SHOT Show: It's International

The British Pavilion

The most common language heard at the SHOT Show is Upland Southern English, followed by German.

German firms form the largest national cluster.

Apparently to succeed in the firearms industry, it is helpful to sound like you come from Arkansas — or Arnsberg.

I have also overheard several varieties of Spanish, e.g., terse Argentinian around the Bersa booth — plus Portuguese, Swedish, Chinese, Turkish, Japanese, Italian, Arabic, and some that I could not be sure of (Hindi?).

German, Italian, and British firms are clustered in national pavilions, with Germany's being the largest.

The Italian pavilion is the place to go for reproductions of every 19th-century gun.

There are enough Turkish firearms firms to fill a pavilion too, although the man whom I spoke to at the Trabzon booth seemed cool to the idea. We prefer to be spread out, he said.