Title: Thoughts About The SHOT Show
Author: Andrew Molchan
Date: Mon June 20th, 2005
Dear Friends,
In the early 1970s, the firearms industry was part of the annual NSGA Show (January in Chicago). The anti-gun movement had gone into high gear. Teddy Kennedy was pushing for more and more gun control, with the help of all the left-wing big press.
In the early 1970s. I and American Firearms Industry Magazine, started lobbying for an independent firearms show. It was an idea who’s time had come, and in January 1979 the SHOT® Show was started.
All went well in the beginning, but little by little the British company of Reed gained more and more control. To give the British credit, with hundreds of years of practice they are unquestionable the world’s greatest experts at handling native chiefs.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, I clearly saw a two-part grand strategy mistake. The SHOT® Show management was hand picked and dominated by the classic hunting mentality. On the other hand, the anti-gun forces were successfully building a large anti-firearms national consensus. Firearms ownership was under increasingly successful attacks. The SHOT® Show old-guard defense against the attacks was to picture the firearms industry as only, and nothing more, than a gentleman’s hunting sport, just as any other sport like baseball or bowling.
Back in the late 1980s, I had already been battling the left-wing anti-freedom groups for 20 years. I have been on the front lines for a long time, and was under no illusion about the anti-gun groups wanting a total ban of every kind of firearm. They were then, and still are today, anti-freedom fascists. The fascist anti-gun groups believe all governments should own the people as "property." There’s no reason for "property" to own guns.
I knew that the delusion of, "lets pretend we are all just gentlemen hunters and they will leave us alone," was a highly dangerous delusion. It was that politically naïve attitude, and the projected picture of the gun industry as public relations incompetent, that helped precipitate all the anti-gun city lawsuits of the late 1990s.
Neal Knox and I were good friends. After the socialist Tony Blair came to power in England, and banned guns, Neal and I were having lunch at an NRA convention. The then recent ban on firearms in England came up. As background, there is an English NRA that is loosely related to the American NRA. Neal stated, "I told the British NRA over and over that they had to get serious about their fight. They kept telling me that the government only wanted to ban military type handguns, and the government would never touch shotguns and hunting rifles. I told them they would be sorry."
From the time Neil and I first met back in the 1960, we both agreed that the 2nd Amendment had nothing whatsoever to do with deer and duck hunting. Aside from that, the fascists don’t want ordinary people owning any kind of firearm for any kind of reason.
So, going back to the SHOT® Show. For years nothing that was military or police could be at the SHOT® Show. Remember, we were all supposed to only be gentlemen hunters. Well, you know me, I say what I think, and I said in the pages of AFI that the highly flawed worldview was politically simple-minded. Some people thought that because they ran old fashioned backwoods factories, making hundred year old products, that made them world experts on everything in the total universe, so they couldn’t possibly be wrong about anything. I was massively attacked as, "Not being co-operative with the industry." That was the line of attack for years, "Andy just isn’t co-operating with the industry." That charge was absolutely true. I was definitely not co-operative with the prevailing worldview coming out of the SHOT® Show old guard.
I remember one SHOT® Show in particular. I was talking to my old friend, Val Forgett of Navy Arms. Val can correctly be given credit for much of the modern black power shooting sport in America, and for helping to start the Cowboy Action market. At the recent January 2005 SHOT® Show, I attended the Italian government’s luncheon. All the major Italian firearms manufacturers were there and spoke. Even though it’s been a few years since Val’s death, Val, he was given credit for starting the modern black powder industry, as we know it today.
Anyway, so Val and I are talking at the SHOT® Show in Houston. Val had a nice booth, with some TVs running from videotapes. Val was a big backer of Civil War and Revolutionary War enactments and helped start the modern Civil War enactment movement. So, the videos of a recent Revolutionary War enactment using Val’s flintlock guns are playing on the TVs. Along comes Reeds enforcer, Gerry Van Dijk. Gerry tells Val that the SHOT® Show doesn’t allow pictures of soldiers, and Val would have to turn off the videos immediately. Val says they are Revolutionary War enactments, with flintlocks! Gerry said turn off the videos, no military in any form allowed at the SHOT® Show. If Val didn’t, Gerry wouldn’t let Val into next years Show!
At the same show Smith & Wesson had a pair of S&W handcuffs on display. They were told to remove them because that wasn’t "sporting" equipment.
Well, I didn’t, "Cooperate with the industry." In AFI, I said that was a perfect example of being brain dead.
Starting in the early 1970s, I consistently said the key to political success was not necessarily to tie the industry into classic hunting, but to tie the industry into law enforcement and national defense. The SHOT® Show old guard and Reed resisted tooth and claw. During those many years, I was incessantly attacked as, "Not co-operating with the industry."
Things at SHOT® didn’t change until I started the Firearms Trade Expo (FTE). The FTE successfully had police and military equipment. All the Reed big shots came to the first FTE and were frightened enough to reverse the anti-police rules at SHOT®.
This year’s SHOT® Show was a pleasure for me. I looked out over a constantly packed law enforcement and military section, and I was happy.
The SHOT® Show is a much bigger and better Show with the police and military section. Exactly like I said it would be, 20 years before it happened. If I had been running the SHOT® Show, it would today be the world’s premier Show for sporting, police and military equipment of all kinds. In addition, the city lawsuits never would have happened.
Law enforcement and infantry equipment is a growing worldwide market, and the SHOT® Show is now positioned to sell to the international police and military market. What’s good for our industry in total makes me happy.
SOMETHING DIFFERENT. In between all of my usual jobs, I’m still writing novels. Book four, JOHN DAGON in GOD & THE DEVIL PLAY THEIR GAME, is on the AFI website, amfire.com. It’s rough copy, and I’m looking for people who want to help with the proofreading. As stated on the DAGON website section, if you want to help, when the novel is published you will be in the credit listings. I think it’s a fun project, I see the DAGON series as something like the Reverend Tim LaHaye’s novels but in ultra heavy form. Log onto amfire.com, and click onto the DAGON box on the first page. All the information you’ll need is listed.
Best Wishes,
Andrew Molchan
Professional Gun Retailers Association
National Association of Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers
INDUSTRY
INSIGHTS
