SHOT Show is mostly about guns but tucked into the miles of aisles of guns and gear, you can find plenty of gear oriented toward the training market. Firearms training is a critical aspect of firearm ownership. With that in mind, I covered the aisles of SHOT Show 2025 looking for new training gear.
Specifically, I wanted to find gear that broke out of the norm. I sought out gear that integrated technology to create a more efficient and effective tool for sharpening firearm skills.
Here’s what I found.
Mantis Laser Pistol, Blackbeard, and Projector Training
Mantis has pioneered some of the best at-home training gear and will continue to expand its lineup with three new hits at SHOT 2025.
First, they expanded their Blackbeard offerings. The Blackbeard system is a drop-in bolt and magazine design that fires a laser with each trigger pull and resets your trigger. It makes for rapid dry-fire training.
Mantis started with AR but is expanding into the AK, SCAR, Bren, and even AR9 platforms. This brings modern training solutions to a variety of platforms outside of AR, making training efficient and much more entertaining.
They’ve also introduced a Glock-style laser pistol. This non-gun emits a laser with every trigger press. The system also integrates an X10 device for real-time feedback with every trigger pull. These guns feature a removable, weighted magazine that allows for realistic reloads.
Mantis is producing this pistol in Glock 19 and Glock 17 formats, and they plan to retail the laser pistol for $200.
Finally, they are producing a projector-based training system that uses your phone to recognize hits on the projected image. Projectors are fairly cheap these days, and this can make any wall into a dry fire range.
The system includes training and games like a zombie shoot. It’s a great bit of fun, and I’m excited to see it come to market. My dry fire training is going to get seriously upgraded in 2025.
The Shooters Global SG Pro Glasses
Shooters Global makes an outstanding shot timer. It’s high-tech and capable of tracking live and dry fire, as well as phone integration that tracks your shots while filming yourself. This mix of feedback types makes diagnosing and improving your issues easy.
Shooters Global is expanding its lineup to include a pair of shooting glasses that integrate with its shot timer. This creates an AR experience that displays how many shots have been fired, your total time, and split time. It’s all displayed in an out-of-the-way location to the left of your right eye.
The glasses feature a built-in camera that allows you to record in a first-person view. This makes it easy to track your performance, with your times easily implemented into your video performance. This allows you to track your performance and diagnose performance issues.
The times displayed in the glasses make it easy to conveniently track your times as you shoot. It’s easy to use but also great for matches. You can track your times and know if you need to speed up or to slow down.
Unit Solutions Pistol
Unit Solutions has been making simulated training rifles that fire what’s essentially a paintball powered by compressed air. These rifles are used for force-on-force training and are the downright safest option. They are extremely valuable tools for Law Enforcement and civilians who want to up their training.
This year, Unit Solutions introduced a pistol. The pistol is built on a Glock pattern design and uses a magazine that houses a proprietary .8-gram CO2 cartridge and up to 15 rounds of marking or nonmarking ammo. The .8-gram cartridge can fire 30 to 50 shots.
Additionally, the pistol can be used as a dry-fire device. The Co2 provides realistic recoil and slide reciprocation. When paired with a training laser or a Mantis X10, you can get some awesome dry-fire training.
With the marking cartridges, you can practice under pressure and use limited PPE to keep things realistic. The Unit Solutions pistol could be an excellent consumer-grade force-on-force training device.
TactNib Targets and App
So far, our new training gear has been rather high-tech and will likely be a little pricey. Quality and new technology cost money to develop. The TactNib Targets and application give us a high-tech training option that won’t cost an arm and a leg.
The system works simply. You have a TactNib target with a proprietary design that can be read by an app that you download to your phone.
When you shoot the target, the app can read where the rounds landed. It can also measure your group size and accuracy and provide a score based on distance, group size, and accuracy on target. The app is free, and there are multiple types of targets.
TactNib is also developing a shot timer system that links to your phone and the app to provide another metric for judging your performance. I’m excited to see where this small company will take things.
Training and SHOT Show
The gun industry gets awfully wrapped up in the new releases of guns and gear and often forgets that training is the most important aspect of firearm ownership. I’m guilty of it, too, but I’d like to promote more training this year, and this article showcases some of the best high-tech training gear coming out in 2025.
