Last week, Las Vegas hosted the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show put on by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association. SHOT is a chance for firearm manufacturers and importers to celebrate sales successes and showcase new products to media outlets and potential customers, including wholesalers and dealers. The trade show is only open to industry insiders, but social media posts have made it easier for the public to peek behind the event’s closed doors.
Notable Attendees
According to the NSSF, more than 52,000 people attended the 2023 SHOT Show, and this year’s show had over 2,600 exhibitors spanning the Venetian Expo Center and Caesars Forum in Las Vegas.
Among the attendees were several political figures, including Governors Brian Kemp (Georgia), Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Arkansas), Brad Little (Ohio), Greg Gianforte (Montana), Jim Pillen (Nebraska), Joe Lombardo (Nevada) and Mark Gordon (Wyoming), who sat down with the NSSF’s executive vice president and general counsel, Larry Keane, to discuss “Second Amendment rights along with their efforts to attract firearm- and ammunition-related business.”
After the 2024 “Governors Forum,” Governor Sanders was seen talking with firearms executives on the show floor.
Other notable attendees included Donald Trump Jr., Kyle Rittenhouse, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Sheriff Joe Arapaio, who was pardoned by President Trump after being convicted of criminal contempt for defying a court order demanding that his deputies stop racially profiling and detaining immigrants. Adam Christian Johnson, known as the “lectern guy” from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, also attended — as did Mindy Robinson, a far-right conspiracy theorist and influencer who attended SHOT to promote bulletproof backpacks because, according to her, the FBI allows mass shootings to occur “as an excuse to take away our gun rights.”
Deadly marketing
Many companies used SHOT Show to market their deadly innovations, including assault weapons, silencers, and binary triggers. For example, Franklin Armory advertised its binary triggers for Glock pistols — allowing shooters to fire one shot when they pull the trigger and another shot when they release the trigger, effectively doubling their rate of fire — with a banner claiming that “Binary is better.”
Another company, FosTech Outdoors, debuted a drum magazine for Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles, doubling their capacity to 20 rounds, as shown below. These powerful rifles are used by soldiers to stop enemy vehicles — and they’ve become attractive to criminals and extremists in recent years.
For its part, Barrett Firearms boldly advertised its MK22 sniper rifle as a “military contract winner” at SHOT as a way to legitimize the gun for potential customers, including civilians.
Finally, Accufire Technology, a Texas-based company that produces sights and optics for rifles, used an image from the cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to advertise its location at SHOT.
Accufire also appears to sell “Adolescent Precision Shooters” attire with similar Ninja-Turtles-inspired branding as well as stickers, flags, and hoodies depicting a Care Bear, nicknamed “Accu-Bear,” holding an AR-15.