Remington 700 Unintentional fire?

[leroy]

....Dude... I am fairly aware of the tea party. I have no idea what their "great" symbol is. I am going to go out on a limb and say that the average person has no ****ing clue what if any symbol they have. The tea party is something I hear the news mention but it really amounts to two things to most people. Jack is the first and Ill let you guess the other. ....

Sounds to me like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and someone peed in your Post Tosties this morning. I didnt do any of that to you. My advice to you is to take a baby apirin and lighten up. Found this in about 30 seconds in Democrat country, WV. Note the upper right hand corner.

Hows that!?

[Daniel]

Looks like a rolled up newspaper to me.

[mikegideon]

Looks like a rolled up newspaper to me.

I think it's supposed to be the constitution. My choice is to stop thinking about it before it drives me crazy. There's only a very small group that will get what they want... the same group that always gets it.

[leroy]

Looks like a rolled up newspaper to me.

Daniel:____________

I believe you and mike are both right. Need to change my glasses. This is the one i ment to post:

Link here:

American Power: Best Tea Party Signs

Blind Leroy

[mikegideon]

I like that one!

[Daniel]

cant see it from work.

[Alleycat72]

Dude... I am fairly aware of the tea party. I have no idea what their "great" symbol is. I am going to go out on a limb and say that the average person has no ****ing clue what if any symbol they have. The tea party is something I hear the news mention but it really amounts to two things to most people. Jack is the first and Ill let you guess the other.

WOW..... Super Moderator????????

[Daniel]

Problem?

[Alleycat72]

[Moped]

Well let's try this again. Computer crapped out before I could get my post up here. Spent the last hour and half reloading drivers and eating. GRRRRR.

For those of you that still haven't bothered to watch the program, the most damaging part of this expose' was the interview with Mark Walker. Mr. Walker was the Remington Engineer responsible for the development of the 700. He said that Remington knew that there was an issue when they released the rifle for production back in the 50's. He even came up with a redesign of the for the trigger that would have cost Remington 5 cents to make. For some reason they chose not to. Throughout his career at Remington, he repeatedly requested and suggested that Remington change the trigger, and at one point in the 70's, they had a program to do just that. But just as they were about to go public with the program, they changed their minds and went with a safety campaign instead. One they continue to use till this day. It's the Ten or Twelve Rules for Safety or something like that. I might add that Mr. Walker continues to do custom rifle design work at the ripe old age of 98 and is sharp as a tack.

I hate that CNBC was the one to run this piece. It's damages the Firearms industry and ultimately us. But before we jump all over CNBC for being the liberal namby, pamby network that we all know they are, lets remind ourselves the Remington is a corporation and like any other corporation in any other industry, they are going to cover their butt and try to get out of this any way they can, because they have lots of lawyers to tell them that is the thing to do. Don't blind yourselves into thinking that they are some noble bastion of American Genius.

I'm not posting to bash. I have owned and will continue to own Remington products. I think the 870 is one of the best shotguns ever made. But they are a corporation and corporations are in the business to make money, not lose money and they will protect their bottom line at the cost of us, the American Gun Buying sector if that's what it takes to survive.

[Links2k]

Problem?

You did not agree with them. You are going get shipped to N. Korea with me because you don't appreciate our freedoms. You had better pack for cold weather. It has been a long time since I was in S. Korea, but I do remember that the winters will kick your butt. No disrespect to the tea partiers, because I think all of the parties suck.

Edited October 22, 2010 by LINKS2K

[Daniel]

tbh I am just over the conspiracy nutjobs.

[mikegideon]

Well let's try this again. Computer crapped out before I could get my post up here. Spent the last hour and half reloading drivers and eating. GRRRRR.

For those of you that still haven't bothered to watch the program, the most damaging part of this expose' was the interview with Mark Walker. Mr. Walker was the Remington Engineer responsible for the development of the 700. He said that Remington knew that there was an issue when they released the rifle for production back in the 50's. He even came up with a redesign of the for the trigger that would have cost Remington 5 cents to make. For some reason they chose not to. Throughout his career at Remington, he repeatedly requested and suggested that Remington change the trigger, and at one point in the 70's, they had a program to do just that. But just as they were about to go public with the program, they changed their minds and went with a safety campaign instead. One they continue to use till this day. It's the Ten or Twelve Rules for Safety or something like that. I might add that Mr. Walker continues to do custom rifle design work at the ripe old age of 98 and is sharp as a tack.

.

None of this is new information. Been out there for a long time

[Guest GunTroll]

Looking at the video of the sniper, I'm wondering if the bolt was not completely closed. He pulled the trigger which released the striker from the sear but only after fully closing the bolt did the striker release the spring tension. Not real good from a safety standpoint but probably easily fixed.

