Posted on 07/07/2014 5:48:48 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
The Remington Arms Co. has reached a nationwide settlement of claims that most of its Model 700 bolt-action hunting rifles have a defective trigger mechanism – a settlement likely to include the recall of millions of the popular firearm.
Richard Barber, a Montana man who’s been saying for a dozen years that many of the Model 700 are defective and should be recalled, indicated Monday that a recall is part of the settlement.
Barber’s 9-year-old son, Gus, was killed by a Model 700 rifle in a 2000 hunting accident in Montana. The family says the rifle fired when Barber’s wife, Barbara, released the safety as she prepared to unload the weapon. The bullet passed through a horse trailer and hit Gus, who was standing behind the trailer.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.ravallirepublic.com ...
8yr old grand daughter is here for the week. Gonna break out some of those expensive .22lr and do some schoolin.
I started my daughter off with a .22 single shot. If I had to do it again, I might choose a Daisy model 953 pellet gun to start with. Economy is part of the reason but noise also.
Still a .22 single shot is a fine beginners gun.
When Remington began balking on this years ago, it was all I needed to go looking for equal and better rifles. I lucked onto a Ruger M77 UltraLite “Mountain Rifle” and it groups better than I can shoot and you never have to wonder about the action.
There are far too many people who cannot think of more than one thing at a time. The mere moving of a gun so that the barrel crosses me or another person is infuriating. Drives me nuts, and quite angry at these people. There are either one of two things to remember—NEVER POINT THE DAM THING AT ANOTHER PERSON, or ASSUME THE WEAPON IS LOADED AND READY TO FIRE until determined otherwise. The first should be followed at all times.
Of all the people who do own guns, the percentage of people stupidly handling guns is extremely low, but a flashpoint for the libtards to advance gun control, and unfortunately can be fatal.
I swear yarddog, the image is so realistic I can reach out and touch the hole.
I had a model 700 Remington 350 rem mag that I bought for bear hunting. The safety was terrible, you could hear it for 100 yards. I tried to bend the plate out a little to cancel this noise but it broke. They wouldn’t send me a replacement part and wouldn’t let a local Remington certified repairman fix it. Bought me a Canjar replacement trigger instead, never looked back, except a mental note to never buy a Remington again.
I have a 700 left hand 30-06. Shoots very nice. Did I mention it’s left hand?
I had intended to shoot a five shot group but after the third shot there is no way I was going for 4. The group was only something like 6 thousandths of an inch center to center.
And they blamed the manufacturer for their own stupidity.
Show off.
That’s ‘frog hair fine*’, ever seen frog hair?
(must be pretty fine...;-)
My first centerfire rifle was a 700 in .270Win.
Out to 300 that rifle will easily shoot with my bench rifle.
Never a smidgen* of malfunction. Really, its done its job better that I have.
If after a good thorough cleaning any firearm malfunctions, send it to the gunsmith.
Tragic unfortunate situation.
Important to handle a firearm properly, every time.
Have heard similar complaints from others.
How any respectable company can think they can pull this kind of crap and stay respected, is beyond me. They deserve to now have a second rate reputation.
My favorite is a Ruger Hawkeye compact stainless .308 with a grey/black laminate stock and a 2-7 variable scope. Lightweight, short, sturdy, accurate, and suitable for just about any North American animal on 4 or 2 legs.
The basics of gun safety would help reduce the number of accidents to a bare minimum.
-=080=-
Didn’t you mean Zero ?
I commend what I'm sure is a genuine spirit, but you have to learn to read public statements like the lawyers they were crafted by:
"Both Remington and experts hired by plaintiff attorneys have conducted testing on guns returned from the field which were alleged to have fired without a trigger pull," Remington's statement says, "and neither has ever been able to duplicate such an event on guns which had been properly maintained and which had not been altered after sale."
First they tried to blame dirty rifles on the customers. Now contrast that with the statement they sent accompanying the recall, and remember what the designer said about the inspection process in the video I linked earlier (you did listen to what the designer of the trigger said about it, right?)):
The trouble, according to Remington’s product notification, is that excess bonding agent used in the assembly of the X-Mark Pro trigger in some rifles can lead to unintentional discharge of the rifles. Remington says the only remedy is to send recalled rifles in for inspection, cleaning and testing. They stress that consumers shouldn’t try to clean the triggers themselves.
The 700 was introduced by Remington in 1962. In 40 years of experience with the 700 I have never experienced trigger defectiveness.
I never shot anyone
I read everything that there was available after my father-in-law got spooked by ABC’s 60 Minutes hit piece on the 700. Hard to imagine ABC or 60 Minutes skewing a piece to trash a big corporate gun maker, huh?
Anyway, it was clear that the plaintiffs had never been able to replicate the theoretical issue that they claimed was the problem. And yes, I’ve watched the videos and listened to the statements of the plaintiffs and their expert witnesses, including the designer.
They were able to make modified trigger mechanisms with lightened sears go off by jarring the rifle. Not a big shocker there, and an issue that everyone should understand.
Safety mechanisms that lock or block the striker are generally best, but with enough wear that can fail too. I had a ‘95 Mauser that would fire when you disengaged the cam striker safety.
As the underlying claim against Remington was that foreign material in the trigger could cause the gun to accidently discharge, they addressed that in their public statement, because the lawyers certainly would not want to imply that the trigger mechanism was safe no matter how it was maintained or modified.
Like the Toyota accelerator problem, there is no underlying design issue here. Remington just finally decided to recall/settle to clear their books. My guess is that they are wanting to sell the operation and the issue makes valuation difficult.
The case boiled down to sad stories of people who had shot themselves or their children and who understandably didn’t want to think they were at fault. But any time that an accidental discharge kills someone in close proximity (without riquochette) the #1 problem safety failure was muzzle discipline. As for the designer, he believed he could have designed an even safer mechanism. OK, I don’t know many designers who don’t think they can perfect a previous design, but that doesn’t make the older design inherently bad.
There are many older guns that do become unsafe when heavily worn, but are perfectly safe when well maintained. Such as the old Marlin pump shotguns. You will find however, that the Marlin company has made a blacket CYA statement that the guns are now unsafe to shoot.
A similar but unrelated gun safety issue involves pre-800k ‘03 Springfield receivers. Anyone and everyone who thinks they know something about firearms will tell you that those receivers are brittle, unsafe, and shouldn’t be fired. However, that is not what the Army report said at all. After reports of receiver failures had started to gain ground, the Army conducted a full investigation. What they found was that every receiver failure had a barrel obstruction. But they did a full investigation and in that they also discovered that modern quality control techniques for measuring temperature were not being used in manufacture. Making differences in hardness possible depending upon the season of the year. They fixed that issue, and receivers after ~800k used exact measurements instead of color perception.
Well, in this case there is blame on both sides, but still...
Don’t give up. Use the sights next time.
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