Review of 2014 SHOT Show

[W.R.Buchanan]

HI guys: Just got back from the 2014 SHOT Show in Las Vegas Friday night.

As usual it was a really good time and I saw some new things as well as touched base with some old acquaintances.

The show was managed by a new outfit this year and the one problem I saw started with the price of admission. It was $175 per person ! Last year and all previous years it was $50 a head. The NSSF website is saying the attendance was up this year however my boots on the ground assessment was maybe 70-80% of the crowd last year.

This was supported by the fact that I never had to park above level 8 in the parking structure, and normally we are relegated to floors 10,11 and 12. It was pretty sparse on day 4 and we parked on level 6.

Another indicator was that virtually all of the booths were downsized. Not so much with the big outfits like Ruger, Glock etc. which were in the same place and same size, but the smaller outfits had definitely downsized and I was told this was due to the increased cost per SF.

Only a few outfits were selling stuff at the show (and believe me I was there to buy) but the things I really wanted weren't allowed to be sold for some reason that after talking to numerous reps, is still not clear to me. Part of the excuse is that Nevada had came in and told outfits not to sell anything over the counter unless they delivered at a later date and collected Sales Tax.

I did buy a nice Boyt Rifle case for way less than I could get it anywhere else, and I am going to buy a new Coleman, Yeti style cooler for 10% off dealer cost which was less than half of what a Yeti sells for. I found out that Yeti's are made in Austin TX and the majority of those coolers are actually sold in Texas. So don't mess with Texas!

I saw a few new and pretty innovative products. My own personal Bucky Brand Golden Doodad Award goes to Troy Industries, purveyor of numerous accessories for AR Rifles.

They showed up with a "Pump Action AR15!"

Yes I said "Pump Action !!!!"

It is aimed at all of the prison states like CA MA NY etc. since none of the features of an AR apply if it isn't "Semi-automatic!" It was slick as snot to operate and you could keep up pretty well with a semi auto once you got the hang of it. It looks just like any other AR with a quad rail fore end except there is no gas block and no charging handle. The right and left sides of the quad rail are what act as the slide. It locks the bolt open on the last round just like a regular AR does and all furniture and accessories work just like an AR also.

Pretty cool gun.

I found out I can send my older 50's model Ithaca Model 37 back to Ithaca and they will completely refurbish and refinish it for $225! Will be sending that out soon.

I also got some inside skinny from Ruger on a couple of new offerings along the same lines as my favorite Scout Rifle however nothing has been produced yet and they are still gathering ideas which I was happy to provide in excess. Look for spare magazines in the buttstock and side mounted slings.

I was also able to nail down some sources for products I need to further development on two of my personal projects, which I will talk about more as they come to fruition. One shooting accessory will appeal to many people here, and the other is a newer method of crowd control that will just make you guys split your sides laughing when it shows up. It will be the most effective method of crowd dispersal ever.

Plenty more to talk about but this post would just get too big.

You all really need to go and experience this show for yourselves. I assure you that even at the new higher admission price it is still well worth the trip! :Fire:

Randy

[Artful]

Welcome back and glad you had a good time

We put a thread
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?227116-Shot-Show-anyone-following-it

[btroj]

A pump AR, I like that. Business will always find a way to adapt to new laws. Capitalism works.

[Just Duke]

HI guys: Just got back from the 2014 SHOT Show in Las Vegas Friday night.

As usual it was a really good time and I saw some new things as well as touched base with some old acquaintances.

The show was managed by a new outfit this year and the one problem I saw started with the price of admission. It was $175 per person ! Last year and all previous years it was $50 a head. The NSSF website is saying the attendance was up this year however my boots on the ground assessment was maybe 70-80% of the crowd last year.


Randy

Wow! I get a stack of press passes every year and never go.
A Remington 760 will do the same thing as the pump AR.
A pump action AR? <shiver ick!!!> That's like a pickup truck with a joy stick instead of a steering wheel. lol

[btroj]

Except the 760 won't piss off the anti gun fools who wrote the laws. A detachable magazine and pistol grip on a pump action? I love it.

[Just Duke]

Here's another.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfN0YNAholI

[siamese4570]

Randy: I always wanted to go the SHOT show. Don't you have to be in the firearms business to get in?
siamese4570

[HeavyMetal]

my question is a little more off the wall: current issue shooting times has a nice little piece on a clean Merwin hulbert Pocket Army in 44-40.

Some time in the past some outfit was trying to get up and running with a reproduction of said pistol.

My google fu shows this outfit in and out of business.

you didn't happen to see anyone proposing these in a both, as in they actually had one to touch?

If they were the right quality I could be interested in one but have no intentions of doing the Dornus & Dixon thing ever again, LOL!

Got burnt on one of those and a 44 automag in early 71: monies return but no gun!

Just really curious if this was still alive.

[silverjay]

Franklin arsenal had a new trimmer/case prep center that looked good. Be out in a few weeks. They also had a slick tumbler meant for stainless pins and comes with the pins. Vertx has a line of CCW bags that looked great.

