Top 5 Things We’re Excited About Headed into SHOT Show

Ruger Mini GB (that’s not a GB)

While millions of Ruger Mini-14s have been made in the past 50 years, the most popular variant has also been the hardest to get. All that to say, Bill Ruger was a Fudd who hated to sell neat stuff to the public but, with a background designing machine guns for the Army in the 1940s, spent a lot of time chasing military and police contracts.

This led to the “Government Barrel” Mini-14, which included a birdcage-style flash hider and a bayonet lug that accepted the standard M7 or M9 pattern U.S. military bayonet. It was available in a select-fire variant, the AC556, as well as with a side-folding stock.

The company sold a lot of these to overseas gendarmerie and constabulary forces and marketed them extensively to stateside police and corrections agencies.

But it was tough for consumers to get these GB models, typically just picking them up as police trade-ins. Even the prop masters on the A-Team set had to fake it, taking standard Ranch Rifles, and modifying them to look the part.

Then, after Bill Ruger retired in 2000, the federal AWB expired in 2004, and Bill Jr. retired in 2006, the company started selling “Tactical” Mini-14s that included factory 20-round mags, flash hiders, and other items that their founders would have surely frowned upon.

Now, the company has come full circle and is finally, after a half-century of playing around, selling a stainless steel Mini-14 with a side-folding stock (surely made by Sampson), what would be described by the “old” Ruger as a GB profile barrel, and stainless steel Ruger-branded mags.

Plus, while the old-school guns had some serious reliability and accuracy issues, the newer ones have design and barrel improvements that help mitigate that, giving us a more fully developed design.

As the man said, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

PSA Krinkov (no, really, they say)

Palmetto State Armory has been teasing the public for years that they have an American-made Krink headed to market while not delivering. Well, Cameron surfaced over the weekend and said the company is in their final testing phase for the gun, expecting to launch it in February (yes, of 2024).

They intend to have five variants at launch– all in 5.56 with included side rails. These will include a plum gloss, a Vudu version, a JMac railed option, a redwood version, and an SBR-ready variant. PSA says that they will work on 5.45, .300 BLK, and 7.62×39 variants after the 5.56s have been released. No pricing is available.

Color us excited.

Rost Martin RM1C

If you have followed this blog for more than five minutes, you’ll get that we like new guns, which come around almost every day.

Something rarer is new gun companies, and we always take an interest in those, and they can sometimes prove a bigger and more complex story.

The first new gun company of the year this year appears to be Texas-based Rost Martin, who has what at first appears to be a G19-sized vanilla striker-fired polymer-framed 9mm pistol, but at closer look seems to be a little better (and for a better price).

Their flagship RM1C pistol is a compact-sized double-stack 9mm, that sports a 4-inch hammer-forged barrel, 7.1-inch overall length, and a 21.1-ounce unloaded weight with a 15+1 round magazine. For those curious, that is a little smaller than a Glock 19.

It comes in a choice of three assorted colors, is optics-ready, uses CZ magazines, and accepts XD-pattern sights. The price is $459, which puts it in the same ballpark as a lot of Turkish-made guns, but the catch is the RM1C is supposed to be made right here in the U.S.

Is it a Texas-made (or finished) AREX Delta Gen 2 (it bears a remarkably close resemblance), as some have thought? We’ll find out.

Taurus TH10

While Taurus has made lots of believers in the past several years with its G2 and G3 series of polymer-framed 9mm pistols that have surprised even us in terms of performance, they have also been making a new line of hammer-fired guns that are surprisingly good. The TH (Taurus hammer-fired) was introduced in 9mm and .40 in 2018, followed by the .45 ACP TH45.

Now, the company is bringing the 10mm TH10 to Las Vegas to show it off at SHOT.

Why the big deal? Well, the TH10 is a 15+1 capacity hammer-fired 10mm with an ask of about $500. Tough to find that combination on the market, which, if it works, could make the new Taurus centimeter a crowd-pleaser.

Glock 49

We talked about the gun industry’s chase for what was long described as the G19L a couple of months ago and must admit that we are still excited about laying hands-on the Glock 49 at SHOT Show.

Yes, we cannot believe it is still a thing to be amped up about a full-length G17-sized slide and barrel on a compact G19 frame.

We will bring you more from SHOT.