothing, for all gun-related purposes. You’ll see accessories. You’ll see the latest in hunting blinds.

I spent the entire show wearing EOTAC garments. (I shoot with their company pistol team, and I wear this stuff on my own time, not just at matches.) Owned by Fernando Coelho, the guy who designed the Woolrich Elite line of tactical garb, this is the latest evolution of “shooterwear” designed with heavy input from beta testers from the sharp end of the war on terror to domestic shooting champions. I was comfortable throughout, and thanks to all the pockets, never lacked for anything I wanted readily at hand.

Today, brother writer Charlie Cutshaw turned me on to SHADOWSHIELD (www.theSHADOWSHIELD.com). Available in hunting blind, sniper hide, or assault team shield formats, all but the hunting version are also available with bullet-resistant reinforcement. The key is a mirror-like outer surface that reflects the surroundings, turning the user into a human chameleon. Not exactly cheap, but pretty neat. Y’all decide if y’all need it. As a toy, it’s expensive, but if you fit a certain pattern of need, it’s downright cheap.

Like the National Rifle Association Annual Convention or the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference sponsored by Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens’ Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the SHOT Show brings together thousands of people who’ve looked at life the way we have and have seen the same rights and responsibilities. It’s an affirmative thing.

Most of us left tired…but most of us left feeling uplifted.

The old Chinese saying has come true, and we “live in interesting times.” It is good to know that none of us are alone in this.

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Burnout is setting in. Yesterday I mis-typed LCP (Lightweight Compact Pistol) when I meant to write LCR (Lightweight Compact Revolver) in reference to Ruger’s new polymer .38 snubnose. And today, the most memorable product I saw was the fixed bayonet on a Glock pistol, courtesy of Laser-Lyte. A buddy of mine, a police academy firearms/officer survival instructor, bought one. He’s going to bring it to class as an only slightly humorous reminder of why you fight, fight, fight and never give up. Hell, I’m thinking of buying one of these pistol bayonets to cure students from shoving a pistol down the front of their waistbands…

I’m told that Navy Arms is now offering a replica Springfield 1903A4 rifle, complete with World War vintage telescopic sight, the scope being a Chinese copy. With the new administration, it’s possible that soon, pre-WWI-vintage bolt actions like this will be the only kind of military rifles allowed. If so, this Navy Arms flashback would be a choice example. I will try to get my hands on one tomorrow.

The SHOT Show is always alive with highly skilled demonstrators. I watched world champ Todd Jarrett give a gun handling demonstration at the ParaOrdnance booth: awesome, as always. At the Smith & Wesson complex, revolver wizard Jerry Miculek joined the precise Doug Koenig and the graceful Julie Goloski-Golub for a speed demo. Dave Sevigny, Jessica Abbate, and young Randi Rogers were signing autographs at the Glock booth – great shooters all, freely dispensing good advice to any shooter who cared to ask. Among them all is one common thread: a lack of the arrogance we often see in superstars in other sports. It makes us all the prouder to have them as the champions of our chosen sport.

Another of the great champs is Rob Leatham, and if all goes well I’ll record a podcast with him tomorrow. Rob won many of his world championships with target pistols with triggers as light as one pound, but when I asked him this afternoon what he actually carries nowadays, he told me it was a Springfield Armory EMP 9mm with a four- to five-pound trigger pull. He knows that target guns with target triggers belong on the range, and that on the street you need a street gun with a street trigger.

We recorded a ProArms Podcast with Charles Brown, the guy who markets low-priced guns such as the old Charter Arms revolver and the often-maligned Hi-Point semiautomatic pistols that start at $119 suggested retail. The Hi-Point product was the focus of an active and very two-sided discussion on this blog a while back, and when this particular podcast is up, I’ll post a link here.

Federal has reintroduced their excellent 125 grain Nyclad hollow point .38 Special load. If you own Grampa’s antique Smith & Wesson .38 Special made in the year 1902, or the new little six-shot Taurus Magnesium six-shot .38 Special that barely weighs enough to keep it from floating out of your pocket, you know that modern +P ammunition is too hot for either one. Within that range of needs, your best standard pressure .38 Special round for defensive purposes is, I’m convinced, that long-since discontinued Nyclad load. We’ve seen it expand reliably in flesh and bone, even when fired at low velocity from short barrels, many times. Its return is most welcome.

More tomorrow after the 2009 Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show passes into history on its last day.

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Just when you thought you’d seen everything…

Two days ago, I shot a plastic revolver (Ruger LCP) and a break-open semiautomatic shotgun (Beretta). Today I came face to face with a muzzle-loader…with an electronic trigger. When I told my significant other about it, she asked, “Isn’t that a little like a Glock at a cowboy match?” Actually, it makes a certain kind of sense. If you get a few more days to put venison in the freezer with a muzzle-loader hunting season, and tradition is NOT your motivation, anything conducive to a clean, surprise break of the trigger that sends the projectile true is in your best interest. This strange melding of Davy Crockett and Buck Rogers comes to us from CVA.

