Andy Martin

Calling the shots

Rubbing shoulders with the hunters, urban cowboys and trigger-happy heroes at Las Vegas’s Shot Show

issue 30 January 2016
 

 Las Vegas

They say that there are more guns in America than human beings and most of them seemed to be at Shot Show in Las Vegas last week. Shot (Shooting Hunting Outdoor Trade) Show — the firearms industry’s biggest shop window — occupied several floors of a building roughly the size of Wembley Stadium, wedged between a couple of casinos and a replica of the Grand Canal. Like a kleptomaniac at Harrods, I didn’t know what to try out first. I was momentarily torn between being Dirty Harry (at the Smith & Wesson stand, with the most powerful handgun in the world) and James Bond (I couldn’t find the Walther PPK, it seems to have given way to the PPQ). Winchester, Springfield, Beretta, Glock, Sig Sauer, Mossberg, Heckler & Koch: how could I not be bewitched by the sheer poetry of such names? Not to mention the nostalgia of tucking a classic Colt six-shooter or two in my belt.

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