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There’s no better place to check the pulse of the firearms industry than at the annual SHOT Show. After several banner years for gun manufacturers, consumer demand has started to soften. That’s a good thing for us hunters and shooters, points out shooting editor John B. Snow, since those periods historically prompt manufacturers to start revamping products.
“[Manufacturers] can’t just take existing product lines and expect them to fly off the shelf,” says shooting editor John B. Snow. “So they have to start innovating. They have to start getting a little anxious and, you know, they have to start fighting for an edge. And that edge ends up manifesting itself in terms of some just really cool stuff that’s gonna end up in our hands.”
While we saw lots of interesting individual new rifles, handguns, shotguns, and ammo at the 2025 SHOT Show this year, most of those products speak to some of the bigger trends going on in the industry. Take, for instance, the Ruger RXM.
“That pistol is an interesting one, because you see the announcement and you’re like, ‘Whoopee, another Glock clone,’” says staff writer Tyler Freel. “ And that’s what it is. But the more we started kind of digging into the features and comparing it to the market and what, you know, it’s became a little bit more interesting and more exciting for that price, especially.”
For year companies have made Glock clones that are what everyone would modify their Glocks to be, points out Freel. People spend all this money in machining and grip modifications to customize their Glocks. And the RXM is a representation of that: it cuts to the chase.
To hear more about the latest products and to dig into the trends they represent, listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.