By Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor

Somewhere along the line at the 2008 Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show, I picked up my 30th anniversary commemorative pin.

While I haven't been to all 30 editions of SHOT, I've been to quite a few.

Some things about SHOT seem to stay the same whether it's held in early January or mid-February, in Orlando or Las Vegas. It's always a pain to get there and it's never quite as nice "there" as a winter-weary soul like me could hope.

Another thing that doesn't change: SHOT gets bigger ever year. Even given jet-propelled roller skates, I doubt that you could see every single booth at SHOT in the four days allotted for it, even if you zoomed around a bit during set-up and take-down.

I'm not a jet-propelled kind of girl, so what I did see of SHOT, I saw on (comfortably-shod) foot. Where once there was one giant hall filled with exhibits, there are now three (or 5 depending on how you count).
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) booth was at one end of the main exhibit hall at the Las Vegas Convention center. Our booth was numbered 124, in the Central Hall that began with #100 and ended with #5999.

Then there was the "North Hall," also in the Convention Center proper, which housed booths 6000-9299.

And finally, set up across the street from the Convention Center was the Gold Hall, a conglomeration of three temporary structures, housing booths 20,000-31,199.

Needless to say, I made it to the North Hall twice and the Gold Hall once.

Between booth 100 and booth 31,199 is a whole lot of stuff that fits the bill of shooting, hunting and outdoor trade. Guns, yes, to be sure, and just about every accessory for guns you could think of-and quite a few you couldn't think of if you stayed up most nights pondering. There's also paintball and archery gear, knives aplenty, camping equipment, vehicles, and aisles and aisles of clothing.

The "savvy" SHOT Show goer starts with a plan. The plan goes into the proverbial handbasket about 20 minutes after the show floor opens on Day One. Which is generally okay, because if you miss one of your targets, you are apt to find something else you didn't even know existed.

Some of us are lucky, too, to be invited to Media Day shoots and press conferences the day before the show opens, which not only afford you some hands-on time with some of the new guns and goodies, but also a little more relaxed way of getting information.

I only made it to one of the shoots-FNH's-held at a police range on the edge of the moon (well, it seemed like it was out there, and the road to the facility literally ended right behind it, but in typical Las Vegas fashion, was being graded out further). It was a cool, but pleasant day, and we could shoot everything from their Five-SeveN handgun to their SCAR tactical rifles.

SHOT gives me a chance to see what's new and do some planning for the coming year. Most of the products featured in W&G for the next four or five issues, debuted at SHOT.

It gives me a chance to see some of our regular contributing writers-this year Gila Hayes and Sheila Link, and to talk to other people interested in Women & Guns.

But there's also an intangible at SHOT-a sort of pulse of the industry. When you talk to people at their booths, you often hear how busy they've been, or the reaction they are getting to new introductions.

You get a sense of how things are going-especially in fragile economic times. You also get a sense of what's on the mind of folks in the industry.

With the Heller case arguments set to be heard by the Supreme Court in just a few weeks, that was a hot topic of conversation.

So, too, were the upcoming elections. We were in Las Vegas not just on Super Bowl Sunday, but also Super Tuesday, when the Republican presidential race seemed all but set in stone and the Democratic race got more dramatic.

Presidential politics will lead the way-but the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate are also in play this year, along with any number of statehouses, and all of those races will impact gun rights and gunowners.

I voted absentee before heading to Vegas and while I didn't get purple ink on my finger to signify suffrage, it did occur to me my 30th anniversary SHOT pin could serve as a reminder throughout the year to pay careful attention to everything the year 2008 may hold.

Peggy Tartaro

Photo © Copyright 1998 Nancy Floyd, used with permission.