Next week, tens of thousands of gun makers and sellers will gather in Las Vegas for the annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show hosted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association. The largest trade show of its kind, the SHOT Show gives gun manufacturers and importers a chance to show off their new products to wholesalers, gun dealers, and media outlets that cover guns while celebrating the previous year’s sales with parties and mixers.
The NSSF boasts that SHOT Show attendees can walk “13.9 miles of aisles” to see all the new firearms, ammunition, and accessories on display. But as discussed below, countless companies use the show to promote military-style assault weapons and accessories that can increase their rate of fire or concealability, among other deadly innovations.
Notably, the SHOT Show is held at the Venetian Expo Center and Caesars Form, just 2 miles from the scene of the Route 91 Harvest music festival mass shooting — the deadliest in modern American history. The perpetrator of that attack had an arsenal of weapons, including 14 AR-15s equipped with bump stocks to mimic fully automatic machine gun fire. Many of the shooter’s rifles were introduced at previous SHOT Shows, and Slide Fire Solutions, the company that made the bump stocks he used, exhibited at SHOT from 2012 to 2017.
promoting deadly innovations
Over 2,800 exhibitors are currently slated to attend the 2025 SHOT Show. But a closer look at the exhibitor list highlights the gun industry’s push for deadlier weapons.
- Dozens of exhibitors — Bushmaster, Century Arms, Daniel Defense, Palmetto State Armory, Ruger, Smith & Wesson, and Springfield Armory, among many others — produce or import assault weapons, including AR-15s and AK-47s, that have been used in the country’s deadliest mass shootings.
- Daniel Defense first launched its DDM4 V7 series of AR-15s in 2011, and the perpetrator of the Robb Elementary School mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, used a version introduced at the 2016 SHOT Show.
- Smith & Wesson debuted its first AR-15, called the M&P15, at the 2006 SHOT Show. Since then, M&P15 rifles have been used in the Aurora, San Bernardino, Parkland, Poway, and Highland Park mass shootings.
- Sig Sauer introduced its MCX semi-automatic rifles at the 2015 SHOT Show, and one was used in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando the following year.
- Numerous exhibitors produce high-capacity magazines, including 50-round drum magazines for Glock pistols.
- At least two exhibitors, FN and Ohio Ordnance Works, produce semi-automatic versions of U.S. military belt-fed machine guns for civilians. Similarly, another exhibitor, FightLite Industries, produces belt-fed AR-15s.
- One exhibitor, Mountain Billy Gun Lab (formerly known as Wee1 Tactical), manufactures child-sized, .22-caliber AR-15s. Several exhibitors also produce realistic-looking BB and airsoft guns, including replicas of assault weapons, that may appeal to children.
- Exhibitors Franklin Armory and FosTech Outdoors manufacture binary triggers. When installed in a semi-automatic firearm, a binary trigger allows a shooter to fire one shot when they pull the trigger and another shot when they release the trigger, effectively doubling their rate of fire.
- Franklin Armory unveiled its first binary trigger at the 2015 SHOT Show.
- In July 2023, a man used an Anderson Manufacturing AR-15 with a binary trigger to ambush police officers in Fargo, North Dakota, killing one and wounding two others as well as a bystander.
- Several exhibitors, such as Dead Foot Arms, FoldAR, Kel-Tec, Magpul/Zev Technologies, and Shield Arms, produce firearms that fold — or aftermarket parts that allow AR-15s to fold — for easy concealment on one’s person.
- Over a dozen exhibitors, including SilencerCo and Silencer Central, manufacture and sell silencers that muffle a firearm’s sound signature and eliminate its muzzle flash, making it difficult to determine where a gunshot originated. While these companies specialize in silencers, dozens of gun manufacturers have also added the devices to their catalogs in recent years.
- To own a silencer, or sound suppressor, civilians must submit an application to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and undergo an enhanced background check. But in 2021, the ATF launched a new online application system — after lobbying from the NSSF — that has drastically reduced wait times. Since then, silencer sales have skyrocketed.
- Silencers were used in the mass shootings that took place in Virginia Beach and Monterey Park in 2019 and 2023, respectively, and the suspect in the recent assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson used a ghost gun with a 3D-printed silencer.
- At least four exhibitors manufacture or distribute components and tools for building untraceable ghost guns — down from 10 exhibitors last year and 27 in 2022. This decrease may be attributed to the ATF rule regulating the parts kits used to build ghost guns, though the agency’s most recent data shows that these firearms are still frequently recovered from crime scenes.
- Exhibitors Credova and Gearfire offer “shoot now, pay later” financing for gun purchases. With the former, buyers may not even need to make their first payment for 30 days.
- Exhibitor Tannerite Sports produces and sells exploding targets that can ignite wildfires and cause injuries.
- Exhibitors CCW Safe, Lockton Affinity, U.S. LawShield, and the U.S. Concealed Carry Association (USCCA) offer self-defense liability insurance, which has been called “murder insurance,” or legal services to that end.
gun rights groups
The National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America, a far-right gun group, are also listed as exhibitors along with smaller, lesser-known organizations like the National Firearms Act Trade & Collectors Association (NFATCA), which seeks to remove silencers and short-barreled rifles from the registration requirements of the National Firearms Act, which was enacted in 1934 to regulate these deadly items, among other initiatives.
notable absences from shot show
A few past SHOT Show exhibitors are noticeably absent from this year’s show:
- After reports that the U.S. Department of Commerce had helped American gun makers export tens of thousands of semi-automatic weapons to “some of the most violent countries in the world” by easing export restrictions and bringing international buyers to the SHOT Show, the agency pulled out of the 2024 show and will not return for this year’s convention.
- The reporters who first revealed the surge in U.S. firearms exports noted that a gunman used a Sig Sauer P365 pistol — introduced at the 2018 SHOT Show — to carry out Thailand’s deadliest mass shooting, in which 36 people were killed.
- SB Tactical, the largest arm brace maker, is not exhibiting at the 2025 SHOT Show, unlike in previous years. However, several other arm brace manufacturers, including Maxim Defense and Gear Head Works, are still exhibiting — as are dozens of companies that sell easy-to-conceal short-barreled ARs and AKs with arm braces. To learn more about these devices and the ATF’s attempts to regulate them, click here.
- Polymer80, once the largest producer of ghost gun parts and kits, was a SHOT Show exhibitor from 2016 to 2023, but the company shut down last year.