Old and new is always a theme at such “gun gatherings.” Replica 19th Century Sharps rifles, Winchesters, Peacemakers etc. are always good to see, especially with today’s prices through the roof on original antique guns. Ithaca’s sweet, trim slide-action shotgun, which goes back to before WWII, is back in yet another incarnation. You can get the original format or one with a space-age pistol grip/thumbhole stock.

Remember the Ginsu knife from TV infomercials? There’s now an outdoorsman’s line of Ginsus.

High tech flashlights (oops, I mean “tactical illumination devices”) are burgeoning. Leatherman has a line of them now. So do a bunch of other folks. I photographed the appropriately-named Beast light from SureFire on a .50 caliber M-2 Browning machinegun. Just the thing when night-hunting raccoons in Jurassic Park…but also, I expect, useful after dark to our young service men and women fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Telescopic sights are mature technology, but incremental advances do occur. The most significant I’ve seen at the show thus far is from Leupold, one of our Cadillac-level makers of firearms optics. Their new VX-7 scope will give extraordinary visibility in twilight.

The best thing about these gatherings is the people. It recharges your batteries to be among folks who share your values.

In a time of recession closing in on full-blown depression, most here are saying business is great. It’s unclear how much of this is the continuing concern that the new administration will soon ban some firearms. Randy Luth, head of AR15 manufacturer DPMS, told the SHOT Show folks that his company has taken as many orders in the last month and a half as it did in all of calendar 2007.

Will put up some pictures after I get home.

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The Show officially opened today. I for one prefer the Orlando venue to SHOT Show’s traditional haunt, Las Vegas, where they’ll be for the next several years after this one. More room in the aisles, for one thing, less sense of being packed in like sardines.

The “miles of aisles” take their toll early on us geezers, and I still have a podcast interview to do tonight. Producer is down with a bad cold, host/moderator is stuck on the other side of the city, and I got elected to run the microphone, God help us all. Like giving a monkey an AK47…anyway, I don’t even have time to put things in alphabetical order by manufacturer tonight. So, please forgive the “potpourri” approach.

There is, overall, a definite sense of foreboding about the incoming anti-gun administration that pervades this gathering of firearms professionals. Lots of the heavy hitter gun rights players are here. Over at Second Amendment Foundation, Dave Workman notes that while he personally feels the new administration will come in early with all guns blazing (so to speak), director Alan Gottlieb has cautious optimism that President Obama will have his plate too full to come after us from the get-go. Time will tell. My friends at Sabre Defence, manufacturers of one of the finest lines of AR15 rifles, are taking orders hand over fist from the attending retailers, as are their competitors. Sabre’s Charlie Shearon told me today, “We took orders for more guns in November than we’ve sold in the last three years.”

At Taurus, CEO Bob Morrison showed off several new handguns, all geared for concealed carry and personal defense. They had on display a new little polymer frame .380 pocket pistol to compete with the hugely-in-demand Ruger LCP and the pistol it appears to have been almost cloned from, the Kel-Tec P3AT. Weight will be 10 ounces with a steel slide assembly atop its polymer frame, and a mere 8.5 ounces with Titanium slide. It will be produced in Miami and Taurus USA will be hiring some 70 new people to carry out their plans. Taurus’ biggest seller right now is their unique Judge, a revolver that can hold a .410 shotgun shell OR a .45 Colt cartridge in each of its five chambers. The recently introduced version that takes a 3” Magnum .410 shell is now joined by a small frame revolver (the size of an S&W J-frame or Taurus’ similar Model 85 .38 snubnose) that will take .410 shells. The Judge series is particularly popular among outdoor folks who live in poisonous snake country, for obvious reasons. Second in popularity is their PT1911, a well-executed, low-price clone of the classic Colt 1911 .45 pistol.
Blog reader Erich (welcome to this place, bro!) asked about the new little SIG .380. Played with it today. It’s a scaled-down 1911 that does indeed resemble the late, lamented Colt Mustang and Pocketlite .380s. Flat metal grip panels enhance its slimness and concealability.

Smith & Wesson has sort of re-introduced the classic old K-38s to its “retro” line – I say “sort of” because the front sights and stocks aren’t quite authentic – and the .41 Magnum revolver in both the target version and the iconic 4” barrel, fixed sight Model 58 variation. A truly beloved “cult gun” among knowledgeable gun enthusiasts, the S&W .41 Magnum will earn a hearty “welcome back” from those of us who habitually carry a handgun in the outdoors.

More tomorrow…

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