What do you make of this post copied from NRA Joe's site:
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(Bozeman MT Daily Chronicle)
By KATHLEEN O'TOOLE Chronicle Staff Writer 11/05/2000 00:00:00 (Montana)
Remington rifle involved in growing number of accidents
Pete Noreen was watching the television news two weeks ago when he saw a story
about a 9-year-old boy, Gus Barber, who had been shot and killed in a hunting
accident in Madison County. The boy's mother was unloading her hunting rifle and the
gun accidentally discharged. The tragedy would sicken anyone, but Noreen, a former
gunsmith, now a Belgrade machinist, felt a shiver roll down his spine. "I had the
strangest feeling that I knew what happened and how it happened," he said. "I had a
feeling in my guts that it was the same type of gun."
The gun is a Remington Model 700 series rifle. It's the same gun that went off in his
daughter's hands while hunting in the Little Belt Mountains near Utica, three years
ago. It's the same gun that Bob Ekey, another Bozeman hunter, had accidentally
discharge on two separate occasions in two consecutive years.
It's the same gun that has been the center of more than 80 lawsuits around the
country taken up against Remington Arms Co. in the past 20 years. One of those
lawsuits ended in 1994 with Remington paying $17 million to a Texas man whose
Remington Model 700 bolt-action rifle accidentally discharged and shot him in the foot.
The court earmarked $15 million of that order as punitive damages.
As it turned out Noreen was right. The gun that discharged unexpectedly and killed
Gus Barber in the Gravelly Range on a family hunting trip Oct. 23 was a Remington
Model 700 bolt-action rifle. It isn't only the number of incidents that raises eyebrows,
but also the similarity of the incidents. Ekey said in his first incident in 1988 with the
Remington Model 700, he returned from hunting with a buddy and was in the parking
lot unloading the gun. He released the safety and opened the bolt when the gun,
which was pointing at the ground, discharged. He said his finger was not near the
trigger. Barbara Barber, Gus Barber's mother, said Wednesday that was exactly what
happened to her as she unloaded the gun. But this time the barrel of her gun was
pointing at the open door of a horse trailer. The bullet went through the trailer's wall
and hit her son in the abdomen as he stood on the other side. "My finger wasn't on
the trigger," she said.
Even with mounting evidence many people like Jacob Martin, owner of Valley Pawn in
Bozeman, don't believe there is a problem with the gun and say accidents happen
because people aren't following basic hunter safety rules. "It's the most reliable gun
out there," he said. "I have a difficult time believing this."
But Ekey said hunters have a right to expect more from the Remington Model 700, one
of the most popular rifles on the market with more than 3 million sold since it went on
the market in 1962. "You should handle a gun as if it will go off, but you should have a
reasonable expectation that it won't," Ekey said Thursday. "Guns are inherently
dangerous, but we as hunters don't have to accept a situation that is more dangerous
than it has to be."
Not including Gus Barber's fatal accident, at least three other injury or death
accidents in Montana have been associated with the Remington rifles. The most
recent was this past Friday, when a Bozeman hunter, Justin Sabol, was unloading his
Remington Model 700 .22-250-caliber rifle when it discharged. The bullet first hit the
floor of his truck, then ricocheted and hit Robert Nase, 53, of Belgrade, in the forearm,
causing a minor injury. In November 1988, Brock Aleksich of Butte was operating the
safety of a Remington Model 700 rifle when the gun discharged and shot his brother,
Brent Aleksich, in both legs. The teen suffered severe and permanent physical injuries,
according to court documents on the case. The case settled out of court, but parties
were not allowed to discuss terms of the settlement. In June 1993, 11-year-old Hank
Blacksmith was at the home of his friend, Jesse Coonfare, in Billings. Coonfare got his
father's Remington Model 600 Mohawk rifle, a gun that Remington had recalled in 1978.
