New AR Add-Ons at SHOT: Crossbow, Chainsaw, Nancy Pelosi’s Head

When you first walk into the SHOT show and see the shiny new guns and gear as far as the eye can see, you think you’ve died and gone to heaven. By Day 2, surveying the same thing, you start to wonder if maybe you’ve died and gone someplace else. There is such a thing as Too Long at the Fun House. Plus, for every 100 “new” products, 99 are old wine in bottles with Picatinny rails soldered right onto the glass.

The 37th show, SHOT XXXVII, featured 13 acres of exhibit space. That’s 12½ miles of aisles. There were 60,000 attendees, including 2,500 journalists.

What struck me above all else at this year’s show is that whatever you can think up, some fool has found a way to put it on the AR-15 platform, including:

—A crossbow. Because you never know when the rules of engagement may suddenly shift to “Second Century B.C.” mode.

—A chainsaw. This is actually old hat, exhibited as early as SHOT XXXIV as the Zombie X Chainsaw Attachment from DoubletStar. I’m not sure it ever caught on commercially. Probably because—although I haven’t researched this—so many chainsaws now come with 5.56 NATO barrels as an option.

—Your iPhone. Because the iTunes app BulletFlight, at $29.99, is a lot cheaper than say, the $900 Rianov Eagle Gen II Commercial, another scope-mounted ballistics computer. On the other hand, the Rianov also tells you the range, the angle up or down to the target, the cant of the weapon, barometric pressure, and how long it takes Dominos to deliver a pizza to the scope’s GPS coordinates. (Dominos does not deliver to Afghanistan, by the way, despite what it says on many Groupons).

There were a handful of high-potential add-ons that I didn’t find this year, but my hope is that by SHOT XXXVIII the list will include waffle makers, the George Foreman Grill, and a Pez dispenser with Nancy Pelosi’s head on it.

On Day 3 I found myself looking at yet another AR. This one, curiously, was naked, not a thing on its 13-inch Picatinny rail. The tag on it identified it as a DRDP762-BLK16. In other words, a 16-inch semi-auto AR in 7.62 NATO. Its tag mentioned the FN hammer, mid-length gas system, and forged, chrome-lined, threaded barrel. It had a black finish, with MagPul MOE stock and grip. It came with a hard case, two 20-round MagPul P mags, and was suppressor-ready.

The bare rifle was $4,725.00.

Even if you limited your options to a bare-bones scope, light, and Nancy Pelosi, you’d probably be well over $7,500. Even by SHOT standards, that’s a chunk of change. You could take your whole family out to dinner in Las Vegas for that and still have most of the cab fare for the three-mile ride back to your hotel.