I didn’t think that SHOT Show 2022 would happen. And I REALLY drug my feet on committing to go and booking travel. I didn’t want to wear a mask, and didn’t know if it would be worth while to go with all of the big companies backing out.
It ended up being the best and most productive SHOT show that I’ve been to in the last decade.
A lot of the companies who didn’t set up their booths are 1-2 YEARS behind on manufacturing. The demand is already there. They don’t need to release new products that hog production time and they don’t really need to go to SHOT to sell 2 years out. In many cases, the big players were there, instead of the 12-50 people who normally are.
On the media side, I did a podcast interview for the Rob Pincus Podcast, a TV interview with Michael Bane, and a video podcast interview with Kevin Allen for the Kevin Allen Show in conjunction with Law Enforcement Today. I’ll let you know when those air. Michael just did a segment on Real World Gunfight Training for his TV show, “Triggered.” I’ll link to it below.
FYI, as Michael LOVES to share, he has “killed” me several times for doing nefarious, unspeakable deeds. If you’ve ever seen season 1 & 2 of “The Best Defense” with Bane, Pincus, and Michael Janich, I was in several of the episodes that were filmed at the Swanson Tactical Training Center. I alternated back and forth between being a good guy and a bad guy. And when I was bad, I was really bad…and they shot me for it.
I’ve got a few more media appearances coming up in the next few weeks. If you’ve got a favorite show or channel that you think I should be on, let me know.
What else?
I spent some time with Austin and Matt Mallory at the MantisX booth and tried out some of their soon-to-be-released upgraded tech around their Blackbeard system for the AR.
It was very cool and I’m looking forward to spending some more time working with it. It turns the AR inert and gives you a resetting trigger. Cool tech.
There were a couple of cool things that came out of that demo…
One was the trigger. I couldn’t press it. 4-5 times, Austin started the drill and I went to press the trigger but my brain stopped me as I touched it. Why? It was a straight, flat faced trigger that felt like I was pressing on the front of the trigger guard. When I slowed down enough to think about it, I could press it, but when I was on autopilot, it was such a confusing sensation that I couldn’t bring myself to press the trigger. Finally, I looked at it as I pressed it multiple times and then I was finally able to run it well…up, 2 hits, transition, 2 hits, transition, 2 hits, transition, 2 hits in about 2 seconds. The lesson here is that differences between how you train and how you fight can introduce lags. On ARs, I purposely have all of my triggers different…some (bad) stock and some really nice so I never get so used to a clean trigger that I can’t run a crappy one well. In this case, it was the trigger geometry that tripped me up. I’ve avoided flat-faced triggers…not because I don’t like them, but because I don’t want to get used to the feel of them and have it cause an issue with concave triggers. What this showed me is that I need to spend some more time shooting flat faced triggers occasionally so it’s not a surprise again.
The other was a cool neurological hack. When I ran the transition drill with the Mantis Blackbeard, it said I had an opportunity to improve my time by about 10% based on over-travel on the transitions. I saw the opportunity for a cool test and threw on my non-corrective prism lenses. They change the timing of sensory processing in the brain and, for many people, they reduce or eliminate visual and physical overtravel on transitions. Immediately, the overtravel went away and Austin said that the opportunity for improvement dropped to essentially zero. I only mention this because I could have tried grinding out hundreds or thousands of reps to try to eliminate that overtravel. A neurological solution allowed me to create dramatic change from one shot to the next.
Ben and Kathe Campomanes, owners of LASRapp, have some very cool phone/tablet tech coming out for laser based dry fire that I’ll be sharing with you soon, including being able to use your phone/tablet to time and score various shooting standards and steel challenge stages. They recently bought the company from John and I’ve been using LASR for at least 6 years.
As does Andrey Safanyuk from iMarksman. His newest invention, the “clip shot” is really cool! It is a target and stand combo with a simple lens system that focuses on the camera of your phone so you can get speed and accuracy feedback.
If I remember right, Clip Shot went from concept to prototype to market in 60 days. Andrey is that kind of guy. He’s got more great stuff coming out in the next few months.
Next is a new biometric gun lock system that I REALLY like from Vara Safety.
I have talked several times about how I do not like biometric locks for guns. There are some significant aspects about this (and their upcoming tech) that I really like that may have finally tipped the scales for me in favor of a biometric safe.
- They understand the challenges of wet/cold/sweaty fingerprints and have options for making them work.
- The scanner reads and unlocks in .3 seconds.
- To activate the scanner, you grab the grip of your pistol, push in like you would on a holster to get a command grip, and the print scanner is where your thumb hits…a natural for anyone who uses a retention holster with a thumb break.
- You can activate/deactivate the lock remotely with an app…this way, the default could be to have the reader disabled but you could unlock it remotely for a family member who is at home in an emergency. You could also disable the thumbprint reader remotely in cases where self-harm became a concern.
- I got to see the demo version of their next generation that will have both biometrics and a push-button code backup.
- It is the best looking gun-safe I’ve seen that’s not specifically designed to be art-hiding-a-gun.
Finally, there’s new training gear from T4E that I’m going to be sharing with you this year as it becomes available and as I receive it. Carbines, shotguns, revolvers, and more that shoot .43 paintball, powderball, and rubber ball projectiles.
Now, this is a fraction of the people I saw over the course of the week…if I mentioned everyone, it would be excessive. It truly was an incredible week and I’m thankful for the chance to see so many friends.
Gunfight Book Club
I got some incredible feedback on “Real World Gunfight Training” at SHOT and since SHOT.
One of the most meaningful came from one of my first instructors I took a class from after I got serious, retired Special Forces Colonel, retired Ogden Police Chief, and Gunsite instructor, Randy Watt. He said,
“This is the best book on firearms Training,
capital T, currently in existence, bar none.“
When someone of Randy’s caliber says something like that, it’s worth paying attention…in other words, if you haven’t read it yet, you should.
Now, at the end of each chapter in the book, there’s a link to the resources for the chapter…and one of those resources is going to be an quick video summary of the chapter. I can do them without an audience, but I know they’ll be better if I record them live.
So, what I’m going to do is a Gunfight Book Club, starting next week, where I present a summary of each chapter of the book to the group, and then we have a live, private, Q&A at the end.
The chapter summaries will be public…but the Q&A where all the juicy details get hashed out will be for members only.
It’ll be a great way to get questions answered and hear about the latest findings and updates.
How can you be a part of it?
Simple.
I was going to charge for it…and then I decided to make it a FREE bonus for Upgraded Shooter subscribers! (How’s that for cool)
If you’re already an Upgraded Shooter subscriber, you’ll be able to attend the weekly sessions and/or watch the recordings, and ask your biggest questions, live.
If you’re not already a subscriber, you can learn all about it and get signed up today by going >HERE<
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