Top Five Highlights
1. Coolest New Thing I’ll Never Own Award: TrackingPoint XS1 Precision Guided Firearm System
TrackingPoint is a company that’s been in the news a lot over the last year because they make the kind of awesome product the media just loves to hate. The TrackingPoint smart rifle is probably the coolest technology I’ve ever seen, but it terrifies a lot of people because it combines two of our society’s most irrational fears; guns and computers. Basically, the TrackingPoint system takes all of the opportunity for human error out of long range shooting. A computer in the scope tells you where to point the rifle and then fires for you when it’s in just the right spot.
Camera
TrackingPoint has a ton of excellent and informative videos about their technology on YouTube, but here’s the basic layman’s breakdown of how it works:
- Aim the reticle where you want the bullet to go.
- Press the red button mounted on the front of the trigger guard to “tag” the target. A red dot appears on your target.
- The TrackingPoint scope does things with math and lasers and stuff. Almost immediately, the reticle moves to adjust for bullet drop, wind, incline, movement, and other science stuff I don’t understand.
- Move the rifle until the reticle is close to your tagged target again.
- Press and hold the trigger. The reticle turns red.
- The instant you move the rifle so the center of the reticle meets the tag, the electronic trigger is activated and the trigger fires.
- Congratulations! You are now a marksman!
A representative from TrackingPoint walked me through the above steps at demo day at SHOT Show. With the .300 Win Mag bolt gun they had the TrackingPoint rig mounted to, I was able to nail a steel target at 960 yards away. That’s despite high wind, a bullet drop of nearly 20 feet, and my never having fired a rifle at anything even remotely close to that range before. Everything I was seeing through the scope was simultaneously beamed to an iPad, so we caught the whole thing on camera:
2. Most Surprising Company Booth Award: Kel-Tec
You don’t have to look very hard to find criticism of Kel-Tec. It seems that their products with the most potential are either grossly under-produced, functionally problematic, or both. I could go into more detail, but I’m going to let you go ask “the Google” if you want to know more about that. For now, this is Kel-Tec’s award and it’s their moment to shine.
3. Fun Gun of the Year So Far* Award: Full Auto Daniel Defense M4 V5 300 BLK w/ AAC suppressor
4. Most Interesting Gun Nobody Else Was Talking About Award:Mossberg MVP .308
5. “I Really Want To Like You, But…” Award: Remington R-51
