Monday, December 14, 2009

It occurs to me...

...that except for some M41A snark I never actually posted anything about the SAR show, which dominated all the activities of a week ago. Careless of me. Okay, lemme 'splain.

No, is too much. Lemme sum up. If you've ever been to a Crossroads of the West show, you've seen 5/6 of this show. All the same vendors are there, and so are their clones and cousins. The main event was the SAR (Small Arms Review) building. The SAR building offerings can be roughly divided into three categories:

1. AR15/M16 bling, with enough picatinny rail to reach to Mars and back again. Apparently it really is impossible to have too much rail farm on your carbine.

2. Machine guns & machine gun parts for those willing to jump through NFA hoops. If you want a parts kit for that someday MG42 project, this is the place. The amounts of money that changed hands at these booths is still boggling my tiny mind.

3. "Militaria," about which the less said the better - especially since I spent three days manning such a booth and now know far more about how to differentiate one piece of moldy European web gear from another than I ever, ever wanted to know. To my shock, lots of people find this information truly riveting.

Hint for future attendees: The way to the heart of a real serious military rifle/machine gun/militaria buff absolutely does not involve walking around in baggy pants down to your ankles with a TEC9 hanging around your neck. Just sayin'. Oh, they'll notice. They just won't make encouraging remarks.

3 comments:

Tam said...

The coolest thing about NFA-heavy shows, such as SAR or the semiannual KCR shindig, is that it's one of the few places where ammo gets sold by the pallet and is priced as "xx¢/rd.".

Anonymous said...

How would one of these go over?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsV50T5uEyw

M said...

It's not a show you go to for something like that bedside shotgun holder. You go to the SAR show to find things like spade grips for your AR, or a spare drum mag for your Oerklion AA cannon, or spare lock parts for your Vickers.