[tomme boy]

They did a pump in a AK style a few years ago. Never did sell and they ended up selling for about 250$ just to get rid of them. This was pre 2004 so that was the main reason it did not sell.

[W.R.Buchanan]

I might add that CCI did not show up at this show. Who can blame them since all they would have done is stand there and take krap for 4 days due to the unavailability of their products.

Randy

[cbrick]

Never realized how much it cost to get in, every time I've been it was with a press pass and free to get in. Another benefit to the press pass is that press is the only ones allowed to have a camera inside. The press also has a lounge with coffee, sodas, tables & chairs where ya can have meetings & kick back for a spell & that helps, it's a grueling few days. Anyone that's never been really has no idea how huge the show is.

Anybody that thinks boolit casting isn't big need only go to the show and try to get a few minutes with the folks from Magma, they are like a phart in a tornado all day & people lined up to see them.

Maybe next year I'll go again, it really is an absolutely astonishing thing to see, it can't be described, it has to be seen to be believed. I've been to SEMA, the electronics show, the auto shows & nothing compares with The SHOT Show.


Rick

[Love Life]

Is Ruger going to make the GSR in 338 federal and or .243? Please, please, please...

One amazing thing released at the shot show is the Accuracy International AT rifle. So much awesome in one package.

Thermal imaging for whole sale....

[starmac]

Remington made a pump 223 with a pistol grip and it uses ar mags. A buddy of mine has one and I like it better than an ar myself.

[nicholst55]

I believe that pump action ARs have been available in the UK for some time. They can't own centerfire semi-autos.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Love Life: the next gun in that class to come along will be a .223 Scout. I was asked for input on some fine points, one of which was a spare mag in the buttstock which I totally agreed with. I also suggested side mounted sling arrangement. I also pretty much insisted on AR mags, but they already knew that. They were actually impressed with Mossberg's solution to feeding from random magazines.

The issue here is that they are still swamped with orders for the original Scout in .308, which has been one of the,,, if not "the" most successful products they have ever marketed. This new gun will probably not be released until those orders slack off. I would buy one in a minute!

The gun I am currently interested in is the Guide Gun in .30-06 caliber. I am coming up on a time in my life where I might actually get to go hunt the Yukon or AK, and that gun is ideally suited to how I would want to do it.

I had a good uninterrupted talk with Walt Berger (who is one of the nicest people I have ever met!) on the last day, and I was inquiring about 220 gr bullets for Moose. He told me that I really didn't need to go above a 185 gr bullet and gave me a sample of said bullet. see pic of said bullet atop my laser engraved Mayan calendar with perfect detail visible under a 10x glass. These bullets penetrate about 12" and then blow up! Anywhere in the boiler room and Mr. Moose is toast.

Love to use the Scout but the 16.5" barrel is not allowed in Canada.

Randy

[dbosman]

The passes are color coded so booth people can size tell the customers from the browsers. The year I went, they lost my badge and printed a new on on the spot. After I found out I had a wholesale distributor coded badge I understood how come I got treated so well. ;-)

[W.R.Buchanan]

This year there were literally hundreds of AR's and obviously AR parts. This is true of any year however more so this time than in years previous. Why anyone would get into the business of building another complete AR is beyond me but, what the hey.

The next on my list is Chassis builders, all of which make them specifically for Remy 700's. Pretty much all of these are in the $1000-2000 price range. I bet I saw 20 outfits doing this, and next year there will be more.

Also quite a few outfits offering high dollar, super accurate rifles, most of which were built on Remy 700 actions. As a machinist it is hard for me to understand what you can do to a Remington 700 action that is worth $7000 dollars? Luckily some of the guns had handmade super slick actions which were in fact worth the money(if you can shoot as good as the gun)

There were also custom sporting rifles made by Cooper and several others which were absolutely spectacular. If you look inside the front cover of the latest Handloader Magazine the is a picture of a full stock rifle in .257 BOB.. It wasn't there,,, however it's brother was, and it was better looking than the one in the picture. The type of gun that comes alive when you pick it up. I'm sure they assign souls to them as they are being built.

Randy

[RedHawk357Mag]

I might add that CCI did not show up at this show. Who can blame them since all they would have done is stand there and take krap for 4 days due to the unavailability of their products.

Randy

And that's the fact! Sad but funny:(

[Nrut]

I had a good uninterrupted talk with Walt Berger (who is one of the nicest people I have ever met!) on the last day, and I was inquiring about 220 gr bullets for Moose. He told me that I really didn't need to go above a 185 gr bullet and gave me a sample of said bullet. see pic of said bullet atop my laser engraved Mayan calendar with perfect detail visible under a 10x glass. These bullets penetrate about 12" and then blow up! Anywhere in the boiler room and Mr. Moose is toast.

Love to use the Scout but the 16.5" barrel is not allowed in Canada.

Randy
I have a Ruger Frontier, 760 P, and a Contender with a 45/70 barrel..
They are all 16.5" and legal to hunt with because they are sold that way from the factory..
What >I< can't do is cut a 20" barrel below so many cm's or around 18"..