The gun slipped from Coonfare's hands and accidentally discharged, shooting and
killing Blacksmith. That case also settled out of court in 1996 and the terms of the
settlement were also sealed and confidential.
Remington Arms Co. denies that its Model 700 bolt-action rifle, which includes 19
different variations, is more dangerous than any other weapon, or faulty in its design.
According to a 1994 Business Week magazine story, a company spokesman said "We
have believed in the past and continue to believe today that the Model 700 is one of
the finest bolt-action rifles manufactured. We see the product as a safe and reliable
sporting firearm." Several attempts to reach a spokesperson for Remington for this
article were unsuccessful. The Chronicle did reach Ron Bristle, chief operating officer
for Remington, on Friday, but he said he could not speak for the company and that
someone would return the call. No one did. Remington has admitted problems with
another rifle, the Model 600, sister to the Model 700. After settling a case in 1978
with a man who became paralyzed when the Model 600 suddenly discharged,
Remington recalled that model. The company calculated that 50 percent of the
200,000 Model 600 rifles it had sold would fail, according to minutes of a January 1979
meeting of the Remington Arms Product Safety Subcommittee.
The Model 600 and Model 700 rifles use the Walker fire control system and evidenced
the same discharge problems leading to the same kind of injuries, the subcommittee
minutes note. But Remington had sold 10 times as many Model 700 rifles and a recall
would be much more costly to the company. Remington had 1979 tests that showed
only 1 percent of the Model 700 guns could be "tricked" into a discharging
inadvertently and argued that a recall "would have to gather 2 million guns just to find
20,000 that are susceptible to this condition," according to the subcommittee's
minutes. But Attorney Richard C. Miller, a Missouri attorney who has represented more
than 40 cases against Remington regarding accidental discharges of the Model 700,
believes the real reasons Remington didn't order a recall because it would be too
costly and hurt the company's future sales. "Every one can do it. There's not one out
there that's safe," Miller said Friday.
The cause is an inherent problem with the Walker system in Remington's bolt-action
rifle, something the company knew about from the original patent in 1950. The patent
application states, "We have found it to be essential that the safety (mechanism) be
so arranged that an inadvertent operation of the trigger while the safety is in the
"Safe" position will not condition the arm to fire upon release of the safety." Miller
explained there are two problems with the Model 700 rifle. The first is a problem where
the internal components of the system don't always return the sear-block safety,
which blocks the firing pin from reaching the primer. When that happens, the only
thing keeping the gun from firing is the safety. The second problem exists in guns
made prior to 1982, when the rifle was made with a bolt lock. The lock wouldn't allow
the bolt to be opened or closed while the safety was on. Accidents with these guns
most often happen in camp, or parking lots, when people are loading and unloading the
weapon, Miller said.
In 1982, Remington started making its bolt action rifles without the bolt lock and the
number of complaints declined, Miller said. Accidental discharges with these newer
rifles often happen when people turn off the safety, usually when they are ready to
shoot. "I want to give Remington credit where credit is due," Miller said. "That did
reduce the likelihood of a malfunction. But Remington would never have made that
change but for the fact that they were facing a bunch of lawsuits."
Miller and his associates have also uncovered evidence that Remington developed a
safer gun with its new bolt-action rifle, or NBAR, program but never manufactured it.
The company also tried to keep documents about the NBAR program out of court, but
more than 20 judges ruled the company needed to release its records, according to
Business Week. "The NBAR program had as its goal improvement of the defective fire
control on the Model 700," wrote Texas Supreme Court Justice Lloyd Dogget in
December 1992. "(The documents) provide evidence of great significance ... as to
Remington's knowledge of defects and of its ability to implement safer alternative
designs."
All the evidence of what Remington knew or didn't do doesn't help the Barber family,
Rich Barber, Gus's father said Wednesday. But he does feel the company was
"unconscionable" by not notifying the public about the problem. "My son is a statistic,"
Rich Barber said. "He was one of 20,000 potential problems Remington knew about."
