If you’ve scrolled your way down to the feature position this morning, you already know today’s edition is large. In fact, today’s edition has the largest number of news items we’ve ever had in a single day. There have been days with more major news stories, but never before have we seen an edition with this much industry news and information.
Without sounding like some sort of prognosticator, this is more than likely a positive sign for SHOT Show 2020. We’ve never seen so many new products announced in advance of the show. Hopefully, that will energize attendees (meaning buyers) to get busy and start passing out those purchase orders beginning on Tuesday.
Talking with one industry leader yesterday, he recounted the pep talk he used to give his sales staff before SHOT opened its doors. “Bring me lots of white papers with Purchase Order in the upper left-hand corner,” he said, “all those manufacturing machines at home run on POs. Without them, we have to feed them sales people.”
OK, probably not a politically correct speech today, but even the dense salesperson got that message. No sales means no jobs.
And that’s what SHOT, ultimately, boils down to. It’s not at the optimal point of the sales cycle, but it’s the major event where you can find - and fill- your entire year’s catalog of new products. Not everyone will write gigantic numbers- that’s an impossibility- but the inference for the rest of your year can easily be extrapolated. If you can’t get a buyer’s attention in Las Vegas, you’re going to have to ramp up your discourse for the rest of the year.
Plenty of companies have already rolled out new products. Today’s news section lifts the covers off of Mossberg’s second pistol in the past 100 years. And like last year’s subcompact, this year’s MC2c is quite the shooter.
There are a plethora of compact pistols out there today, and there’s absolutely not a bad shooter in the bunch. But the Mossberg’s Safe Takedown System is one that I’ve found especially appealing. It’s not only simple; it assures you that your gun is safe to clean and handle when disassembled. Drop the magazine, clear the chamber, lock the slide back, then remove the striker assembly. At that point, simply slide the slide off the gun and get busy cleaning. No need to touch the trigger.
Shooting alongside Chris Cerino during the initial tests, I realized that for an average shooter like me, the flat trigger and integrated blade safety with a 5-5.5 pound pull made it easy to shoot very solid groups. For a high-grade shooter like Chris, it was no big deal for him to shoot five shot groups he covered with his thumb -and a single piece of tape.
“Wow,” he said as we were taping targets, “Mossberg’s knocked another one out of the park. Good trigger, good sights, great results. Anytime I can take a brand-new pistol and shoot groups I can cover with my thumb, it’s a great gun.”
Hard to argue his results - or mine for that matter. As we got more familiar with the compact pistol, the Gunsite instructors did what they do to help us realize our shooting mistakes: they lengthened the distances.
We quickly moved back on the range to the point we were all the way out to 25 yards. I know everyone talks about being able to make head shots at distances with their carry pistols, but I don’t see many people doing it on a regular basis. I don’t even try. Instead, I concentrate on making center mass hits at those distances. Especially with small guns. After making three consecutive hits at 25 yards, I realized the gun could easily outshoot my abilities. Cerino confirmed it, making five consecutive hits at 50 yards.
Let me make something completely clear: shooting compact pistols at those distances is something writers do for sport. It’s not something I would practice for self defense. Getting familiar with a new pistol is actually tedious after a 100 or more rounds. Moving out to silly distances breaks the square range practice mindset- and certainly makes any bad habits easy-to-see.
Shooting is a sport that has to be approached in a very serious manner. But most of us hope it remains just that - a sport. Shooting small guns big distances isn’t just entertaining, it’s informative and makes shooting at personal defense distances far simpler.
Anyway, we’ll talk more about Mossberg’s new pistol later, but my impression at this point is it’s quite the shooter -and price friendly. That’s important, too.
We’re packing up and getting ready to head to Las Vegas for SHOT Show. It’s gotten to the point that SHOT has essentially become a week-long event. We arrive on Saturday, then begin the “pre-Show” events where we’re given the opportunity to look at, try and evaluate many of the new products buyers will see on the show floor beginning Tuesday.
Monday is a holiday for plenty of people, but we’ll be at the gigantic event that sprawls over nearly a mile of shooting lines outside Las Vegas. The Media Day at the Range has grown from a small event to a spectacle in itself. There, we’ll repeat the examination of new products and share them with everyone beginning in our Tuesday SHOT Show combined editions.
We’ll be busy; but we’ll keep you posted.
—Jim Shepherd