The bolt would cam closed so I doubt it. The cocking piece is what closes the bolt when fired without the bolt being closed fully.

ETA: I thought more about it and I now see what you were saying. The way I see it....if it is man made it is flawed.

Please send all your 700's to me for proper disposal

Same here.

tbh I am just over the conspiracy nutjobs.

Booo

Edited October 23, 2010 by GunTroll

[jughead]

my neighbor has one that fires when the safety is flipped off. he hasnt used it in about 4 years. does he need to contact remington or try to find a gunsmith in this area to fix it?

[raydog1]

I thought this would be one of those "oh well" stories that "the accused" would just let go away silently into the night. But Remington is fighting back!

http://www.shootingwire.com/

"Remington isn't pulling any punches calling the factual accuracy of CNBC's report into question. What appear to be excerpts from an eventual long-form Remington response on their website not only attack the credibility of CNBC's senior correspondent Scott Cohn (whose discomfort in handling a firearm was painful to watch), but question CNBC's interview techniques (questions they didn't ask), the experts cited in the report, and virtually everything else connected to the story.

Only the tragic accidents cited in the CNBC report appear - at least at this writing - to be off-limits to very pointed questioning. Frequent references to Remintgon's "10 Commandments of Firearms Safety" however, it would seem to imply that most problems associated with the Model 700 can - ultimately- be traced to a variety of human factors.

A section on that website teases an upcoming special report by Joie Chen entitled "Remington Shoots Straight".

You might remember Chen as a former CBS/CNN anchor, but today she's not a mainstream news anchor. She is Executive Vice President for Branded News Worldwide, a company which "creates online platforms for organizations and industries to deliver news and programming models for niche audiences."

Part of mega-agency Ackerman/McQueen, Branded News Worldwide is in the business of professionally packaging and delivering niche-focused content for organizations as diverse as the Cancer Institute of Oklahoma and the National Rifle Association (NRA News).

In other words, Remington's rolling out very heavy artillery to fight back against a report they say was pieced together out of less than whole-cloth. "

They've added a few more videos to this site: Remington

Click the little white dots in the video window to see them all.

It'll be interesting to see if CNBC is up for a little cockfighting with Remington.

[mikegideon]

Remington is pretty good at wiggling their way out of it. Been doing it for years

[leroy]

....tbh I am just over the conspiracy nutjobs. .....

Daniel:_______________

A kind observation. Dont give in to the temptation to confuse "nut opinions" with satire --- take a look at 'em and grade them if they are good (...looks like you gave me an "F' on the first round; im kinda crestfallen about that; but i'll be ok -- sniff....).

I, like you, and some others here believe that there are lots of lies being told everywhere. That's always the case with politics and any political party or movement, no matter how popular and winsome.

The great thing about America is that that you can vote (...even if the candidates aint worth a damn ---most of them aint. ...), you can speak your peace in the public forum without being arrested (...for now...), and, greatest of all, we are still armed. The genius of America is being free. To stay free, lots of nutty and "over the top" things need saying. The trick is to sort 'em out, laugh at the funny ones, and cry at some of the truthful ones.

BY THE WAY: I am pleased to announce that I too am opening a proper disposal depot for all the bad Remington 700's in the east tennessee region. Please contact me and i will arrange for proper shipping or pickup.

Keep up the good work!

Kind regards,

Leroy --

Radical libertarian cynic, nut, apprentice satirist, and official Remington disposal officer for the East Tennessee region

[kesava]

I am surprised a bit, but not totally.

I am not very eloquent or well written (heck, I'm even a little dumb) so I will try to be as direct as possible.

If a gun has so many issues (thousands of complaints). Come on, there is something wrong with the damn gun. Don't defend it, accept the fact. But cheese and crackers, if I adjust a trigger that is adjustable from the factory and it starts going off arbitrarily, then there is something wrong with the function of the rifle. It's very short sighted to assume that they were handling the gun poorly. Were you there? These are people's lives and you have whittled it down to a political issue. My mother in law was shot in the back from an accidental discharge. No fingers on the trigger.

Does it have a politial spin? possibly.

As far as political alignments are concerned, the new Tea Party fad-thing.... nothing of intelligence, substance or worth has come of it. Only media hype. Congratulations.

[Guest DeadEye]

This has been known for 20 yrs!

Remington mod. 700 controversy?

[Guest GunTroll]

Well then.

[leroy]

I own three of these "bad" rifles. One is an old one from the early sixties (...benchrest gun...). One a target gun, one a hunting rifle. Two of these guns have light triggers (...probably less than 2 lb...). Never had one go off by its self or "accidently".

