This was my first SHOT Show ever. It was a little overwhelming for me. There were so many booths and products, it was impossible to see everything. I tried to see as much as I could throughout the day and tried shooting a variety of firearms. These are my first impressions of some of the items that really caught my eye.
Ascendence International - nTHERM
nTHERM is a proprietary, non-metallic material that was developed by Ascendence. They have used this material to design handguards for ARs. The benefit - it doesn't heat up the same way traditional handguards do as the barrel gets hot from firing. When I shot the weapon with the handguards, close to 200 rounds had just been shot through t. While the barrel was still smoking, an on site thermometer indicated that the barrel was approximately 350 degrees F, while the guard was right around 80 degrees F. I was able to comfortably handle the rifle even while the barrel was smoking.
Slide-Fire
If you haven't had the chance to use a rifle with the Slide-Fire furniture, you are missing it out. You will walk away with a giant grin on your face. I have never used this product before and I had no trouble getting it to work my first try. The new model has the controls located on the pistol grip and it is very attractive.
Standard Manufacturing - DP12
This is a massive weapon. It is a 12-gauge pump action shotgun with two barrels, but one trigger system. It fires one barrel at a time, and each barrel has its own tube. Despite its overall weight, it did not have a lot of recoil. I did have difficulty using the pump action and the representative had to help me each time.
Kris's - Vector CRB
This rifle shoots .45Acp with little felt recoil. I had the benefit that the weapon I test fired was equipped with an EOTech holographic sight The sight was very nice and about as fun as the actual pistol.
Moore Advanced Dynamics. - 9mm pistol
The first thing you would notice looking at the MAD weapons is that they are all black and very attractive. They are HK style firearms and I was able to test fire one of the 9mm pistols. It was extremely fun to shoot, but a little too large for my hands. I had difficulty reaching the safety and other controls.
HK - VP9
This new pistol from HK is designed to be small with minimal recoil. The charging slide was easy to pull back, but it was not the easiest I experienced today. This was a fun pistol to shoot.
Walther - CCP
Walther has a new concealed carry pistol. It has been designed to have no recoil. It had less recoil than the HK VP9 in my opinion. The slide was easier to use than other pistols I have shot, but it was still not the best of the day. The pistol is designed with what the manufacturer is calling Soft Coil Technology.
Korth Arms - PRS
This was my favorite pistol of the day. Unfortunately, it is not likely to be a pistol I will own anytime soon because of the price tag. This fit perfectly in my hands, had the easiest slide of anything I have ever used, and it was accurate with iron sights.. I was to able to reach all of the controls and it had almost no noticeable recoil. I am very excited about this pistol.
Again, these are just some of the products that were available. More details and photos will be following soon, so stay tuned. With women being the largest growing demographic of shooters, I was hoping to see some products that were geared specifically towards women, but nothing I saw was advertised as this. With the increasing number of small pistols featuring little recoil and adjustments for easier use (such as racking the slide back), I hope to see more products geared towards women and/or children. More information and more product reviews will be coming once the show opens , which is later today.