Category: NRA Convention

The convention is over, and I’m sitting here back at home now.  It was my first convention, but I have to say, it was pretty neat getting to meet so many interesting people and seeing the industry’s latest offerings.   I’m already looking forward to next year in Louisville!

My impression of St. Louis was overall positive, though I was disappointed that downtown around the convention center is mostly devoid of any evidence that anyone lives there.  Still, the people are remarkably friendly for a large city.

I’d love to see the convention come to Philadelphia someday, but I’m not sure it’s a good strategic location for the NRA, and I’m pretty sure the cities smoking ban would cause problems with some members.  Despite the fact that The City of Brotherly Love is the birthplace of the constitution and the second amendment, it’s surrounded by places that aren’t strong for NRA, like New Jersey, New York, and Maryland.

If you want to see all the NRA convention posts in one place, you can click here.

Bitter and I decided to take one last tour of the floor today before heading back home.  We talked to Tom Knapp on the way to the exhibit floor.   Pretty cool!  It’s the kind of thing that happens at an NRA convention.

I visited the Styer booth, where they had a few AUGs on display.  I asked the Styer guy if they were building those here now, because new AUGs can only be imported for law enforcement or military use.  He said Styer was considering building a plant in the US to make the AUG, but that they have been concerned about the political situation.   They don’t want to invest in building a factory here only to have the AUG banned at some point in the future, and be out their investment in establishing manufacturing here.  He said that if they make the decision to go ahead with a US factory, which is looking more likely since the political situation seems to be favorable, expect to see a domestic built AUG by next May.  Cool.

I also checked out the SIG 556, which I liked a lot.  I’m disappointed that Robinson Arms didn’t get a booth there, as I’d like to handle an XCR before I decide whether I want to get one.  I liked how the 556 operated though.   It has a very crisp trigger pull.

Some pics from around the floor: It was pretty packed on Saturday.  This is a view of the exhibit floor.  The NRA News booth is in the middle, where Cam and his crew reside, and were simulcasting the convention.

Of course Barrett had a very popular booth.   I didn’t see Ronnie himself around, but Lots of folks were taking his literature.  I think most of us will just have to pretend we can afford
his products.

Rock River Arms was showing off a lot of their AR product.

I like the P90.   The PS90, I’m not sure about.   If I were going to go for one, I think I’d rather just get the SBR version and go through all the NFA stuff.   To me the beauty of this personal defense weapon is putting a lot of firepower in a very compact package.   Once you get rid of the compact, it’s just a rifle with a small caliber underpowered cartridge that takes forever to locate where the chamber is, and is still hard to check even when you find it.

Some of you might remember the YouTube videos featuring miniature machine guns that actually fire.  At first I thought it was a fake, but then I found out that there was actually a Class II manufacturer that was making these.    That would be Lakeside Machine, who had a booth at the convention.

The rotating table of mini machine gun goodness.  The cool thing is, these are all semi-auto, so are for sale on the civilian market.  These are very beautifully crafted, and they actually fire!

This picture wasn’t meant for me to be aiming straight at the camera, but it ended up that way, because by the time Bitter got to snap the pic, the table had rotated.  Like I said, everything on the floor has to be rendered inoperable to be put on display.

30 Caliber Browning machine gun.  My hand is showing for scale.  You’ll notice the belt of fake .22LR along the bottom.

I really like these products.  I’d love to buy one to put on display, but I’d have to figure out a way to secure it nicely.

I decided to check out the FN booth.   FN is making some pretty cool stuff these days.   First I checked out the FS2000.

It’s very interesting, and certainly slick looking.  But when it comes to rifles, I’m pretty utilitarian.  For one, I’m not a huge fan of bullpups, even though this one ejects the brass out the front, which is pretty cool.   My main problem with it is that I have to flip up that black cover on the top rear of the rifle in order to check the chamber.   I much prefer to have easy visual access to the rifle’s chamber.  I’m also not a huge fan of the magazine release.  On the AR system, you can fetch yourself a magazine while you’re firing your last few shots, then drop the mag with a single finger, let gravity do the work of getting it out of the receiver, then just slam in another one.   On the FS2000, you can see a black button forward to the mag well on the receiver.  You hit this with the same hand you’re removing the magazine with, but you still have to yank it.  I prefer to let gravity do that work.

That’s me trying it out.   Don’t give me crap about fingers and triggers, I was actually trying out the trigger pull.  All firearms on the floor have had the firing pins removed.  I also checked the chamber before trying a dry fire.  The FN guy had to show me where the chamber was.

All in all, the collector in me loves this rifle, just for it’s uniqueness, but I’m not sure what it offers over other operating systems out there.

The Banquet is over.   I’ve gotten to meet several more gun bloggers today.   Michael Bane, and Yosemite Sam and Denise of The Ten Ring.  The weather is cold here in St. Louis, but we listened to some of Dave Hardy’s stories out in front of the Renaissance.   Once Dave decided to retire for the night, we went back inside and sat down with Dave Kopel and Stephen Halbrook.

It’s very cool for me to finally meet in person, people who’s papers, articles and academic research, I’ve read or seen cited for years.  I think it’s a great thing about blogging that it makes possible this kind of dialog.  But one thing is, you’ll never get to know half as many people as you’d like through blogging, and you’ll never get to know that half, half as well as you would like.  I still have more NRA convention blogging to come, including my impressions of Ambassador John Bolton’s keynote at the members meeting, plus a few pictures from the floor.

Stay tuned.

I’m getting ready for the banquet where John Bolton, former Ambassador to the UN, will be speaking. Bitter was telling me of the havoc that having Dick Cheney speak at the Pittsburgh Banquet wrought. Not because he shot someone by accident or anything, but from his secret service security detail.  I doubt we’ll have any such problems with John Bolton, as he does not require security; his mustache is trained to kill.

As I look out at the crowd at this meeting, I’m struck by the fact that most of them appear to be over 50, and I see maybe only a handful of us that are under 40.   If this is a true reflection of the NRA demographic, we’re in a lot of trouble over the long term.   I go to the range quite often, and the place is teaming with people in their 20s and 30s, yet I come here and I feel young!

Why aren’t more young people involved in this issue, when I know they are involved in shooting.  Where are all the 20-30 year olds I see at gun shows on a regular basis looking at the latest black rifles?   Something’s wrong.