SHOT
SHOW
2012
Kicking and screaming, Nige
dragged himself off to Las
Vegas to visit the Shooting,
Hunting and Outdoor Trades
Show. It’s a hard life…
T
he SHOT Show has something
in common with the Grand
Canyon…
Words cannot describe
it and pictures do not do it
justice. The only way to fully appreciate the
020
March 2012
enormity of it is to go and see for yourself.
On Monday 16 January 2012, as I stood on
the lip of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon
looking out over the dizzying spectacle in
front of me I ticked one off my bucket list.
The sheer size, scale and beauty of the place
is truly awe-inspiring and mere words simply
cannot do it justice.
On Tuesday 17 January 2012 I had pretty
much the same feeling as I stood in the
middle of ‘Level 2’ of the 2012 SHOT
Show. This Show is not just big; it’s huge,
humongous, massive (and just about every
other superlative relating to size you can
think of) – and it’s full of guns, lots and lots
of guns!
Surrounded by iconic names such as
ArmaLite, Colt, Beretta, Glock, Sig Sauer,
Heckler & Koch and Browning I really did feel
like a kid in a candy store – wanting to see
and try everything but not knowing where to
start. Thankfully, I had an agenda to keep to
and so at least I had a starting point!
The show was spread out over three levels
of the Sands Expo & Convention Center in
Las Vegas, Nevada, with 1,600-plus exhibitors
filling 630,000sq/ft of space. This year broke
the attendance record with more than 61,000
visitors, making the SHOT Show the largest
trade show of its kind in the world. The
enormity of the thing does make it difficult to
find what you’re looking for but once you’ve
managed to decipher the Show map and