SHOT SHOW, DAY THREE
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.
January 17th, 2009 at 2:08 am
Mas, the new Ruger revolver is designated the LCR; the LCP is, of course, the compact polymer-framed .380 auto introduced last year.
I’m really looking forward to purchasing and trying the LCR; just looking at it, though, it seems to me that the cylinder will need to be de-horned if it is to carried in a side pocket.
January 17th, 2009 at 4:45 am
It’s actually an LCR (R for revolver) as opposed the last year’s Shot Show announcement of the LCP (P for pistol).
January 17th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Eek!
Thanks for the catch, guys. It is indeed LCR, not LCP. I mistyped.
The curse of proofreading your own writing is that your subconscious knowledge of what you meant to say gets in the way of what your eyes are trying to tell you that you actually said.
This may be why they don’t usually let me out by myself without editors or other adult supervision…:-(
January 17th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Went to a ‘local’ gun show last weekend, was great to sign up our daughter for her first NRA membership.
Other than that it wasn’t that big of a show, but saw lot’s of overpriced Mosin’s and ‘tactical’ light stuff. Nothing I was really looking for.
January 17th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve filed a brief referring to what the “trail” court did – and a colleague always proofs when I’m done with proofreading.
A gal in the office next to me referred recently to the “Untied” States Supreme Court . . . I caught it when reading her brief long after she’d filed it, but neither she nor her proofreader caught it at the relevant time.
Anyhow, if that’s the worst mistake you made all day, you had a really good day!
Hope that you’re having fun – gotta beat cleaning carpets, which is what I just spent all morning doing. 
cheers, erich
January 17th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Sharing of values. Yup. At the civilian version of this gathering, the NRA Annual Meeting, that is THE reason for attending on my part. I have all the toys I want but meeting new folks and chatting is wonderful.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
It’s good to hear that the firearms and firearm-related industries are flourishing in this uncertain time. I am trying to be an optimist and it is only a matter of time before things make an upturn. I did some training at a local gun club this weekend, and it was the first time I ever attended such a program. The class was designed to fulfill the requirements to upgrade a restricted pistol permit (hunting and target shooting) to an unrestricted (carry) permit. Our county in New York state has not issued carry permits for 20+ years, and our instructor has about 100 people so far (5 classes) who have had their permits upgraded. This economic climate is allowing our instructor to thrive in his business venture, putting more responsible, armed citizens into our communities, helping the firearms industries thrive, generating interest in shooting sports and feeding the local sportsmen’s clubs, and most importantly, sending an important message to the legislators that America is serious about the Second Amendment. I don’t think the effects of the economy are all bad!