Yesterday was SHOT Show Media Day. SHOT Show is the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show. The best way to describe the tradeshow is that it’s Disneyland for gun owners.
During media day, you get the opportunity to go out to the Boulder Rifle and Pistol Club (just outside of Las Vegas) and shoot a bunch of guns and get a lot of SWAG. (Except this SWAG is gun company hats and camo shirts instead of diamonds and whatever else celebrities get.)
One of the guns I got to shoot yesterday was the Browning 1911-380 pictured here.
I’ve been looking forward to shooting this gun because I’m a huge 1911 fan and my daily carry gun at the moment is a Springfield 1911.
The Browning 1911-380 is 85% of the size of a regular 1911 and weighs much less. A full size 1911 weighs about 40 ounces and the new Browning only weighs 17.5 ounces. This weight difference will encourage a lot of folks to try this gun since most people won’t carry a full size 1911 because of the weight.
Shooting the 1911-380 was a breeze and just as I expected. It had a nice smooth trigger pull, pointed well and accuracy was not a problem. There was also little recoil because it’s a .380.
I definitely shouldn’t have shot this gun because now it’s on my (very) long list of guns I want. If you’ve ever thought about trying out the 1911 platform but don’t want to have to deal with a .45, then this new gun from Browning is the way to go.
Another of my favorite products that I checked out yesterday was the Salvo 12 silencer (suppressor) from SilencerCo.
The Salvo 12 is supposedly the first commercially available shotgun silencer. If you’ve ever fired a shotgun before, you know that they’re very loud and that you’ll regret it if you aren’t wearing hearing protection when it fires.
Well, let’s just say I couldn’t believe how quiet the gun was when using the silencer. You didn’t even need to wear hearing protection when firing the gun and I’m not exaggerating when I say the sound was pretty darn close to that of a .22.
I’m no engineer, but whoever created the Salvo 12 knew what they were doing and did a good job. The Salvo 12 is mostly for duck and bird hunters, but if you shoot a shotgun often you should probably check the silencer out.
I’ll be at SHOT Show for the next few days as well and will certainly have a few more products to tell you about so keep an eye out for more soon.