You that think that it is the goal of american business to screw, maim, and mistreat it's customers should think about that a good while. I simply do not believe it is the policy of any company to willfully kill or maim its customers. That idea is a distinctly old song of the socialists, communists, and "one big unionites" that say all capitalist ventures are inherently bad; and that all capitalists are inherently bad.

The fact of the matter is that guns are inherrently dangerous and they need to be handled very carefully. Failure to do so could have final results. Am i sorry for folks that get shot accidently? -- yes, of course. Do i have empathy for families of folks who are shot accidently? - of course. Do i think the "evil" gun did it by its self? - no.

Do i think everything has a political component today? You bet!!!---it does. We are playing for all the marbles now. The stakes are eextremely high.

Food for thought.

Leroy

[mikegideon]

I own three of these "bad" rifles. One is an old one from the early sixties (...benchrest gun...). One a target gun, one a hunting rifle. Two of these guns have light triggers (...probably less than 2 lb...). Never had one go off by its self or "accidently".

You that think that it is the goal of american business to screw, maim, and mistreat it's customers should think about that a good while. I simply do not believe it is the policy of any company to willfully kill or maim its customers. That idea is a distinctly old song of the socialists, communists, and "one big unionites" that say all capitalist ventures are inherently bad; and that all capitalists are inherently bad.

The fact of the matter is that guns are inherrently dangerous and they need to be handled very carefully. Failure to do so could have final results. Am i sorry for folks that get shot accidently? -- yes, of course. Do i have empathy for families of folks who are shot accidently? - of course. Do i think the "evil" gun did it by its self? - no.

Do i think everything has a political component today? You bet!!!---it does. We are playing for all the marbles now. The stakes are eextremely high.

Food for thought.

Leroy

I think the right mix of people in a conference room may choose to opt out of the best, safest engineering to reduce cost, or to avoid revealing a smoking gun. You, of all people, know that happens. Sometimes those choices contribute to harming people. Not saying they're evil. Just saying they may be Toyota.

I know that some of the 700 discharges were from folks bubba diddlin' the adjustments. Some weren't. When I got my 700, I wanted a real good trigger. Frankly, I was spoiled by my X bolt. I did a lot of reading, and found quite a bit of info on the lawsuits. I decided that my best solution was an aftermarket trigger group. The 700 is a great rifle, but the trigger sucks. I don't remember all the details, but I remember coming away with the feeling that Remington danced around the problem instead of attacking it directly. Instead of improving the design, they just painted it with lawyer goo. I could be wrong.

Savage, Browning, and Winchester have great stock triggers. Remington can't seem to figure it out.

EDIT: In your first paragraph, you mention the light triggers on the earlier guns. The lawsuits started when they were shipping lighter trigger pulls. My theory has been that those light pulls were right on the hairy edge of the trigger design's capabilities. Add a little slop in the machining and QC, and there's your problem.

Edited October 24, 2010 by mikegideon
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[DaveTN]

I think the right mix of people in a conference room may choose to opt out of the best, safest engineering to reduce cost, or to avoid revealing a smoking gun. You, of all people, know that happens. Sometimes those choices contribute to harming people. Not saying they're evil. Just saying they may be Toyota.

If the problem is real (I’m not saying it is) and they don’t recall and continue shipping product; then yes they are not only evil; but IMO criminally and civilly liable. The same thing happened to Glock during the 80’s and 90’s. They couldn’t admit that their guns fired without pulling the trigger so they did “upgrades†and moved on. Yet today you have new Glocksters that will inform you it is impossible for a Glock to fire without pulling the trigger. How do they know that? They don’t; but they have to say they believe it to justify what they want to buy.

I know that some of the 700 discharges were from folks bubba diddlin' the adjustments. Some weren't.

How do you know some weren’t?

Savage, Browning, and Winchester have great stock triggers. Remington can't seem to figure it out.

They figured out how to sell more rifles than those three combined. They continually hold the #1 position for bolt action Rifles, Savage is closing in on them but they are still so far behind they can’t see the taillights.

I have an X-Pro mark trigger and it is great, breaks perfect from the factory and I had no need to adjust it. I too am one of the ones that think a lot of gun problems come from those that have absolutely no skills deciding they can tune up their guns. Gun manufacturers should not be held liable for that.

Mechanical devices can fail…. Period. Whether it is the trigger mechanism of a gun or parts of a car.

If you are loading/unloading a rifle, moving the safety Off/On or rotating the bolt on a live round and it fires; that may well be a mechanical failure and is an accidental discharge (Yes, they do happen). If you kill someone else in the room or shoot yourself; that is a negligent discharge.

