SHOT Show Archives

Tikka got my attention this year with several new rifles, and one deserving of some praise is the Artic. This gun was purpose-built for the Canadian Rangers, who know a thing or two about being cold. These poor bastards train in some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth, and they needed a no-frills rifle that would stand up to that. Tikka stepped up to the plate.

The Benelli Performance Shop guns never fail to electrify. In the past we have seen these special editions tuned up for 3-Gun, sporting clays, and other specialized ventures. This year, Benelli is all about the hunting marker, with three Performance Shop models built just for taking game.

I am not a shotgun connoisseur; that wasn’t really the style in my neighborhood unless we count very illegally sawed off versions. But the Barrett Sovereign shotgun I saw was staggeringly beautiful. If you had told me it was a $20,000 English shotgun, I would have believed it. But, with pricing starting at $2,200 and going up to $6,550, these are great deals for the money.

Nice universal smartphone adapter to turn even cheap binos into a telephoto lens. New 2.0 appears to be phone independent. Very well reviewed around the web looks like a real find at SHOT.

This is a cool magazine device that will do your single stacks with the same tool as a double stack.

Light and novel vertical foregrip that allows you to lock your preferred angle in place. Pricey though.

New for 2017 is Kimber’s Subalpine Mountain Rifle, available with a Gore Optifade camo finish. Kimber also teamed up with Leupold to make matching scopes.

It has been a good few years for the industry. Between the SIG “Arm Brace”, Mossberg Shockwave non-NFA shotguns, and MagPul producing hi-capacity magazines at the cyclic rate, innovation is helping us all beat idiotic government regulation. One of the reasons I like Alex Kincaid, 2nd Amendment lawyer extraordinaire, so much is her stance on these things. She argues that we shouldn’t have to do these things in the first place.

Kel-Tec has been in the bullpup design business for many years now, and they never rest on their laurels. This year saw two new designs that should prove very popular, both in the RDB family of weapons.

Steiner has made very high-end optics for the military for a very long time, but I haven’t seen a lot from them on the civilian side. That ends now.

We saw a lot of cool shotguns at Range Day during SHOT Show 2017. Here are the top five.

Since its introduction several years ago, Crye Precision’s revolving shotgun has captured the hearts and minds of many gun owners.

Being a full-fledged member of the cult of the 10mm, this was an excellent SHOT Show for me. New from Kimber this year is the Super Jagare. “Jagare” is German for hunter, and this new model should excel at that. Chambered in 10mm, it features a full 6-inch barrel to really exploit the velocity capability of this round. The barrel is also factory ported, which helps keep the gun controllable during recoil.

The M.O.A.B. is a 1/4 MOA click adjustable tilting scope base, which allows you to use the middle of your optics glass at long range. So rather than click your scope out 40 or more MOA when you stretch from 100 to 1000 yards, you click the base out, and make only minor adjustments to your scope turrets.

This year at SHOT Show we got our greedy little paws on two new offerings, and these are both going to be winners.

Mossberg had quite a few new items at SHOT this year, including the introduction of 2 AOWs (Any Other Weapons) based on the Mossberg 500 and 590 family of weapons.

The new Spectrum pistol from Taurus takes modularity to the next level with its customizable color system and has an appealing ergonomic design as well.

When I ran across this AR magwell innovation at SHOT, that was the first thing that came to mind. Am I privy to a different way of doing this that will change the AR-15 forever, and deprecate the guns we thought were absolutely the shit.

The NCPCC, or Nordic Components Pistol Caliber Carbine, is the coolest 9mm carbine I have seen. It sports standard AR furniture, which you can change out if you like, and a mil-spec trigger group. That also means you can put your favorite AR trigger in; no need to look for a sub gun special. By far the selling point though, in my opinion, is the innovative magazine system.

In all of its configurations, the HK-91 is about as reliable a .308 battle rifle as you’ll find. I have had rifles in this design since the 80s when Century Arms first brought in CETME rifles from Spain, which is where that design originally appeared. To this day PTR Industries is involved with the current CETMEs that Century sells, and I have one in for review now actually.

This year Timney is following the herd with their latest take on the AR-15 drop in style trigger. The thinking on this product is geared to the competitive shooter who wants to develop his or her own style of trigger work, with a slightly canted paddle angle. Super light, you could theoretically set up the trigger to almost brush it rather than pull it straight back, and that could theoretically give you an advantage for long distance precision shooting, or even quick 3-Gun work.

How do you explain someone who designed a gun specifically so that it could be made for $10 so that you can make them to turn into gun buybacks for upwards of $300. That is Mark Serbu, and he has been making novel and useful gun products for years, that unfortunately only early birds get to actually buy lmao.

If you are a cowboy shooter or you just love guns that look and feel like they did at the dawn of American firearms, Cimarron has become the primary importer of high quality Uberti firearms, any many of them are short run and quite novel. This year is an 1862 Colt Pocket conversion to .380ACP, a original version of the 94 Winchester, and a couple 1876 leverguns with interesting stories.

If you run into Kowa at a big box store or gunshop, give them a look. High quality optics aren’t for everyone, but if you are spending big bucks on a hunting or sightseeing trip, being able to see clearly at distance in low light will add a lot of value to what you are already investing.

Twisted Industries https://twisted.industries/shop/ If you look around hard enough at SHOT Show you’ll find some really innovative stuff. Standing 10 feet away you’d never know that Twisted Industries was one of them, but if you stop and ask, “Hey what is all this stuff,” they’ll explain that they make are rimfire conversion kits for some [...]

A fundamental introspective question. Do I need to spend a grand on what appears to be a flimsy electronic gadget that lets me see thermal up to hundreds of yards away? Let’s all join hands and meditate, or maybe medicate if you lean toward the positive.

There are two models, the Target Hound and the Target Hound Max. If you only plan to shoot at 100 yards or less, the regular Target Hound fits targets to 18 inches wide. It will hold both 1×2 strapping and 2×4 standard construction lumber. The base is made to stay stable in a light breeze, so if you want more wind resistance, you can attach longer lumber stringers to the extended legs.

Stag Arms has been a leader in the AR side of the house, most notably the only major manufacturer to offer left-handed models. I don’t suffer from wronghandedness myself, but I appreciate a company stepping up the engineering to solve a problem.

The Car Abdo is essentially a lockable gun vault in your car, the entire system runs off of a fob.