The world’s largest trade show for the firearms industry wrapped up today with what the sponsor, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, called record attendance. NSSF says that more than 57,000 people were there.Remington announces their Versa-Max semiautomatic shotgun, which feeds a broad array of shotshells that spans the range between mild and wild. We old gunnies remember when we had to laboriously adjust the gas ports of an autoloading scattergun if we were switching between light trap and skeet loads to full power “express loads,” or to short Magnum shells. They have a patented gas operation system with two pistons and seven gas ports that they call VersaPort™, which Remington says will “self-regulate” for reliable feeding with any shell of any power level, from 2 ¾” to the heaviest 3 ½” Magnum load. They promise that the sophisticated gas system will reduce recoil to a high degree, as well. Read more from Remington at http://www.remington.com/pages/news-and-resources/press-releases/2010/firearms/versa-max-the-new-pinnacle-of-autoloading-shotguns.aspx .
Speaking of new shotshell dispensers, that Raging Judge 28-gauge revolver from Taurus has, according to rumor, been stepped on by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. I say “rumor” because I haven’t seen anything official on it yet from Taurus or BATFE. Can’t be a “sawed off shotgun” thing, since it has a rifled barrel; I suspect was the concern that a solid slug load for the 28 gauge would have a diameter larger than .50 caliber. Stay tuned for updates on that. There’s also scuttlebutt that the popular Saiga, a semiautomatic shotgun styled like the AK47 and feeding quick-change box magazines, may be banned by the Government as well. We’ll keep you posted on developments.
Shotgun fanciers who want something different can console themselves with a new entry from Mossberg, says Backwoods Home’s man on the ground there, Russ Lary. It’s a double barrel over/under with 18.5” barrel, and takes up to 3” Magnum 12 gauge. It has a Picatinny rail for a tactical light. Yeah, I know, a two-shot firearm sounds a little counterintuitive for “tactical” work, and I don’t think you’ll see SWAT teams adopting them anytime soon. However, its two shots are probably enough for “farm gun” chores. The attachable light will work great for the midnight raccoon, or the proverbial “fox in the henhouse” after dark; and because a double barrel has a shorter receiver (frame) than a pump or semiautomatic shotgun, it’s shorter overall. Combine that inherent shortness with the “barely legal” (but definitely legal, at least in the USA) 18.5” barrels, and you’ve got an easy-handling gun that will come out of a pickup truck or an ATV with smooth alacrity, and will be less likely to smack against the vehicle while you’re doing so. I spent some time with an 18 ½” over/under 12 gauge by another maker back in the ‘70s, and found it to be a remarkably nice, fast-handling quail and partridge gun.
Many thanks to Russ Lary for being Backwoods Home’s eyes and ears on the show floor and behind the scenes! Now that he’s retired as a police chief, he’ll have some time to write, and I expect y’all will be hearing more from him as time goes on.
You get to meet pretty cool people at the SHOT Show. Here are two of them. Left, “The Gunny,” R. Lee Ermey; Right, our own Russ Lary.
MORE SHOT SHOW…
January 20th, 2011 by Mas
My bro Russ Lary reports from the SHOT Show that there’s some pretty high-tech stuff on display, including a security system that links through your AR15/M4 rifle. Seems that if you turn the rifle’s safety/selector switch to “Fire,” it triggers a signal to lock your gates, etc. “A kid saw a guy get killed by a drive-through bomber, and came up with this concept,” Russ relays. “The inventor’s feeling was that if a system like this had been in place, it might have kept the vehicle from getting through the gates as soon as the first guard who saw him flipped the safety switch on his rifle.
We are, indeed, in the 21st Century…
One of our blog readers asked about carrying guns at the SHOT Show. Russ relates the story of a brother cop attending the Show who pulled up at the adjacent host hotel, the Palazzo. It seems that as soon as his car came to a stop, an attendant asked, “Sir, do you have any guns in the car?” The cop identified himself and stated that he was carrying an off-duty pistol. He was promptly escorted into the adjacent SHOT Show security center, where his pistol was put in a locker to which he was given the key. Apparently, the host hotel does not even allow off-duty cops to have guns on the premises.
(Guess where one old blog writer will NOT be spending his money the next time he’s in Las Vegas…)
At Backwoods Home’s request, Russ has kept his ear to the ground to hear the industry buzz on the current media push for a ban on high capacity magazines. His sense of it, after talking with lots of industry folks (including some who make up to 100-round magazines), is that they don’t really think the proposed new legislation is going to fly. After all, it didn’t work the LAST time it was in effect for ten years…
Dan Baum, whose name you’ve seen in this blog before, is a credentialed liberal, but had this to say on the Huffington Post on this topic:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-baum/after-tucson-stricter-gun_b_811696.html
Massad Ayoob
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