Odd Stuff I Liked At The SHOT Show.

By Mike Keleher

I spent twelve hours walking the 2018 Shot Show floor this year. I did not see it all. In fact, by the end of the second day I was pretty full of guns, gadgets and black Velcro backed items and needed to get out and see the sun for a while. The show is beyond enormous and every dealer is there to make sales contacts for the coming year. The potential money involved is mind boggling.

One year I walked the show for a full three days. My Adventure Wife remembers that little safari and now refuses to go back to the show-ever.

At the end of this year’s two day marathon I finally pegged my “Full” meter and did not need to see any more AR-15’s or AR parts for a while….geez they must have had more carbines in that building than the entire U.S. Army has in inventory. I thought everyone in American who wanted an AR should have one or six by now.

I saw all the newest products on the market, and I am including a few non-sensational items that just tickled my fancy or I thought were innovative.

My absolute favorite item at the show, was a brand new Automag LTD Corp. 8.5 inch barreled Automag. It was so new I am sure I could still smell the machine shop where it was made. The huge all stainless steel Automag showed up in the 1970’s and was the most powerful handgun in the world at the time. It was the first magnum semi-automatic pistol, long before the Desert Eagle showed up, and used a new cartridge, the .44 AMP which originally came from cut down .308 brass.

Back then, guns weren’t made in stainless steel yet, so it was cutting edge production and other manufacturers had to sit up and take notice. The Automag was featured in the Dirty Harry “Sudden Impact” movie as a replacement for Harry’s S&W Mdl 29 .44 Magnum. The Automag company went through changes and eventually the gun went out of production and they became collector’s items. In 2017 The Excel Industries and Automag LTD Corporation brought back the original Automag and have started shipping them in 2018. They will be available in 6.5” and 8.5” barrel lengths and are instant collector’s items. Price? About the value of a used car.

One of my other candidates for “Best Value Handgun” was the Canik SFX 9mm competition pistol imported by Century Arms. If you are not familiar with the company, Canik has been making their polymer framed SF models for a few years and are catching on with the American public. Their 9mm SF is a very modern polymer combat/self-defense pistol and a huge value.

Jumping way ahead in the game, Canik next brought out this premium SFX model designed for competition-USPSA/IDPA/PPC and 3 gun. I can’t believe all of the features they offer for a very small price. The gun features a 5.2” barrel, is available in DA/SA or SAO trigger, has a very good fiber optic sight set up, picatinny rail, reversible mag catch, and is Cerakoted. It also comes with two 20 round mags and very reasonably priced 15 and 18 round mags are available as well. The Canik people throw in a holster and a paddle, and the receiver is cut for mounting red dot sights. They throw in four different base plates for the most common micro red dot sights if you decide to mount one. You can purchase it with a Vortex red dot already installed.

The SFX is the 2017 Industry Choice Awards Pistol of the Year and is also competition proven. Canik sponsors my friend pro-shooter Corrine Mosher to shoot it nationwide. I have witnessed Corrine running this pistol many times and it just flat works. Corrine goes head to head against every other competitor and firearm in the market week after week. The biggest surprise, is you can find this gun and all the included accessories on-line in the $400 range. You can’t come near that price with any other action shooting competition grade pistol.

I found a bullet resistant backpack being offered by Guard Dog Security, the Pro Shield that made me stop and inquire further. I was not looking for such an item, it just caught my curiosity.

They make a variety of colors and have lots of normal backpack style features like 20 pockets, hidden gun pocket and laptop/tablet pockets, but they are also NIJ level IIIa rated bullet resistant. PIcking one up I was astonished to find they don't weigh much more than an average backpack. Maybe 3 lbs total weight.

Travelling around the wild and sometimes dangerous world these $175-$200 backpacks might be a comfort/shield for you or even your kids in far flung places like Chicago, St Louis, Memphis, DC, Detroit or other well known battlegrounds. This camo pattern really caught my eye, but they have "normal" colors too.

A lot of the Pistol Caliber Carbine shooters were excited about Ruger’s new 9mm PC Carbine which hit the market in January of 2018, and I went by to see them. As expected, the new carbine, like everything Ruger makes, is rock solid. Really. You could probably hit pro baseball pitches with it. It features a nylon stock and it is actually made to easily disassemble into two pieces and can be backpacked or carried in short bags. The stock has included spacers to insure a correct fit. The receiver has a Picatinny rail on top and there is another rail on the fore-end. The gun features viable high-profile sights, a fluted barrel with a threaded tip (for compensators or suppressors) and you can change the charging handle and magazine release yourself to set it up for left handed shooting.

The gun profile reminds me of the old Marlin Camp Carbine and it features a trigger system from the ultra-dependable Ruger 10/22 line. The most exciting thing about the gun to me, is it takes Ruger SR9 pistol mags-and includes an adapter so it can accept Glock 9mm pistol mags like the high capacity 33 rd mag you could use in PCC competition. It is rare for a gun manufacturer to acknowledge another manufacturer, but by making it Glock mag friendly, the Ruger people have already tipped their hat to the red hot PCC competition crowd.

One of the quirkiest pieces I did not expect to like but did, was the M3 Folding Glock 19 by Full Conceal. This modification cuts the grip off of a Glock pistol, has a hinge replacing part of the trigger guard, and the gun folds in half. The gun can carry a magazine in place while it is folded in half and the entire thing can slide into your pocket. The more time I spent at the booth talking with the company, the more I was impressed with the vision and engineering that went into the modification. They are now offering it on the smaller Glocks too like the G43 to make a tiny pistol even tinier to carry. It doesn’t appeal to everyone, but if you think you need one, this modification keeps all of the Glock dependability along with a new smaller concealed size.

I don’t know about you, but I have one or two-bushel baskets of holsters lying around that I don’t use anymore. I am always looking for something that works and is comfortable. At a show like the Shot Show, there are scads of holsters on display. I always talk to the makers of holsters I use and tell them what I like or don’t like about their product. I pretty much ignore other holsters on display-until I stumbled upon the Limbsaver brand Crosstech holster. This is a unique new design which combines an old Yaqui slide type design with space age materials, both Inside and Outside fit-able waistband clips, lots of owner accessible holes you use to cant the holster as you like, and best of all, this thing is made of some bizzaro material and which molds to fit a go-zillion pistols. You probably know the Limbsaver brand associated with archery anti-vibration and firearm recoil reduction pads. This is their first outing with a holster.

I have had plenty of experience with “one size fits most” holsters and it is always a compromise. Not as good as a specific molded model, but might be good enough to fill in for a while. I don’t wear some pistols very often, but I always want to have a holster and at least one spare magazine for them in case I decide to carry them.

The designer of this Crosstech holster was in the booth and told me he actually has a patent pending on this thing it is so radical. He advised you can put almost any pistol in the holster, hit it with a hair dryer or heat gun for a couple of minutes and it will mold to your gun.

Want to change guns? Hit it again with some mild heat. Over and over again. Even more amazing, he said if you just put your gun in and did not heat it, the material would mold itself in about three days. Amazing. The mounting clips let you put this very flat holster in appendix carry, hip carry, small of the back and even inside the waistband-all for $39.99. I need to try one of these.

Finally, no round up of odd things I like at this show would be complete without including this fab end of the world bayonet lug add-on. You just never know when this would come in handy… well, maybe you do know.