The National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers (NASGW), the association representing shooting sports wholesalers, manufacturers and their trade partners, is pleased to announce that Armscor will be sponsoring an NASGW Expo Happy Hour on Thursday, October 28th in Columbus, Ohio.

Summer is in full swing, and we are back to our normal lives for the most part. Americans are vacationing at historic levels, events and crowds are returning, and music festivals and baseball are reminding us what summer is all about. Honestly, it is all so refreshing after last summer. You don’t realize how much we all took for granted until those regular summer activities were taken away.

While there has been little meaningful federal legislative action on firearms recently in Washington, D.C., all efforts remain focused on ensuring President Joe Biden’s nomination of David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is defeated. This includes the first-ever TV ad from the firearm and ammunition trade association opposing Chipman’s confirmation. All 50 U.S. Senate Republicans have come out against supporting Chipman as director, but a handful of Democrats are undecided. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Angus King (I-Maine), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have not indicated how they may vote. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, acknowledged Chipman “has a lot of issues” and faces a difficult path ahead. Industry efforts are ongoing to ensure Chipman’s nomination does not proceed and all voters in these states are encouraged tell their senators to oppose him as well.

Birmingham, Alabama: Bangers L.P., a leading distributor of shooting sports products and outdoor recreational sporting goods, announced today that it is rebranding as Iron Valley™ Supply Co. This new name reflects the company’s nearly 100-year heritage as a wholesale distributor in the Iron Valley region of Alabama.

We have a new puppy.

If you are a dog owner, I almost don’t even need to say anything more, because you know how crazy life just got at my house.

I can tell already; he’s going to be a good dog. He’s smart, and because of this, he brings a unique set of challenges and opportunities. But for now, he’s just a puppy so of course he needs a lot of love, training, and constant attention.

He’s a French pointing breed called Braque D’Auvergne. I’d never heard of it. My wife discovered the breed through a gun dog magazine we get delivered to the house. It’s supposed to be a good hunting breed, so hopefully he’ll learn how to hunt for pheasants. He did already rip the wing off a stuffed duck toy, so maybe that’s a good sign? My wife is excited about his potential. She’s been working very hard with him already and if she can tame his inner beast, this guy is going to be amazing.

As the weeks go on, it seems like COVID is becoming a thing of the past. True, there are still some places and circumstances where restrictions still exist, but most things are opening up and we’re slowly getting back to what we think is normal. That is a tremendous development which we have all been waiting for—impatiently, I might add. This leaves me wondering, exactly what IS normal in the post-pandemic era?

Culture is everything. It surrounds you in your office setting, at home, and in your social aura. Much of our past year has been spent in a “non-cultured” environment with minimal socialization and little opportunity to do anything about it. The removal of masks (for those vaccinated) was certainly the biggest obstacle that was overcome to begin socializing again. We missed the casual conversations, the smiles, the facial expressions and the laughs.

I played a lot of baseball when I was a kid. When we weren’t on the actual ball diamond, you could often find me and my brothers in the backyard playing whiffle ball. We had the diamond laid out so that if you were able to hit the ball over the house to right or center field, you were pretty much guaranteed a homerun and an easy trip around the bases.

That is unless you got extra “cocky” and took your time strutting and showing off your baseball prowess, bragging about your power swing. Meanwhile, one of my very determined brothers would hustle to get the ball, then sneak back around the corner of the house and make a beeline for home plate. If you were too busy showing off, they’d get to home just ahead of you and tag you out.

It happens all the time in sports. A team gets a #1 ranking pre-season and then what? There’s only one way to go from there and that’s down. I can’t imagine any sports team being excited about that ranking before the season even starts. The expectations are too high and it’s only a disappointment from there. You see it in the stock market as well. Stocks climb up to a point where you realize that it must be on its way down. What goes up must come down, and we all know, at some point, things will shift in our own industry. Demand will decline, and we will again be pivoting our businesses in the other direction. The only difference here is that we CAN go higher than before; we often do. Look at 2013. A record year for many of us, but then came along 2016. Another stellar year. There was no way we could climb higher. But we did. 2020 recorded numbers that none of us could dream of.