While the Barbers have been in contact with Miller, Barber said the family has not
decided what to do on a legal front. For now, his focus is on educating everyone he
can about the gun that killed his son. "We are considering (a lawsuit) at this time, but
it's not one of my priorities," he said. "It's the middle of hunting season in Montana
now. I want to make a difference." In the two weeks since his son's death, Rich
Barber has been in contact with the news media trying to spread the word about the
dangers of Remington's bolt action rifle. He's also contacted several local schools
offering to speak to classes about the gun and gun safety or be interviewed by the
school paper's reporters, hoping that he can teach a new generation of hunters about
the gun. Barber stressed repeatedly that this is not an anti-gun issue. "It's a
gun-safety issue," he said. For 12 years he and his family had been happy with the
Remington Model 700, he said. "It would out shoot anything that came out of the box.
It was a very accurate weapon and a fine weapon for my family." The Barbers have
another Remington Model 700, bought after being so pleased with the first one. Rich
Barber now looks at his remaining rifle and he's not sure what to do with it.
Miller said there are only two things that can be done with the Remington Model 700
to eliminate the problems. First is to get the bolt lock removed on models made prior
to 1982. Second is to go to a gunsmith and have a new, after-market firing system of
another brand installed.
Barber wants to pass this information along to as many people as he can, believing he
only has a two-week window to do because that's as long as the general public will
remember his son's death. He's also asking people to contact him about any mishaps
they had with the Remington Model 700 series. In a small circle of friends, he said he
already knows of 14 confirmed cases and four possible ones. "My goal is to document
as many cases to show that the 1 percent (Remington claims is susceptible to the
problem) is inaccurate in the hope that their consciousness will catch up with them
and recall the weapon," Rich Barber said. "My emotion is gone. My mission now is to
save lives. I didn't ask for this. I didn't search it out. It came to me. It's a God-given
mission," he said.
http://network54.com/Hide/Forum/message?forumid=12204&messageid=979016255
Anyone ever have an AD like this?
(Bozeman MT Daily Chronicle)
By KATHLEEN O'TOOLE Chronicle Staff Writer 11/05/2000 00:00:00 (Montana)
Remington rifle involved in growing number of accidents
Pete Noreen was watching the television news two weeks ago when he saw a story
about a 9-year-old boy, Gus Barber, who had been shot and killed in a hunting
accident in Madison County. The boy's mother was unloading her hunting rifle and the
gun accidentally discharged. The tragedy would sicken anyone, but Noreen, a former
gunsmith, now a Belgrade machinist, felt a shiver roll down his spine. "I had the
strangest feeling that I knew what happened and how it happened," he said. "I had a
feeling in my guts that it was the same type of gun."
The gun is a Remington Model 700 series rifle. It's the same gun that went off in his
daughter's hands while hunting in the Little Belt Mountains near Utica, three years
ago. It's the same gun that Bob Ekey, another Bozeman hunter, had accidentally
discharge on two separate occasions in two consecutive years.
It's the same gun that has been the center of more than 80 lawsuits around the
country taken up against Remington Arms Co. in the past 20 years. One of those
lawsuits ended in 1994 with Remington paying $17 million to a Texas man whose
Remington Model 700 bolt-action rifle accidentally discharged and shot him in the foot.
The court earmarked $15 million of that order as punitive damages.
As it turned out Noreen was right. The gun that discharged unexpectedly and killed
Gus Barber in the Gravelly Range on a family hunting trip Oct. 23 was a Remington
Model 700 bolt-action rifle. It isn't only the number of incidents that raises eyebrows,
but also the similarity of the incidents. Ekey said in his first incident in 1988 with the
Remington Model 700, he returned from hunting with a buddy and was in the parking
lot unloading the gun. He released the safety and opened the bolt when the gun,
which was pointing at the ground, discharged. He said his finger was not near the
trigger. Barbara Barber, Gus Barber's mother, said Wednesday that was exactly what
happened to her as she unloaded the gun. But this time the barrel of her gun was
pointing at the open door of a horse trailer. The bullet went through the trailer's wall
and hit her son in the abdomen as he stood on the other side. "My finger wasn't on
the trigger," she said.
