For the first time in three years, I decided to not go to SHOT Show, and instead went to the 2019 NRA Annual Meeting (NRAAM) which was held in Indianapolis this year – only a 2 hour drive from my home in Dayton, Ohio.  This was my 2nd NRAAM, having first attended in 2017 when it was held in Atlanta.  Before I get into NRAAM 2019, I’ll say that I think the decision to skip SHOT was a good one.  I’ve generally not enjoyed SHOT nearly as much as NRAAM, and I think SHOT being located in VEGAS is primarily to blame.  NRAAM is said to have more raw attendance numbers than SHOT – ~60,000 ish for SHOT vs. ~80,000 ish for NRAAM.  The reality, in my opinion, is that SHOT feels an order of magnitude more crowded than NRAAM.  Probably because in addition to the show attendees, you have all the normal Vegas tourist population with which to contend.   The difference is particularly noticeable if you attend NRAAM on Friday.  Unlike SHOT, a good percentage of the attendees are “local” in the sense that they drive to the event.  Many don’t take off work on Friday and instead plan on attending on Saturday and/or Sunday.  As a result, both times I’ve been to NRAAM and walked around the show on Friday, it’s been bustling, but not crowded.  SHOT by comparison is pretty brutal no matter the day.  I’ve had to wait over an hour in line at SHOT just get lunch. When I originally booked a hotel for NRAAM 2019, I made the reservation for just one night – Friday night.  My thought was that the buddy I went with and I would drive over early Friday morning, attend the show Friday, stay in the hotel Friday night, and we’d leave at some point on Saturday after a 2nd day of the show.  Great plan…except that two weeks prior to the event, NRA announced that both President Donald Trump and Mike Pence would be speaking at the NRA-ILA Leadership Conference.  So we decided to drive to the Indy area and grab a hotel just outside of downtown Indy (all the convention area hotels were sold out at this point) anticipating traffic in and out of Indy might well be disrupted by the President and Vice President arriving.  This plan worked out well.  We arrived Friday morning and parked in the hotel parking garage, then walked the roughly 2 city blocks distance over to the convention center to check in at the registration desk:

This part was a bit odd to me because supposedly I was sent my name badge along with a name badge holder that arrived in the mail a couple of weeks before the show.  But the package had no actual name badge.  The registration line moved quickly and our next stop was to head over to the Lucas Oil Stadium which is conveniently located adjacent to the convention center, and the NRA-ILA Leadership Conference to hear the President and Vice President.


I’m a Lifetime NRA Member and a staunch Republican, but not the biggest fan of President Trump.  I do however deeply respect the office of the President, and like Mike Pence quite a bit.  So I was pretty excited at the opportunity to hear a sitting President and Vice President (it’s actually pretty rare for them to be together) in person.  We went through security and got seated about 2 hours before the event started which turned out to be a very good idea.  We were able to get settled, grab a bite to eat and relax a bit before the main event – live music played while we waited.  We were initially concerned that they might save the President and Vice President until the end of the event, and make us sit through hours of listening to other speakers.  Thankfully, this was not the case – Vice President Mike Pence came out first, and spoke for about 40 minutes, followed immediately by President Donald Trump who spoke for about an hour:

The seats were pretty fantastic – only about 10 rows ahead of us, and thousands of people behind us:

It was both exciting and inspirational to hear both leaders speak – the weekend was off to a great start.  I couldn’t help but think of my father who passed away in 2016.  He would have been very, very pleased and proud that I took this opportunity to see the President and Vice President. After leaving the NRA-ILA Leadership Conference, we went back across the street to the convention center and hit the show floor.  It was time to vist booths, see old friends, and play with new toys. The first stop I made was to Rock Island Armory to play with the RIA TAC Ultra FS HC doublestack 1911 which has become popular amount 3-Gun shooters on a budget as an alternative to a 2011.


ME:  I don’t need a 1911/2011.  I’m doing fine competing with my SIG P320 X-Five striker fired gun. ALSO ME:  But…2011… You can pretty easily find these out there for $700.00.  Send it of to Hayes Custom Guns and spend another ~$100.00,  And you have about 90% of a custom 2011 that would otherwise cost around $4000-$5000.00.  Very compelling. Next stop was to see Walther and the new all-steel framed Q5 Match SF:


Everyone raves about the Walther trigger, but whenever I pick one up, I’m just like…”eh…OK.”  A stryker fired, steel frame gun is compelling.  But this one isn’t for me. As a die hard SIG enthusiast, I had to spend some time at the SIG “booth” (they had the largest and most impressive area of the show), and I got to same lots of new toys.  Specifically, I was able to play with all the new optics which will be coming out “later this year.” First up is the new Romeo 1 Pro:


 From what I can, changes include an improved battery life, and it’s built more robustly than the current Romeo 1, which is a good thing.  I love competing with it, but the Romeo 1 has never struck me as a “bet your life on it” optic I’d want to carry.  I have a Trijicon RMR on my P320 Compact.  Perhaps the new Pro will change my mind. There are two new variations of the Romeo 3.  Here’s the new Romeo 3 XL:

This is the new SIG optic I’m most interested in at this point (these are all “prototypes” that could change prior to release).  It’s shown here mounted to a SIG P320 X-Five.  To do so requires a mounting plate which apparently is made by Springer Precision.  It will not mount natively to a SIG pistol.  As the name suggests, that window is BIG.  I will surely want to put that on my MPX PCC, and may play with it on a pistol as well. The other variation is the Max Michel Romeo 3:


 I have three of the current iteration of the Romeo 3 mounted to various rifles.  I didn’t have one to compare to this new Max Michel version, but I’m not entirely sure that the window is any different than the current version.  I’m actually not entirely sure what new benefits/features the Max Michel version has over the current version, other than the Max version is black, which will certainly look nicer.  I’m on the list of writers to receive these new optics when they come out later this Summer so I’ll report back when I have them in-hand. Over the last few months, I’ve sort of had an ich to get a 2011.  I say “sort of” because I always come to the same conclusion that while I don’t necessarily have a problem with the price of admission, I’m not convinced I have the mechanical savvy to keep one running.  But I did want to check out the latest crop of 2011’s STI has and to see Tony Pignato, who used to live in Lexington prior to moving to Texas to work for STI: Of course, with the new John Wick Chapter 3 movie just a few weeks away from premiering, Taran Butler and team were at the show promoting the guns which were not only used in this movie, but in the previous chapters of John Wick as well. I played with the new Taran Tactical/STI collaboration Combat Master and I did like it.  It’s not terribly overpriced either as 2011’s go.

ME:  I don’t need a 1911/2011.  I’m doing fine competing with my SIG P320 X-Five striker fired gun. ALSO ME:  But…2011… <Sigh…>  

Trijicon also announced a new optic just a few days before NRAAM, which I was excited to see – the new SRO:

 

This new SRO is Trijicon’s answer to RMR customers who have been wanting the quality and reliability of the RMR with a larger window suitable for competition.  I have two guns currently that are milled for the Trijicon RMR footprint, so I imagine that I’ll pick one of these up.  They will cost roughly the same as the RMR I believe.  I’m not sure that this larger window model would present any challenges to conceal carry, so maybe some people will opt to use the SRO instead?

I also ran into several friends on Saturday, like my “cousin” Jennifer Blake aka Gun Girl Jen on Instagram:

  

We had 6pm dinner reservations, so at this point it was time to head back to the hotel, check in, and get ready for dinner.  We stayed at the Le Méridien Indianapolis:

It was a nice, historic hotel in the downtown Indy area, just two blocks from the convention center.  No complaints.

I tried getting us reservations at the number one restaurant in Indy – St. Elmo’s Steak House:

I made the mistake of waiting until about two weeks before NRAAM to make the reservations, and couldn’t get one at a good time, so we settled for their sister restaurant just a block over – Harry & Izzy’s:

Again, no complaints – the food was great and not terribly priced (very similar to Carver’s of Dayton back home).  The next time I’m in Indy, it might be nice to try St. Elmo’s but Harry & Izzy’s didn’t disappoint.  Everything was super convenient relative to our hotel, which was great.  After dinner, we did a little sightseeing.  Downtown Indy isn’t quite as interesting as Downtown Atlanta was during NRAAM 2017, but we enjoyed ourselves:

Indianapolis seems to be pretty progressive when it comes to “green” public transportation options.  We saw a boatload of battery powered scooters available (I’ve seen some news reports of metropolitan commuters ending up in the hospital after riding those things) and even some little batter operated cars that apparently you can use via a phone app where you pay for however much time you need them.  

Interesting concept.

The next morning (Saturday) we got up and had a nice breakfast (had eggs Benedict made with smoked salmon…yum!), then check out of the hotel. I had only seen about half of the companies/vendors I wanted to on Friday, so I had a lot of ground to cover.  

NRAAM 2019 had a smartphone app available, but unfortunately is was only modestly useful – particularly compared to the SHOT Show app.  The SHOT Show app not only had a directory of exhibitors, but it had some mapping features that could show your position relative to the booth you were looking for that is super helpful.  The NRAAM app had a similar directory of exhibitors, but no mapping feature. 

When we first walked into the convention center, I ran into a buddy I haven’t seen in well over five years – Milos Klacko of Armory Craft:

Milos was at one time a legend in the watch collecting community, particularly in the Rolex and Patek Phillipe.  Not long after my interest focus shifted from watches to firearms, Milos’s did as well, which lead him to start Armory Craft.  It was great seeing both he and his wife at NRAAM.   

My first stop on Saturday was to see the USPSA booth at NRAAM.  I got to spend some time with USPSA President Mike Foley, and we discussed his upcoming re-election bid.  Mike’s done a FANTASTIC job since being elected, and I sincerely hope he gets another term.  


 

I also got to see Brian Conley of Hunters HD Gold while at the USPSA booth. It’s always great to see someone whom I call both a friend and sponsor.  

I’ll look forward to spending more time with Brian at the Steel Challenge 2019 World Speed Shooting Championship later this month.  

It was also great meeting Jake Martens at the USPSA booth at NRAAM – he wears a lot of different hats within the organization, but I work most closely with him on articles for USPSA magazine.  He’s also the Match Director for the SNS 400 Indiana Section Championship which I’ll be shooting in just a few weeks as well.  

My pal Jessica Hook (one of the tippy-top PCC shooters in the US currently…notice I didn’t qualify that by saying “female”) was helping out at the Eotech book so I had to stop by to say hello.

After checking off all the exhibitors I wanted to see, my buddy and I decided to head back to Dayton.    

The 2019 NRA Annual Meeting was a great time and I do not regret in the least skipping