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Over 100 years later the Colt 1911 soldiered on in 2012 by capturing a huge new service contract for the United States Marines for 12,000 pistols, made by Colt Manufacturing in Hartford, Connecticut. We tried to get a review gun as soon as the news dropped, but the gun wasn’t available for the consumer market. Colts are generally tough to get anyway, because consumer demand is so high for them, yet on the handgun side, Colt is not a huge company. It is with great pleasure that we got the news here at SHOT that Colt will be producing 80 of these USMC guns per month for the consumer market. The price will probably be somewhere in 2nd mortgage land, but hey, it’s a Colt and it will only go up in value. These are actually going to be Colt Custom Shop guns, so they will be tuned and slicked up as well. Nobody thought to bring any Hoppes to the Colt tent at Media Day so we only have dirty pictures of the gun, but this is the actual gun they will be selling to the public. Eighty guns a month isn’t going to be enough, but at least we’ll have a shot a getting one. It takes a little while to process the 2nd mortgage anyway.

The small gun market has exploded over the last few years with a vast expansion of concealed carry permit holders across America. One of the very first companies to perfect the extremely small gun was Kahr, and they carry 6 patents to that effect, many of which have actually been defended successfully in court. They are extremely high quality firearms, but the P series is very expensive, prohibitively so for many features. For this reason, Kahr started making some of their smaller guns in a C series, to bring down the overall cost. They did this by simplifying the manufacturing process, eliminating some of the more complex operations that only added marginal performance. These C series guns are still better performers than most of the other small guns in the market, at about the same price. Here at SHOT 2013 we take a look at the new CW380 and CM45. All Kahr firearms are manufactured in Worcester, Massachusetts.
This video also covers Magnum Research, which is owned by Kahr. They make their guns in Minnesota, the most famous of which is the Desert Eagle. Over the years this gun has obviously been a movie gun favorite, but it has also become very popular with gun nerds and handgun hunters. For 2013 Magnum Research will be selling a 10″ barrel for their guns, in .50 and .44, and they do swap out easily with your standard barrel. Magnum Research will also be offering a porting service for their guns. For $200 they will make it look a lot cooler.

New from FNH-USA for SHOT Show 2013 comes a long slide FNS in .40S&W made for competition. It should be priced along the lines of the existing FNS guns, but it will come with three different sight configurations for different rule sets of competitive shooting. The sights you see in the video here are the standard, drift adjustable “Svigney” sights that are also meant for holster carry. A lot of LEOs and belt holster CCW guys have come to prefer a long sight radius for daily use. When the front and rear sights are farther apart it gives you a lot more of a precision alignment for a slightly longer shot. Our test of the FNS was stellar, so much so that people thought it was some kind of PR piece from the company itself, but it wasn’t. There are a lot of great black pistols out there, but if you put your ear to the ground for range chatter, the FNS has been at the top of the pack since its release.

Also check out the new Ballista from FNH. This is one of those very high end sniper rifles that has come out of the government’s competition to replace the M24 and M40. FNH has brought their entry to the civilian market at under $7,000 in .338 Lapua and two other calibers, probably .300 Win. Mag. and .308. FNH makes more than half of all US Military arms, so you can never question that the gun will be of the highest possible standards. We hope to get one of these Ballista rifles in this year for a full review.

Mossberg has added to their MVP bolt action rifle series by expanding their Flex line of innovative modular construction. If you didn’t see the Flex Shotgun last year, the design is unique, because it utilizes a completely tool-less system. You pop out the removal lug and pop it back in. There are no parts to lose and no parts to booger with a screwdriver. The Flex system is brilliant and has nothing by great reviews.

The Mossberg MVP rifle series is meant to be a ton of gun for the money, and that succeed at exactly that. This new MVP Patrol rifle is one of those
guns that is purely aimed strait at people needing a patrol-style bolt rifle meant to put meaningful hits downrange, at a reasonable and affordable price. You may not be in law enforcement, but this rifle is light, carries well, and comes with features you’d expect to see in a much higher priced gun.

This year for SHOT Show we have scheduled currently over 50 videos coming your way over the next couple weeks. There is a crushing amount of footage to edit for our team, and some of the spirit of the show has gotten lost in prior years. We are hoping to bring you a little more flavor of the show this year, and our host Julie Mac is having a lot of fun with it. Media Day is the day before SHOT, on Monday, and it takes place out at a giant range in the desert outside of Las Vegas for more than 1,000 members of traditional and new media. We used our video and pictures from Media Day 2012 this entire past year as guns from Media Day came in for review, but 2013 was completely different. Bone chilling cold, in the low 20s, with a 30+ MPH wind, made even taking notes nearly impossible, but it didn’t dampen the spirit of the event even a little bit. This short video is worth the time to watch it, and we still have at least half a dozen more coming on specific products this week as well. Cracked and frozen hands didn’t stop Julie from shooting every gun she could get her hands on, even a .375 Cheytac from Ashbury Precision Ordnance. It was a fun day.

If you are going to actually click through on some of these companies from SHOT 2013, Ashbury Precision Ordnance wouldn’t be a bad choice. They are the “in your face” company of long range rifle chassis. We stumbled on APO last year at Media Day at the Range, and as you’ll see from the video, they have an absolutely fascinating line pf products to learn about. The rifle chassis you see here are completely modular and interchangeable, so you can go from a bare bones starter system and upgrade it to the most tricked out model they make. They also have unique features, and many of them are patented. Check out some of the new products for this year. This is a long video, but cool stuff just keeps coming so hang in there and watch the whole thing. Ashbury Precision Ordnance makes muscle cars, that fit on your long range or hunting rifle.

You may have spotted a big black rubber shooting block in some of our recent articles. It is made by this company, Range Systems. We have found it a great replacement for sandbags and traditional cloth and metal rests because you can leave it outside. This SHOT video appointment was an education in the other stuff that the company makes, and it is far more advanced than a simple shooting block. Range Systems makes whole bulletproof rooms for law enforcement training, as well as gunsmith and home range traps, all based on the same thick rubber technology as our humble little range block. Now Range Systems is even making steel target systems, check out the video.

It was 1526 when Beretta was pressed into service producing gun barrels for the Republic of Venice, and the fact the company continues to thrive speaks volumes about its dedication to producing quality firearms. One of the company’s introductions for 2013, the 692 Sporting over-under shotgun, continues that tradition, with an eye toward competitive shooters.

Employing a new style of barrel from the company called Steelium Plus, the forcing cone has been lengthened to 360 millimeters in a 76 centimeter barrel (prior to the development of Steelium technology, the typical forcing cone on competition barrels was only 65 millimeters). The change, according to Beretta, increases performance while reducing muzzle rise and perceived recoil. The 12-gauge shotgun is chambered for three-inch shells.

You may ask, “Who is Meopta?” It isn’t an optics brand that you don’t bump into much when you walk into a big box store, yet worldwide Meopta is considered to be in the top tier of optics, with the likes of Zeiss and Leopold. Meopta is an 80+ year old company based out of the Czech Republic that has made optics and related products for the likes of NASA. Over the last few years, after opening offices in the US, Meopta has gained a reputation in America for building some of highest quality and well thought out optics products in the market. Meopta designs, develops, and builds its own products, including their own reticles, glass, and tubes for their scopes. No outsourcing.
At SHOT, they introduced several new rifle scopes and two new holographic sights. In the video our host Julie Mac takes you through their flagship hunting scope, a 3.5-10 x 44 lightweight big game model that is extremely light and extremely high quality.