Even with mounting evidence many people like Jacob Martin, owner of Valley Pawn in
Bozeman, don't believe there is a problem with the gun and say accidents happen
because people aren't following basic hunter safety rules. "It's the most reliable gun
out there," he said. "I have a difficult time believing this."
But Ekey said hunters have a right to expect more from the Remington Model 700, one
of the most popular rifles on the market with more than 3 million sold since it went on
the market in 1962. "You should handle a gun as if it will go off, but you should have a
reasonable expectation that it won't," Ekey said Thursday. "Guns are inherently
dangerous, but we as hunters don't have to accept a situation that is more dangerous
than it has to be."
Not including Gus Barber's fatal accident, at least three other injury or death
accidents in Montana have been associated with the Remington rifles. The most
recent was this past Friday, when a Bozeman hunter, Justin Sabol, was unloading his
Remington Model 700 .22-250-caliber rifle when it discharged. The bullet first hit the
floor of his truck, then ricocheted and hit Robert Nase, 53, of Belgrade, in the forearm,
causing a minor injury. In November 1988, Brock Aleksich of Butte was operating the
safety of a Remington Model 700 rifle when the gun discharged and shot his brother,
Brent Aleksich, in both legs. The teen suffered severe and permanent physical injuries,
according to court documents on the case. The case settled out of court, but parties
were not allowed to discuss terms of the settlement. In June 1993, 11-year-old Hank
Blacksmith was at the home of his friend, Jesse Coonfare, in Billings. Coonfare got his
father's Remington Model 600 Mohawk rifle, a gun that Remington had recalled in 1978.
The gun slipped from Coonfare's hands and accidentally discharged, shooting and
killing Blacksmith. That case also settled out of court in 1996 and the terms of the
settlement were also sealed and confidential.
Remington Arms Co. denies that its Model 700 bolt-action rifle, which includes 19
different variations, is more dangerous than any other weapon, or faulty in its design.
According to a 1994 Business Week magazine story, a company spokesman said "We
have believed in the past and continue to believe today that the Model 700 is one of
the finest bolt-action rifles manufactured. We see the product as a safe and reliable
sporting firearm." Several attempts to reach a spokesperson for Remington for this
article were unsuccessful. The Chronicle did reach Ron Bristle, chief operating officer
for Remington, on Friday, but he said he could not speak for the company and that
someone would return the call. No one did. Remington has admitted problems with
another rifle, the Model 600, sister to the Model 700. After settling a case in 1978
with a man who became paralyzed when the Model 600 suddenly discharged,
Remington recalled that model. The company calculated that 50 percent of the
200,000 Model 600 rifles it had sold would fail, according to minutes of a January 1979
meeting of the Remington Arms Product Safety Subcommittee.
The Model 600 and Model 700 rifles use the Walker fire control system and evidenced
the same discharge problems leading to the same kind of injuries, the subcommittee
minutes note. But Remington had sold 10 times as many Model 700 rifles and a recall
would be much more costly to the company. Remington had 1979 tests that showed
only 1 percent of the Model 700 guns could be "tricked" into a discharging
inadvertently and argued that a recall "would have to gather 2 million guns just to find
20,000 that are susceptible to this condition," according to the subcommittee's
minutes. But Attorney Richard C. Miller, a Missouri attorney who has represented more
than 40 cases against Remington regarding accidental discharges of the Model 700,
believes the real reasons Remington didn't order a recall because it would be too
costly and hurt the company's future sales. "Every one can do it. There's not one out
there that's safe," Miller said Friday.
