A Post-SHOT Show® 2026 Conversation With NSSF’s Mark Oliva

The National Shooting Sports Foundation hosts the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show. SHOT Show® 2026 was one for the record books and Mark Oliva told Bearing Arms about it.

The NSSF is the firearm industry trade organization. When pundits describe civil rights groups such as the NRA, Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, etc. as the so-called “gun lobby,” they are being inaccurate. The NSSF is the true gun lobby and Bearing Arms took some time to chat with Mark Oliva about the Foundation, SHOT Show® 2026, and yes — ATF funding. Oliva serves as the Foundation’s managing director of public affairs.

“We’re a trade association, just like any other trade association,” Oliva explained. “The easiest way for people to think about this is think of the gun counter as the dividing line. We work for everything to be able to make sure that that gun can get to the counter so you can buy it.

“That includes issues of the manufacturers being able to buy the bar stock to make the barrels, the issues of the of the manufacturers being able to manufacture the types of firearms you want to buy, everything from shipping that to the distributors, distributors to shipping it to the retailers, retailers making sure they can get it across the gun counter to you once you take possession of that gun.”

Oliva went on to explain that the Second Amendment organizations handle the other side of the counter, where the consumer would be. “I think that’s an important distinction,” Oliva noted. “We’re not a Second Amendment organization. That said we couldn’t do what we do without the Second Amendment.”

SHOT Show® 2026, Oliva described as “busy.” He chided that the event is when 53,000 of your best friends get under the same roof  — two if you include the Caesar’s Forum — and spread out across 13 miles of walking space.

Rather tongue in cheek but salient, Oliva said some necessities he tells first-time showgoers to bring include: comfortable shoes, lots of hand sanitizer, lots of business cards, and a plan.

The Government Relations team was quite busy. In attendance at the show this past year were several officials from the Trump Administration as well as numerous state-level executives.

“White House Counsel David Warrington; we had the Deputy Attorney General of the United States Todd Blanche,” Oliva said. “We had Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon come out. We had Secretary Collins come out from the VA to talk about the issues of veteran suicide and preventing suicide by firearm. We had seven governors come out … and eight state attorneys general.”

Oliva explained that the NSSF has “a lot of work to do,” as there are still regulatory relics from the Biden Administration as well as ongoing lawsuits to deal with. Beyond what’s persisting, there’s also infringements that affect the industry that are continually popping up “in the states that are not Second Amendment friendly.”

By broadening their programming over the last several years, the forums with the governors and attorneys general became a great avenue to communicate what’s going on across the country. The forums give the state leaders a chance “to talk about the issues that are important to their states and the legal landscape so we can better explain what’s happening and who we’re working with to make sure that we can try and push through some of these issues that we’ve had.”

Fighting the fight on a lobbying and litigation level Oliva described as pushing a rock up a hill. “Sometimes that rock has been falling back down over you, like we experienced under the last administration,” Oliva admits. “But, you know, we’re trying to get things done, and we expect that there’s going to be more things that we’re going to be able to announce, that we expect the administration is going to be doing here in the coming months.”

Oliva explained that the industry numbers have been sinking from an all-time high in 2020. He noted that there were 21.5 million background checks for firearms sales in 2020 and the year prior to that the industry was at 13.2 million. Coming off those highs hasn’t seemed to shake the spirits of those attending SHOT this year.

“What I did not see out there — across the board — was any kind of trepidation or any kind of deep concern; I think people were really upbeat,” Oliva said. “I think they see that there’s a lot of innovation, there’s a lot of excitement — of course, about suppressors. I think anybody who’s making a suppressor right now is probably really, really happy. They’re selling a lot of them. I think that there was a lot of upbeat and positive thinking about what’s ahead of them in this next year, and what the innovations are going to be able to provide.”

One of the questions floated to Oliva had to do with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The NSSF has recently come under fire for supporting funding to an agency that firearm owners perhaps rightfully have an estranged relationship with. That support has been construed by some Second Amendment supporters as an affront to the movement and being supportive of so-called “gun control,” with some advocates going as far to say the Foundation is “anti-gun.”

“There’s a lot of folks in the gun sphere, if you will, that want to see the ATF defunded; they want to see a disband, and I understand those frustrations, but I also live and work with in reality,” Oliva explained. “The fact is that these laws are on the books. The Second Amendment is a regulated amendment.”

Part of the laws that are on the books include the National Firearms Act, the Gun Control Act, and the 1986 FOPA. “If you got rid of the ATF tomorrow, those laws would still be there, and there would be a federal agency that has to administer those laws,” Oliva observed.

The question Oliva posed was who would take over if the ATF was defunded and disbanded? The FBI? The DEA (an idea that was floated by the Trump Administration)? “You kind of want to deal with the devil you know and [the] ATF is the devil we know,” he noted.

“We’ve taken some shots from even some of the Second Amendment organizations, as to why we stand up for that and this is why,” Oliva expanded. “Because if we want to make sure — especially parts of the of the ATF like the NFA branch — if you got rid of all the funding for NFA branch, well, you would have a really difficult time to be able to buy your suppressors, which is a really popular thing right now.”

The idea behind the funding, Oliva said, has a lot to do with modernizing their electronic systems to handle the influx of workload created from things like increased access to suppressors and short-barreled rifles. He noted that there’s been an increase in Form 4 background checks over 120 percent since the removal of the registration fees post the enactment of the Big Beautiful Bill.

“They’re still working off of dial-up kind of systems, we want to make sure that their electronic hardware and the software is all updated so we can do things in real time in the 21st Century like you and I are trying to do our daily business,” Oliva said. “We shouldn’t be trying to do things dial-up ‘AOL style’ to try and get these done. And that’s kind of what the ATF is still working with because funding has been limited. That’s why we advocate for funding for ATF.”

Oliva did have an overall optimistic message when discussing the industry as a whole. While there are so many competitors in the industry that turn out for SHOT Show®, most know that they must work closely together.

“At the end of the day, all these competitors know that this is an industry — as a whole — and that we all survive together, or we all die together,” Oliva mused. “We have a really good network of support among our members of making sure that we stay aligned on the issues that are important to us, to make sure that we can continue to do business in the United States and be able to sell our products.”

From all accounts, the 2026 SHOT Show® was a huge success. And even prior to shipping off the last crate of goods out of Vegas, the NSSF already started planning the 2027 show — hope to see some of you there! If you’d like more information about The National Shooting Sports Foundation, you can visit them on the web at: NSSF.org. For information on the SHOT Show®, check them out at: ShotShow.org 

If you’d like to tune into the full interview with Mark Oliva, you can check that out HERE or in the embed below.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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