Well, that was interesting.
I got there, wife and two boys in tow, right at 9am when they opened. Took 15 minutes to get our badges. Seemed like the hall had already been open for an hour because it was already packed with people.
It was a typical exhibition hall - vendors giving away tons of knick-knacks (hats, stickers, pins, pens, frisbees, coozies, etc.) and holding "free" drawings (for the cost of your email/address) for some better stuff (AR-15s, etc.).
We saw a lot of neat firearms including old revolvers and state of the art sniper rifles in .338 and .50bmg along with all kinds of accessories (optics, holsters, etc.). Unlike most "gun shows" at small town convention centers, most every firearm here was available to touch, pick up, etc. The vendors encouraged it. My son (#1) went crazy with my wife's camera shooting pictures of everything he saw.
I got to chat with the folks at PTR about the rifle I bought from them. The rep said they have tripled their workforce and are working overtime to fill orders and are still backlogged about 10 something (it was weeks or months, but I didn't catch it as he was explaining this to someone before I got his attention).
I met Alan Gottlieb and shook his hand at the
Second Amendment Foundation booth. That was pretty cool.
Unfortunately, I walked past the
Second Call Defense booth without stopping. Dick Heller (the Heller in D.C. vs. Heller) was there. It would have been cool to meet him and thank him.
There was a booth there with some cool looking laser shot video games. The vendor was selling the complete system for just under $5K. It included the laser gun, computer, video project, screen, etc. I thought that seemed pricy, but then I saw what they had on the other side of their booth. I was fascinated. They had another laser shooting system, but this one did not look like a video game. The laser rifle was a real bolt action rifle that had been milled out so it couldn't fire live rounds. You had to work the bolt to fire a laser shot though. The image on the screen (projected) looked like real video - not some CGI or animated stuff. There was a laptop connected next to the rifle that showed on it's screen the view from the rifle's scope (allowing a second person to work as a spotter). The vendor explained that this system had an advanced physics engine for realistic ballistics (including wind shear) and cost $40K. It was mostly used by the military and police departments /SWAT for sniper training. My son got to shoot a few targets on it.
Wish I could have stayed longer and talked to a few more folks, but the kids didn't have the stamina for more than 3 hours.
