This article was originally published just last November. An email I received the other day reminded me of it so I thought I’d share it again. The bottom line here is scientific method. It’s boring, and expensive and time consuming, but it’s how you test accurately. Now data interpretation is an entirely different ball of wax, but you’ve got to get there first.

We get email all of the time from readers asking why we don’t test this or that. There’s two simple reasons.

First, we do the news and we don’t have enough bandwidth to do proper test & evaluations which leads us to the second point. We don’t have the access to the right facilities and equipment to conduct proper tests.

We see folks all over the internet throwing products on their charcoal grills saying they are conducting burn tests or taking their latest gucciflauge out in the back yard to snap a couple of photos and saying they are testing camouflage or worse yet, shooting a ballistic material at a random range with some random gun. In all cases, they are wrong. All they are doing is making noise and, filling their reader’s heads full of nonsense that in some cases is libelous and in others downright dangerous.

Our editor actually conducted test & evaluation for DoD and later, after he retired from the military for commercial companies. Consequently, he knows how it is supposed to be done and, that is why you won’t see us doing it. If we aren’t going to do it right, we aren’t going to do it at all.

So, next time you see an internet “test” conducted by amateurs, ask them what qualifies them to conduct that test. Ask to see their test plan and their data collection schema. Ask them how many times they conducted the test and how they ensured that the tests were conducted properly and consistently. We could go on and on but quite frankly, question one will stump them.

Not only are there folks posting this nonsense on the internet but they are taking money from unsuspecting companies. Before you pay someone to conduct RDT&E for your company ask them what qualifies them to do this. There’s an old saying in SOCOM, “Don’t confuse enthusiasm with capability.” There are tons of former end-users out there but DoD’s T&E community isn’t very big. Verify credentials.

I went to my first gun show in a couple of years today. The reason its been a couple of years is that the last one I went to left a lot to be desired as well. The gun show is definitely a bastion of the American gun culture. Unfortunately, it seems as if it has begun to reflect The larger American culture a bit too much. Lots of cheap guns, cheap gear, worn out surplus, cheap jewelry, the obligatory jerkey stand, a couple of crowd drawing Class III guns and lots of knock off products. I think the unifying theme is “cheap.” Aside from the low quality offerings there were plenty of counterfeits available as well. I saw loads of look-alike optics and lasers that were marked as the real thing, at less-than-possible prices. Naturally, there were also products obviously manufactured for, and marked as airsoft, being sold alongside the real thing just hoping to draw a huckster in looking to save a buck. I know a lot of airsoft enthusiasts get their necks all out of joint when I talk about it but it is the elephant in the room. So long as someone builds a realistic facsimile of a desirable item, someone else is going to try and pass it off as the real thing. Diamonds, Gold, Airplane Parts or Gun Accessories, no one wants to buy a fake.

I’d love to be able to show pics of what I am talking about, but thanks the main stream media shooting undercover videos of attempts to circumvent laws not a gun show in America will let you take photos. Understood.

For the average user, many of these low cost/quality products will be just fine. A trip to the range once a year to show off that pimped out black rifle won’t test the limits of many knockoffs. But, if you are an armed professional, don’t compromise. Make sure you are purchasing quality no matter where you are shopping. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but it does have to work.

Unfortunately, it seems the gun show has become nothing more than a variant of a weekend flea market.

We’d love to hear your gun show stories. And, let’s not forget the comments you hear at a gun show. Some of them are priceless. Why don’t you share them in the comments section?