A lot of the gun-control efforts from the Biden administration and others today are focused on banning innovations. This is true even when the “innovations” in question are actually a century or more old, such as today’s very popular semi-automatic rifles.
This fact always makes the SHOT Show, which is not a consumer show, but is often the place companies announce new product launches to excite buyers and editors like myself, so interesting. Here we have an ever-growing and increasingly diverse industry—and meandering down the miles of aisles at the SHOT Show makes this clear—working to please American consumers, whether the average civilian or law-enforcement, yet the Biden administration would like to put a stop to much of this marketplace.
Yet, thanks in no small part to the NRA and all its active members, the show goes on; in fact, more than 55,000 people were in attendance over the four days of the show, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
One of the guns that received a lot of attention this year was Smith & Wesson’s new lever-action Model 1854 in .44 Mag., as American gun owners love innovation as much as retro. This gun is meant to honor S&W’s first lever-action patent filed in 1854. Like all lever-actions, it’s fun to shoot, and it’s well suited to home defense. Henry Repeating Arms is offering its first box-fed lever-action, the Lever-Action Supreme, but, though available at SHOT Show’s media day (where it, too, received a lot of attention), it hasn’t been fully rolled out to consumers. Expect it sometime in the first half of the year.
The industry hasn’t neglected the concealed-carry category this year, as several great new—or improved—items were revealed. Here are just a few that seemed to receive a lot of attention at the show:
Beretta: The Cheetah 80x, chambered in .380, and the Tomcat Just in Case, chambered in .32. The Cheetah 80x that Beretta had out at my table was a striking bronze color. And the tiny Tomcat features a tip-up barrel, so you don’t have to rack the slide.
Taurus: The 327 Defender T.O.R.O is a red-dot compatible, double-action/single-action revolver with a 2- or 3-inch barrel, chambered in .327 Fed. Mag. (also compatible with .32 S&W and .32 H&R Mag.). They also rolled out a GX4 Carry version, which offers 15 rounds of 9 mm and a larger grip.
Stoeger: The STR-45 is a line expansion from the surprisingly affordable STR-9 and STR-40 options.
Daniel Defense: The H9 is Daniel Defense’s first handgun, a 15-round, 1911-style, striker-fired 9 mm. It is a redesign of the Hudson H9.
Bond Arms: For those who like a derringer as their back-up gun, the Stubby 9 mm (or .380 or .22) is one of the flattest on the market at only 0.88-of-an-inch wide.
To see more from the 2024 SHOT Show, visit NRAPublications.com and the NRAPubs channel on YouTube. Keep an eye on your America’s 1st Freedom magazine or here at A1F.com for more in-depth reviews of new products and the most-comprehensive reporting on all the issues affecting your Second Amendment rights.
