How many defective guns are we talking about. Is it 10% or 1%? The program made it sound like it was 100%. That is fear mongering at best and describing it as a "hatchet job" is pretty right on. I've only owned a few remington 700 rifles. All told my extended family has probably owned 20 or so. NONE of them have ever accidentally fired. 20 is insignificant. 1000 is insignificant. 1% is also a pretty small number, especially when you consider that all, ALL of these accidents could be avoided by adhering to three of the ten commandments of firearm safety.
1.) Treat every gun as if it were loaded.
2.) Know your target and what is beyond.
3.) Never point a gun at anything you do not intend to shoot.
(Honestly, I can't recall the rest as I think that these three sum it up pretty well.)
Mom shoots son unloading gun while son sleeps in upstairs bed? Did mom not know that son was asleep directly in line of the muzzle of her firearm? (Failure to adhere to 2 and 3). Why was she unloading the gun in the home? I was taught to unload hunting arms in the field. I rate unloading in the home as a failure to adhere to 1.
Shoot yourself or someone else while cleaning gun? Failure of 1.
Shot while crossing fence, when gun falls off rail? Failure of 1.
Shoot a hunter? Failure of 2.
Shoot an animal out of season while "glassing?" Failure of 1 and 3.
I still wonder how many of these failures of the trigger/safety/assembly are the result of home "trigger jobs."
Earlier this year I was on a hunting trip in northern CA. We were driving the ranch roads, and getting out to stalk what looked to be good bedding areas. At one stop I opened the pickup door to put my rifle away, propping it on the seat like I normally do. Before I could get the door closed, the rifle did a cartwheel out of the pickup on to the ground. It did not go off- the chamber was empty. That being said, the firing mechanism had not been triggered.
Remington MAY have QC problems on their 700 line, but to say that 700s are all defective and have been so for 45 years is rubbish.
Edit... Apparently Quirt was posting as I was gathering my thoughts, and has already posted on the rules of firearm safety...
This is tragic on many levels...the gun needs to be recalled, problem fixed once and for all. But mechanical safeguards are only part of the safety/accident causation chain of event. Irrespective of mechanical devices one can never replace following a strict and disciplined safety protocol which begins by operating under the four firearms safety rules I posted earlier.
Someone said this is not a safety issue...so if this statement is true, then does this mean is it okay to unload a rifle while violating the three of the four safety rules I posted earlier? Does this mean you can be careless in where you point a rifle? Can you just unload it any place you want without accounting where everyone from your hunting party is at?
So in otherwords, as long as we know the fire control group is functioning correctly we can unload a rifle while pointing it up in the air (violation of rule #4) which has no impact area to absorb the impact of the bullet and you as the operator can predict where the round will come to rest? Or we can point a rifle at our own foot which is what one person did in the Docu and flip the safety causing this person to lose their own foot? So this is not a safety issue?
In the Barber case... the boy was standing on the other side of horse trailer. The mom points the rifle through an open door to the family's horse trailer with only a thin sheet metal panel between the muzzle of the .243 Win cartridge and her son. When it went off it went through the sheet metal into her son. Clearly this is a violation of Rule 1, 2, & 4.
http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/article_c3fd6994-b1f5-5ec5-92fc-16fc9c10a70b.html
So if it is only a mechanical issue and not a safety issue then that means it would be okay for her to point the rifle at her son on the other side of the trailer as long as the safety will work? I don't think so...
All I have to say is, sometimes, I just really don't understand the firearms community, or at least the vocal minority in it. I've been working in a job that has put me in contact with people who get into auto accidents. Notice, first, that they are auto ACCIDENTS, even though every time there is an "accident", short of trees falling, vandals, or other incidents, it is human error. In fact, it is NEGLIGENT driving; but people don't take as much responsibility here. That's fine; most people don't, and I actually respect the gun community for taking responsibility so seriously.
However, what I DO NOT get is the blaming of victims with
such viciousness. There's a lot of people involved in auto accidents/negligent vehicular incidents every year, as you probably know. Do you interrogate every person who mentions being in an accident IF IT WAS THEIR FAULT? Were they POSSIBLY doing ANYTHING wrong? If you do not apply this same vigorous standard to people driving, then there is a double standard. Most people drive over the speed limit, talk on a cell phone, and engage in other forms of distracted, negligent driving. If you're in an auto accident, honestly, most of the time you've done SOMETHING wrong. Except for a few incidents like being rear-ended at a light, you're SOMEWHAT negligent, even if it reads as "fault-free" on your part. There are drivers I've seen with 4 or 5 incidents in the past 5 years in which every accident was "fault-free" on their part- but I bet you dollars to donuts, there was something they could have done to prevent the accident. The people in the Toyota incidents, including a California Highway Patrol officer could have avoided the crash by shifting the car to neutral or park. Does that mean these dead people are stupid, and should have their names sullied by insults in the grave?
The world is imperfect; things don't always go right. That's why there is redundancies: the world isn't perfect, so you need to overshoot to achieve "safe" levels. I've also worked in the food and restaurant industry- I will tell you, every single last inspection, regulation, and code is not adhered to 100% of the time anywhere outside extremely finicky, low-volume places (I've worked at A-rated places). The point I'm making here is that yes, the people possibly were at fault. As to the question is it OK to point a gun at a trailer, unsure of what is on the other side, even if the rifle is mechanically safe? The answer is no, but that's because you never know if it IS safe. Maybe lint fell into the gun on YOUR part. Maybe the cartridge is defective in some way that can make it unsafe. Maybe you are in a highly electrically charged environment that will set off the gun with no mechanical error anywhere. The point is, everything on the mechanical side should prevent tragedy AND everything on the human side should prevent tragedy. Reality will intervene at some point so that 100% of standards and regulations on both sides will not be achieved. When <100% comes, will that be sufficient to be safe?
If they end up gone, even if it's their own fault, only the anti-gun folks win.
Another point I don't understand. Please, elaborate here. Do people not gain if a defective product, or product that is made in a sub-standard way, is taken off the market or adjusted to be safe? Did all hikers lose when Nalgene withdrew their BPA bottles? I've actually been looking at acquiring a gun in .308, and of course the venerable 700 has been on the list. I'm new to the rifle market, so call me a newb or whatever, I really don't care. However, what I don't get is when defending organizations that may (or may not) be guilty of informed negligence (knowing of their negligence). I don't know enough about the problem to say I have an opinion- but I say my opinion rests on whether Remington did know there was a way to make a better, safer product without adversely impacting the rifle or not, and chose the other option. Intent, to me, is what truly matters. If a company acts in such a shady way, they don't deserve my dollars, and I can't trust what they make. Again, I say I do not have an opinion as of yet, as I need to do more research.
No offense intended anywhere, but sometimes I really don't get the ideology/philosophy that some have, and so desire to learn more.
Zero
