The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show took place last week in Las Vegas, giving gun makers an opportunity to showcase their latest products to media outlets and customers at the largest trade show of its kind. Unsurprisingly, many of the show’s exhibitors doubled down on assault weapons and other dangerous innovations, as the examples below show.
Daniel Defense, a company that produces AR-15s, AR-10s, and bolt-action rifles, has unveiled its first handgun, the H9, a 9mm Glock/1911 hybrid that uses 15-round magazines. Daniel Defense purchased the H9 from Hudson Manufacturing, a startup that first unveiled the gun in 2017 but closed down due to quality-control issues. Daniel Defense also used the 2024 SHOT Show to debut its first 9mm AR, the Pistol Caliber Carbine, or PCC, signaling the company’s commitment to producing assault weapons — even after one of its AR-15s was used in the Uvalde shooting.
Kahr Firearms Group, which owns several brands and produces Desert Eagle pistols and Tommy guns — and has ties to the extremist Rod of Iron Ministries “gun church” — unveiled a new Tommy gun styled like an an AR-15 as well as a “Commander in Chief” AR-10 with “Keep America Great” and “45th” engraved on it, alluding to President Trump. This is one of many custom firearms Kahr has dedicated to the former president in recent years.
Kel-Tec has updated its foldable SUB2000 rifle — one of the rifles recovered in the Nashville mass shooting — to the Gen3 edition, which is designed so that the gun can be folded with sights or optics attached, unlike before. This means a shooter can hide the gun in a backpack, for example, and be more accurate with the weapon after deploying it.
Palmetto State Armory, a South Carolina gun manufacturer and retailer that offers a number of assault weapons — and, in the past, appealed to boogaloo supporters — debuted several new guns, including the X5.7, which is designed to mimic the Heckler & Koch MP7 submachine gun that cannot be imported into the U.S. for civilian sales because of German export laws.
Palmetto State Armory designed the compact and easy-to-conceal X5.7 to use high-velocity 5.7x28mm ammunition that can travel twice as fast as a typical 9mm round. The X5.7 also uses 40-round magazines and a collapsible “brace” reminiscent of a shoulder stock, which the ATF has interpreted as creating a short-barreled rifle subject to National Firearms Act registration requirements. Palmetto State Armory CEO Jamin McCallum stated that the company is already working with Franklin Armory to develop a binary trigger for the gun, enabling shooters to fire one shot when they pull the trigger and another when they release the trigger, doubling their rate of fire.
Smith & Wesson unveiled its first lever-action rifles — a stark contrast to the company’s AR-15s — which can be seen as the company’s attempt to compete with Ruger’s Marlin Firearms brand of lever-action rifles. Smith & Wesson’s new Model 1854 rifles are also a nod to the company’s roots, as Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson patented their first lever-action pistols and rifles in 1854, as part of the short-lived Volcanic Repeating Arms Company. The new rifles are chambered for the .44 Magnum and hold nine rounds.
Henry Repeating Arms, another company known for its lever-action rifles, has introduced the new Lever Action Supreme rifle that is available in two popular AR-15 calibers and uses AR-15 magazines. In other words, the company is capitalizing on the gun industry’s push for assault weapons. This follows the company’s introduction of the semi-automatic Homesteader rifle last year, which uses 9mm Glock, Sig Sauer, or Smith & Wesson pistol magazines.
Springfield Armory used the 2024 SHOT Show to debut a new SA-16A2 rifle designed to look like the U.S. military’s M16A2 rifle, which was issued to Marines and soldiers from 1983 to the early 2000s. Springfield’s retro clone even has “PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVT.” marked on the lower receiver, blurring the lines between military and civilian firepower.
Crossfire, a small Idaho-based company that produces AR-15s, released a single-shot, .22-caliber firearm disguised to look like a miniature baseball bat or trucker’s tire bat. The Viper Tac-Bat poses an obvious threat to public safety because bystanders might not know that someone is carrying a gun.