I watched all the videos on the Remington TV website and I think they did a pretty good job of debunking the unscrupulous reporting. The only question I was left with was about the two guns they showed malfunctioning. It appears to me that this wasn’t just luck that they caught this on video; it appears those two guns had a repeatable problem. Was that video used in court, and if it was what did the gunsmith that examined those rifles testify to as the cause?

I haven’t watched the entire CNBC show yet, but it is on again at 9PM tonight; so I have the DVR set.

[leroy]

In the interest of full disclosure and philosophy. Here are few things i dont (...and some things i do....) believe that are revelant to this discussion:

The first in in regard to my experience in the workplace. I worked for over forty years in the third most dangerous industry for which safety statistics are kept; the construction industry. It follows behind logging and mining. I worked in this industry at all levels from labor, to technical, to management. It has been said by some of it's critics that there was an "acceptable accident (...and death...) rate" for projects done. I never once attended a meeting or participated in a discussion where this "acceptable" accident rate was discussed. We strived for a "zero" accident and fatality rate. Many times that wasn't attained (....in the vast majority of times any accidents were caused by individual bad or careless decisions...). I never detected a corporate mentality that said there was an "acceptable" accident rate. Said another way; we never tried to kill our help or cover up dangerous defects in our product.

Second, there is a fairly recent trend in "pop culture" to adhere to a philosophy of "zero responsibility' for any and all actions. Said another way, whatever happens to anybody is someone elses fault (...hopefully, the fault of those who have the most money...). This philosophy is constantly reinforced by TV commercials for these stinkin tort lawyers who say that somehow you have been victimized and are entitled to compensation for your own misdeads or even voluntary acts. On a personal basis; i find that to be a heinous way of looking at the world. I believe it feeds the "baser instincts of man" and appeals to lots of people because it is far easier to believe the lie that somehow "bad guys' victimized you than it is to actually take responsible for one's own individual actions. The fact is, ....you are responsible for you....; and the "fatcats and capitalists"of the world aint out to get you. If they were, they would kill off all their help and their customers. It just doesnt make sense from a logical or business standpoint. I will grant, that there may be some individual instances of corporate misdeads; but they are the rare exception rather than the rule. I simply do not believe there is a "fat cat capitalist bugger" behind every bush that is waiting to bushwhack the unspecting worker or consumer, and to make sure that he, she or it, have been properly mistreated. That, to me, is the ultimate 'whacko" conspiracy theory. I simply refuse to believe it.

Third, im a student of history. If you take the time to read those who have given reasonable, scholarly accounts of the communist movement in europe starting with Marx; you will see this recurring theme that says that the "evil capitalists" are mercilessly exploiting the poor, downtrodden, hapless worker (...and by extension to this case; the clueless consumer...). For reasons incomprehensible at least to me; our country and much of our culture seem to be hopelessly infatuated with this malarkey that says somehow that business (...read that capitalism...) is evil and that somehow it is the job of government, regulatory bureaucrats, union demigogues, tort lawyers, and socialists to level the playing field for the "little guy". This shameful, heinous potrayal of business is at the very root of why we are in such a weak position in the manufacturing and construction segments of this country today. It is, i believe, the root of our slide in to third world status as a manufacturing power. It is why many are out of work and are poor in this country.

Fourth, i'm a student of people. It has been my experience that it is very easy in today's rarified anti-business atmosphere to find a crop of "i told 'em so" (...pop culture whistleblower...) guys (...some with considerable credentials...) who are willing to feed this "coverup" view of the capitalist world. Some are sincere, some are narcistic physcopaths with a superiority complex, some are liars bought and paid for, and some are nuts. That's how the world is made up. The real trick to all this is to figure out who is telling the truth.

Last of all, i dont believe that Toytotas run off by themselves (...i got one myself...). I dont believe that McDonalds is out to scald me with hot coffee nor kill me by feeding me a diet of quarterpounders. I dont believe that the sugar refiners are in an evil kabal to poison me and give me diabetes with refined sugar products. I dont believe that school system administrators and cooks are trying to fatten up and poision my grandchildren down at the school cafeteria. I dont believe that the the cooking oil producers have entered into an evil kabal to kill me with transfats. Nor do i believe that somehow rifles shoot their owners.

Do i believe that corporations (...as well as individuals...) take the "least damage or liability" approach to problems? --- certainly. Lots of it due to the very things i have mentioned in the above paragraphs. Do i think that is bad or somehow evil? -- no.

Leroy

Edited October 24, 2010 by leroy
spelling!!!