[W.R.Buchanan]

Nrut: maybe it's the flash hider? Ruger makes 4 versions of the Scout Rifle. R&L 16.5 bbls and R&L 18 bbls. the latter are for Canada however they still have the flash hider.

I had a good chat with a Canadian LE guy at one of the booths and he also told me that my Scout was not welcome due to the bbl length, believe me I'd like to use it up there.

The pistol laws are quite stupid in that you can own one you just can't do much of anything with it having to have a permit to transport it from point A to B.

In a land where hunting is such a big part of life and the possibility of running into large carnivores is a distinct possibility you'd think they'd make some exceptions for back up guns.

There never is any rationality when it comes to gun laws no matter where they are from. This is usually because the people writing the laws never know anything about the subject, and their true intent is simply the removal of all firearms form public ownership, but at the specific juncture all they can get is what the public will swallow.

I was under the impression that a lot of your more silly laws, like the national gun registry, were in the process of being dismantled? Wish more of that happened here in CA.

Randy

[Nrut]

Randy,
Not knowing anything about the flash hider rules I did a search over at canadiangunnutz and found this:
http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php/922047-ruger-scout-rifle-question

Got a kick out of Coho's reply..

On a side note the canadian gun registry is history..
We as gun owners must still register ourselves (PAL) how ever and renew every 5 years at around $85.00 I believe...
I just renewed mine before the fee was started so not sure about the price..

My family moved out of Northern California when Brown Sr. was governor and he was part of the reason as did four of my dad's customers..
I stayed behind and finally left California via the draft in 1970..
To many people there and the wrong kind at that, for me to ever go back even though it is the best place to live year round in my mind, if not for the above..

[Love Life]

A .223 Ruger Scout rifle? Interesting indeed if it has an 18 inch barrel and a 1 in 7, 1 in 8, or 1 in 9 twist.

I'm thinking of getting a GSR and sending to JES to re-bore in .338 Federal. Has the quality of the actions increased? The couple I played with last year had sloppy actions, and if you didn't do things just right you ran the real chance of the action binding. The GSR is a great idea, but I hate that Ruger developed them and brought them to market. Their rifles are very ho-hum to down right ARRRRRGHHHH!!

[W.R.Buchanan]

Love Life: it would be 1:9 twist and probably have a 16.5" bbl just like the original, and maybe a 18" one for Canada. I think they have gotten the message that the gun needs to use AR mags. Shipped with a Pmag? And I'm pretty sure that the spare mag in the buttstock will come with it. Also look for a polymer stock on that one to reduce the weight.

Your idea of having the barrel rebored is probably going to be the fastest way to get what you want simply because I doubt Ruger will ever build caliber variants of the GSR. They already have plenty of rifles in those calibers and making this one into something it wasn't designed to be is not a profitable idea from a business point of view.

When you look at it, there is no ballistic advantage in the .243, 260, or 7/08 over the .308. and plenty of negatives. as far as the .338 or .358 there is a big game advantage to those calibers, but the gun wasn't designed to be purely a hunting rifle in the first place and as I said, they already have many guns in those calibers. Nobody really needs a hunting rifle with a 10 rnd. mag in .338 or .358.

One idea I have floated is the idea of Ruger making barrels in all the .308 based calibers and offering them to GSR owners so that they can retrofit their guns to whatever caliber they choose. I could see a $250 barrel, and then you go to your local gunsmith for the changeover. I doubt very many people would even take them up on this idea which is as close as you can get to a factory chambered gun that I think you're going to see. Maybe a test run of 25ea of each caliber to see if they would sell? Probably ain't gonna happen.

I am keeping in contact with my guy there, and will relate anything on the subject I hear from him.

Randy

Nrut: that site wouldn't let me in. Please post what the answer was.

[Love Life]

You're right on the calibers and uses of the gun. The GSR has a specific role to fill and the 308 fills that role with aplomb. I just think one in 338 federal would be the bee's knee's for a 300 yd and in rifle. Just an odd obsession of mine...

The use of AR mags would be pretty neat, but I like their current mag system now. Ruger hit a home run with the rifle, and I really like the size and ergonomics of it. I need to quit fooling around and just get one.

Thank you for answering my questions.

[Bzcraig]

A pump AR, I like that. Business will always find a way to adapt to new laws. Capitalism works.

I think that all the time! Every time the idiot politicians think they can create a law to address what they perceive as an issue (e.g. gun bans/laws), I laugh knowing full well it's just a matter of time before the "poor, stupid fools" make fools of those elites.

[Nrut]

Randy,
What I am going to say is "not" cut in stone ..
1. last night I looked at various Canadian vendor websites and found GSR's for sale having 18" barrels and flash hiders..
http://www.lebaron.ca/pdf_files_fall12/ruger_m77_gunsite.pdf

2. apparently GSR aren't available up here with 16" barrels and flash hiders..

3. I don't know if 16" barrel w/o flash hiders are available..

4. The reason, from what I am reading that the 16" flash hider barrels aren't available up here is >>>because of U.S. export restrictions<<< , not Canadian law..

It doesn't look like to me that you can bring a 16" GSR up here with a flash hider..