SHOT Show 2020 Episode 0: Slav Guns Goes to Vegas

What’s up channel fans and family, and welcome to Slav Guns. This one goes back to the very start of my SHOT Show 2020 trip — Episode 0. I was supposed to already be in Las Vegas. Instead, I was sitting at an airport Marriott in Philly, going live with you guys about missed flights, what Media Day at the Range actually is, and the stacked calendar of booth meetings I had lined up for the week.

Quick note: this is a behind-the-scenes travel and prep livestream, not a test and evaluation of any gun. Product names, prices, and schedule details below are what I said on the stream in January 2020, so treat them as that year’s snapshot.

The delayed arrival

The plan was simple: a 7:30 AM flight out of the New York / New Jersey area. I live in the Poconos, so we left my house around 4:30–5:00 in the morning. It had snowed a lot, but once we got into Jersey the roads were fine. Then my buddy showed up 15 minutes late, and that 15 minutes came back to haunt us.

To skip the crazy airport parking fees, we dropped my car at my aunt’s place near the airport and grabbed a Lyft. The driver was 10 minutes late because he stopped for gas. Still fine. Clear roads the whole way — right up until four minutes from the airport, where a major accident killed it. By the time I got to the ticket counter it was empty, and with two camera bags plus a checked bag, I wasn’t making that flight.

Apparently everybody in the New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania area was heading to Vegas that weekend. The only seat out of New York was something like $1,200 on Delta. So I took the trains down to Philly and booked a 9 PM flight — which gave me five spare hours, a good lunch, my third cup of coffee, and this livestream. The first few minutes are me fighting with which microphone is actually picking me up, so bear with it.

What Media Day at the Range actually is

SHOT Show runs Tuesday to Friday, and the day before it, the National Shooting Sports Foundation holds Media Day at the Range (also called Industry Day at the Range) at the Boulder City Rifle and Pistol Club, about an hour outside Vegas. You get major firearms makers, smaller companies, and startups. Non-shooting companies rent booths too — hearing protection, nonprofits, that sort of thing. Then there are about 50 shooting bays plus a trap and skeet field where manufacturers let you shoot their guns. And the best part: you are shooting somebody else’s ammo.

It is invite-only. Around 65–70 thousand people register for SHOT Show, but Media Day is only about 1,600 people total. Invited media get in starting around 8:30–9:00 AM, and from noon on, the larger distributors and dealers invited by manufacturers can come out and demo too. On the stream I noted that Smith & Wesson wasn’t going to be at Media Day that year, and a few other companies skipped it for different reasons.

Part of the reason is cost — I mentioned that a Media Day bay started around $3,500, compared to roughly $10,000 for a small booth on the main show floor. The other part is that the desert is hell on guns. It can be 30 degrees at 8 AM and 70–80 a couple of hours later, and when the wind picks up, everything is covered in sand. Guns crap out on the line all the time. As a media guy, I actually like that — you find out fast whether a gun is reliable or what the problem is. If you want to see how that day actually went, I wrote up the follow-up here: SHOT Show 2020 Media Day at the Range: What’s It Like?

Why fewer videos per day (and a better plan)

My original goal was four or five videos a day during the show. Then my wife pointed out that the big new releases would have videos everywhere within hours — but a lot of my viewers and friends have never been to SHOT Show and probably want to know what it’s actually like to be there. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. So the plan changed: one video a day for anything major, “what’s it like” videos for Media Day and the show floor, and the rest as daily content once I got home.

Audio was the other reason. I decided against wireless mics that year — with tens of thousands of people and their phones in one building, 2.4 GHz interference can ruin footage. Half my camera bag was audio gear: a new handheld mic with its own recorder, plus backups.

Booth calendar highlights

From Tuesday through Thursday I had about ten appointments a day, with Friday as my makeup day. A few that stood out on the stream:

• Savage: a walkthrough of the new guns, including the 110 Elite and a 110 with a Proof Research carbon fiber barrel. I talked about a trend I was seeing: precision companies partnering up instead of doing everything in-house — Proof barrels, MDT chassis, and so on.
• Kimber: I have been critical of Kimber, but I got one of their K6s revolvers in a trade and was honestly impressed, so I wanted them on the calendar.
• Taurus, Rossi, and Heritage: I had two unedited G3C videos. The 9mm had a small issue I was still diagnosing (magazine or something else — Taurus was sending extra mags), while the .40 had zero issues. I also think the TX22 is fantastic, and Taurus was picking up an award from Guns & Ammo for it that week.
• Frogg Toggs: I had a 15-minute gap, so I squeezed in the outdoor wear guys.
• Sig optics: BDX, plus the newly announced BDX 2.0.
• Thursday on the lower floor: smaller companies, a meeting with a precision action designer at the MDT booth, Lancer Systems (who also distribute the Alien pistol), Palmetto State Armory, Vortex, and more.

Near the end I walked through my spreadsheet of new releases company by company. One I was excited about was the Springfield setup I had posted a picture of — a Law Tactical folding adapter, a brace, and a quick-takedown barrel that packs into a small package. I also pitched the Wednesday pop-up exhibitor tables (around $750 for a day): if you want to find the small companies before everybody else does, that’s where you look.

Keep squatting

At the time of this stream the channel had just hit about 2,400 subscribers in roughly six months, which still blows my mind. Thanks to everyone who hung out in the chat while I killed time at the airport. If you want to help the channel, you can join here, and if you need a range bag, camera gear, or travel stuff for your own SHOT Show trip, have a look at slav.li/amazon.

Keep on squatting.

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Have you ever missed a flight to a trade show, or made it out to SHOT Show yourself? Tell me in the comments.

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