The cause is an inherent problem with the Walker system in Remington's bolt-action
rifle, something the company knew about from the original patent in 1950. The patent
application states, "We have found it to be essential that the safety (mechanism) be
so arranged that an inadvertent operation of the trigger while the safety is in the
"Safe" position will not condition the arm to fire upon release of the safety." Miller
explained there are two problems with the Model 700 rifle. The first is a problem where
the internal components of the system don't always return the sear-block safety,
which blocks the firing pin from reaching the primer. When that happens, the only
thing keeping the gun from firing is the safety. The second problem exists in guns
made prior to 1982, when the rifle was made with a bolt lock. The lock wouldn't allow
the bolt to be opened or closed while the safety was on. Accidents with these guns
most often happen in camp, or parking lots, when people are loading and unloading the
weapon, Miller said.
In 1982, Remington started making its bolt action rifles without the bolt lock and the
number of complaints declined, Miller said. Accidental discharges with these newer
rifles often happen when people turn off the safety, usually when they are ready to
shoot. "I want to give Remington credit where credit is due," Miller said. "That did
reduce the likelihood of a malfunction. But Remington would never have made that
change but for the fact that they were facing a bunch of lawsuits."
Miller and his associates have also uncovered evidence that Remington developed a
safer gun with its new bolt-action rifle, or NBAR, program but never manufactured it.
The company also tried to keep documents about the NBAR program out of court, but
more than 20 judges ruled the company needed to release its records, according to
Business Week. "The NBAR program had as its goal improvement of the defective fire
control on the Model 700," wrote Texas Supreme Court Justice Lloyd Dogget in
December 1992. "(The documents) provide evidence of great significance ... as to
Remington's knowledge of defects and of its ability to implement safer alternative
designs."
All the evidence of what Remington knew or didn't do doesn't help the Barber family,
Rich Barber, Gus's father said Wednesday. But he does feel the company was
"unconscionable" by not notifying the public about the problem. "My son is a statistic,"
Rich Barber said. "He was one of 20,000 potential problems Remington knew about."
While the Barbers have been in contact with Miller, Barber said the family has not
decided what to do on a legal front. For now, his focus is on educating everyone he
can about the gun that killed his son. "We are considering (a lawsuit) at this time, but
it's not one of my priorities," he said. "It's the middle of hunting season in Montana
now. I want to make a difference." In the two weeks since his son's death, Rich
Barber has been in contact with the news media trying to spread the word about the
dangers of Remington's bolt action rifle. He's also contacted several local schools
offering to speak to classes about the gun and gun safety or be interviewed by the
school paper's reporters, hoping that he can teach a new generation of hunters about
the gun. Barber stressed repeatedly that this is not an anti-gun issue. "It's a
gun-safety issue," he said. For 12 years he and his family had been happy with the
Remington Model 700, he said. "It would out shoot anything that came out of the box.
It was a very accurate weapon and a fine weapon for my family." The Barbers have
another Remington Model 700, bought after being so pleased with the first one. Rich
Barber now looks at his remaining rifle and he's not sure what to do with it.
Miller said there are only two things that can be done with the Remington Model 700
to eliminate the problems. First is to get the bolt lock removed on models made prior
to 1982. Second is to go to a gunsmith and have a new, after-market firing system of
another brand installed.
Barber wants to pass this information along to as many people as he can, believing he
only has a two-week window to do because that's as long as the general public will
remember his son's death. He's also asking people to contact him about any mishaps
they had with the Remington Model 700 series. In a small circle of friends, he said he
already knows of 14 confirmed cases and four possible ones. "My goal is to document
as many cases to show that the 1 percent (Remington claims is susceptible to the
problem) is inaccurate in the hope that their consciousness will catch up with them
and recall the weapon," Rich Barber said. "My emotion is gone. My mission now is to
save lives. I didn't ask for this. I didn't search it out. It came to me. It's a God-given
mission," he said.
) when I told her to watch where it was pointed at ALL times. It did sacre her but again Thank God she did not lose her new found love for hunting or shooting.