I had a great weekend at Texas Firearms Festival, which is definitely a sentiment shared by thousands of other attendees!. It was really awesome to see so very many first-time shooters, female shooters, and young'un shooters.
The whole "try and buy" thing was in full effect and is certainly a very cool aspect of TFF. Basically, there were over 40 vendors in attendance and the vast majority of firearms available to shoot were also available to buy at the FFL tent. It's typically pretty hard to "test drive" a gun before committing to a purchase, but TFF provides that unique opportunity and makes it really easy, to boot. As an example, Kel-Tec had a few Gen 2 SUB-2000s available to shoot in their bay. If you wanted one you were in luck, as Kel-Tec brought over 50 with them to TFF to ensure they would be immediately available at the FFL tent.
I left Las Vegas early in the AM to head to Austin. Everyone else was apparently too hung over to enjoy the sunrise, but it was a nice one.
TFF basically kicked off with me manning the range safety officer radio channel from inside the police mobile command center. But eventually I escaped that air conditioned sanctuary for the Texas heat.
First stop was to the Blaser booth. The straight-pull .338 Lapua Magnum at bottom caught my eye right away.
Blaser makes some gorgeous shotguns, too, which were available to shoot at clay pigeons down in the shotgun range area.
I got a first-round hit at 1,000 yards with this bad boy. Hard to argue with that!
View at 1k through the Schmidt scope. Action Targets had set up steel at various, marked ranges out to the 1,000 yard line.
I spotted one of YETI's $49.95 bottle openers in the wild. There were like five great food trucks at the event.
SIG apparently has good taste! My Hogue looks awfully similar (no secret, the SIG-branded version mentions it's made by Hogue in various places).
SIG had a full store going on, including basically everything from their airgun line (the targets are particularly awesome).
Plenty of SIG Optics were on display.
I didn't realize they were doing a spotting scope. Looked nice.
Shooting bays available at the SIG booth. Lots of pistols and rifles, suppressed and otherwise, to choose from.
Brethren Armament was there with their unique HK roller locker models.
This HK lower accepts AR-15 trigger groups and grips!
Silencer Shop was giving away hats, patches, keychains, stickers, and more. Apparently they wanted to win the award for "most free schwag" booth, which I believe they did.
KE Arms had their nice ARs to shoot.
Plus a display of all many of the component parts they manufacture.
IWI was in the house with Tavors, Tavor X95s, Galils, Negevs, Jerichos, Uzis, and more.
In their first year at the Festival, Remington had R1s, R51s, and RM380s at their pistol bay plus lots from their shotgun line available over in the shotgun area.
Capitol Armory came out with all sorts of awesome product.
Walther was there with their new guns.
Taurus with there and consistently busy.
Colt Competition came out with their line of rifles.
Miller Tactical Group had their holsters on display (and for sale).
Yankee Hill Machine had most of its silencer line available to shoot through various firearms.
This new NITRO 30 looks pretty awesome and is priced really competitively.
Comes with the can, a QD mount muzzle brake, a QD mount, a direct-thread mount, two end caps (one .30 cal flat cap and one .30 cal brake cap), and tools.
I went back to Silencer Shop apparently.
Silencer Shop, Brethren Armament, and KE Arms shared a bay with four or five lanes going.
This is in the video at top, also, but it was really cool to see these two ladies pewing away with suppressed HKs. I have to say, that Brethren 300 BLK is one of the quietest 300 BLK guns I've heard! Movie-like pews coming out of that thing (it's in the video twice).
Suppressed .50 Beowulf AR (in the video, t00).
The Brethren 300 BLK, which accepts standard AR-15 magazines.
Defense Distributed had a Ghost Gunner tabletop CNC mill showing how it turns 80% lowers into finished receivers.
Part of the rifle range area.
Thunder Beast Arms Corp brought some really nice rifles with their really nice suppressors out.
She hit with a .308 at 500 yards a couple times, then sat behind a .338 LM and nailed it at 1,000. They were both surprisingly quiet with TBAC's cans attached.
Dan Zimmerman, TTAG's intrepid Managing Editor, gets in the action for what are assuredly much better photos than all of these, which I took with my cell phone.
High Standard had its line of AKs, ARs, and various parts, accessories, and receivers on display.
I sat in the Sheriff's Department's Bearcat TRV.
They did not let me drive it. Yes, I asked.
Robert and Dan with Williamson County Sheriff-elect Robert Chody in the County command vehicle. A really nice, cool guy, I might add.
I finally got to shoot the SilencerCo Maxim 9 (in the video).
Texas is dusty. I don't have this problem in the woods of N'Idaho.
Not intended. It's only a suggestion, though.
Colt sponsored the SWAT team challenge, pitting seven local SWAT teams against each other in a timed competition.
It started off with a couple of sniper shots at 100 yards. Both headshots, one on a moving target. The timer began upon the sniper's second hit.
Six rifles from Colt Competition would be given as prizes to the members of the winning SWAT team.
After the sniper made his second hit, a door had to be breached. The team then ran down ~75 yards towards the end of the range and engaged a bunch of steel popper targets. When they were all down, the timer stopped.
Williamson County, where Best of the West and the Festival are located, won the challenge (fair and square, too).
They put new shims in the door and let me attempt to breach it. Of course, they made me do it with a sledgehammer instead of a ram. Probably so they could laugh at me. I got it down, though (also in the video).
A well-used muzzle brake at the Tac-Con booth.
After hundreds of shooters, this trigger was DIRTY at the end of the weekend, but it still ran, and ran smoothly at that.
So, a bunch of cops won free AR-platform riles.
What's this $49.95 YETI bottle opener crap?
Your takeaways from this are amusing.
I don't think dogs can read.
Overall, my sons and I enjoyed it. These pictures were fun. For future reference, though, let's talk about Tac-Con as opposed to anyone else. I am not employed by them nor have I any relation whatsoever with them.
Close to the beginning of your tour thru FF, we went in while I was saying "Don't I know these people?" Oh, yeah, I already have their trigger on my suppressed .300 SBR. No problem, they have a *new* trigger to sell me!
HEY! These guys are serious! To demonstrate their trigger, they have you put it in the first position and feel your way through 20 rounds (!) to learn what that position does. Then they have you put it in the second position and feel your way through another 20 rounds. Sheesh! I *OWNED* one of the iterations of their trigger, and I learned a lot about it, besides wishing I had waited for the new one. And the shooting of BOTH triggers was fun, and equated to the rounds fired in about the next 5 booths we went to. But, their stupid trigger costs like $400, I cannot imagine most people going for that without serious trigger time, and at FF it was there for the asking. I think this (241) is a *great* product, if you can afford the bucks. I may have to get one for my DPMS GII, if it has problems in the .308 realm I have a 5.56 which might like it!
The 241 was on sale at the show for $320. It could be had for an even $300 if multiples were sold, like a mini group buy. I shot both of their triggers and preferred the 241 over the original 3MR.
I had a blast. I even wrote an article for TTAG about it, didn't make the cut. Not surprisingly, I get a bit of ADD when I write about stuff like this. I am currently on a 3 year plan. waiting for manufacturing to make cool new stuff to shoot in three years unless the fest spreads to somewhere near Michigan.
Great article and photos. Damn, it would have been nice to be there.
Looked like a great time. I may just have to get out to Texas again for the next one. I liked that Brethren Armament HK in .300BO. Unbelievably pfft pfft.