Reminton electronic trigger.

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briandg

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I've wondered for years about them. It's pretty obvious that they don't exist anymore.

When they first came out, I thought that it was probably the absolute answer to mechanical safeties, and in this time, when remington is under fire for the reported ADs, they would at least think about keeping them available.

You have the opportunity of a number of mechanical safeties. You can have a trigger lock, you can have a retractor for the "firing pin," you could even hinge the trigger to flip forward until needed, hence blocking access to the switch.

You could have dozens of possible electronic safety configurations. You could have a main power switch, a power switch that cuts off the bolt electronics, or even a mechanical safety that disconnects the bolt electronics.

There could have been deadman switches, just like so many power tools, that have to be pressed to activate the device. micro switches could be placed where fingers on the trigger hand would be pressed as the finger is on the trigger. a button could be placed on the forearm where it would be held. If a port in the stock was provided for this sort of on/off switch, anyone could buy the switches and tape them on wherever they chose to, taping down the wires.

There could even be a timer; press a button inside the trigger guard to activate the trigger mechanism for a 15 second window, or however long you wanted it to last. the shooter could carry a completely inert rifle all day, press the activation button (just as if he was taking the gun "off safe" mechanically, and after he blows the hole through the trophy ram or waits a minute, the gun would revert to safety.

even if it is only the versatility of safety measures, I think that remington should have kept making these things. discontinuing them, or not fully exploring the issue of safety, could actually been used against them in court.

Can't you hear the lawyers?

"this company designed the ultimate safety mechanism. It was necessary to do ***** before it could be fired, and even if it was made ready to fire, the rifle would have automatically reverted to safe. But, instead of advancing firearm safety by a hundred years into the future,

YOU CONTINUED TO MAKE THE MODEL 700 THAT WE HAVE PROVEN TO BE A FAULTY DEATH TRAP OF A WEAPON!?"

There's your case. Settled with a single paragraph.
 
I don't know about the legal issues, but I do think that we will see more electrical features for firearms. Electrical systems have failures too though ;)
 
Electrical systems have failures too though
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I can agree with that, but I'd bet my lower back left molar (the one with the cavity in it) that if everyone carried electric rifles, there would be tens of thousand of failures of some sort by human error for every time the electronics actually failed (that didn't relate back to human error, like dropping it into water, forgetting new batteries, or so forth)
 
I personally never saw any sense in an electronic trigger. It goes totally against the KISS rule and batteries always go dead at the worst times. Seems really silly to me and apparently it didn't sell which means most people felt the same way.
 
Electric cars were the same way, they failed to sell multiple times but technology forced them back into the market. Maybe one day they will be cheaper, lighter, more efficient, something will allow electricity to work its way into modern or future weaponry in varying ways. It stuck with optics (night vision, red dots, illuminated reticles) and it stuck with long range calculating aids, it's only a matter of time before advances allow it to trickle into mass produced guns as well.

Not trying to say that all current guns will be rendered obsolete by electricity, I just think we will see some applications in the not too distant future.
 
Unless you are electrically firing caseless ammunition what exactly would be the paradigm shifting benefit of adding electronics.
What is an electrical safety doing that a mechanical one isn't already accomplishing without needing a power source.
If you were to put a fingerprint id lockout I could understand that.
As far as lawyers go I could definetly see them jumping all over an electrical safety in any way the suited them. Wether that be calling it unsafe, unproven or a new standard for safety. As long as it advanced their case.
 
briandg said:
YOU CONTINUED TO MAKE THE MODEL 700 THAT WE HAVE PROVEN TO BE A FAULTY DEATH TRAP OF A WEAPON!?"
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I don't believe that's been proved, and I certainly don't believe it to be fact. I've owned several over the years and have never known them to be a "death trap", except when I wanted them to be lethal.

The electric firing system? Never caught on because it was too new. No one wants to trust batteries in their firearms. If you come home, clean the weapon and put it away, come back a year later and the battery is dead, or has corroded and destroyed the contact points, the weapon is useless. If you come home, take the batteries out and put the rifle away, come back a year later to shoot the rifle, get to the range and find that you've forgotten the batteries at home. Either way, that system is useless.

I've used electronic primers and know them to be very reliable and very accurate with the proper systems, but the ones I've used have a power source tied to the weapon, and a backup system for firing the gun if the power happens to be inoperable.
 
<...Drifting cars...>

The trigger in a firearm is an important thing but it is not the primary thing that makes a firearm work. An electric motor or a gas engine is the the primary thing that makes an automobile work (some wag will say "duh, that's how the car goes, your example is wrong", and I'll reply, no, the last time I was in a car, with the engine running, you go noplace unless you select a gear and use the vertical pedal on the right). Red dots, night vision, etc, are secondary to the function of the firearm, similar to a HUD in an automobile. No red-dot sight makes a rifle work better and no HUD made a car perform better. They may make the user interact with the machine better (or not); but the machine's function is 100% identical to they way it would be without that red-dot or HUD.

Re: electric triggers, if we're making the automobile example, I'd say this is the same as electric brakes in a car. I'm sure it would work. But what is the tangible gain over the proven and reliable method already used? Seems like re-invention of the wheel unless there's a need, and I just don't see the need for electrical power in a firearm. Sure a red-dot is great and needs batteries, fine. Now we're powering the gun itself? Needless. Going back to the car example, this is the heated outside mirrors option- not necessary for operation of the vehicle and of questionable value a small percentage of the time for a certain group of owners.
 
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I can see the advantage for a paper puncher from the reduced lock time. "Instant" is faster than "quick". :)

I'd worry about reliability for any other use, however. And the cost of primers for us handloaders was prohibitive. Factory ammo was not a giveaway, either.
 
There most certainly would be a "back up" mechanical means of operation for any function performed electrically. An electric trigger would likely give benefits to those who worry so much about trigger pull. By bypassing the mechanical interactions, you could set the trigger pull as low as possible and still have it operate safely. I agree with Art about paper punchers seeing the most utility, I can't imagine many hunters carrying electric rifles.

It's only a matter of time before someone tries to make a solar powered AR-15 though :p (please don't take the last comment seriously)
 
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I still think neither of us are thinking along the same lines when it comes to the car, so I'll give up my weak attempt at an analogy :rolleyes: I just think that electricity has a tendency to work its way into a lot of products, and I believe we will see the same trend for firearms. I don't think electric triggers will be more popular than standard mechanical ones, I just think they'll be available :o
 
What is an electrical safety doing that a mechanical one isn't already accomplishing without needing a power source.
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If a mechanical safety fails, and becomes UNSAFE, the firing pin or other ignition system will still be capable of firing a round unintentionally.

The electric safety is not only simple, but it is also fool proof. Period. If an electrical system is turned off by the safety, you cannot ignite the electronic primer. You'd have to have serious design flaws to create an electronically fired rifle that can accidentally go "off safe," because going off safe will require that unit to create accidental pathways for the electrical ignition charge to take to the primer.

Originally Posted by briandg
YOU CONTINUED TO MAKE THE MODEL 700 THAT WE HAVE PROVEN TO BE A FAULTY DEATH TRAP OF A WEAPON!?"
Click to expand...

I don't believe that's been proved, and I certainly don't believe it to be fact. I've owned several over the years and have never known them to be a "death trap", except when I wanted them to be lethal.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's a fact either, personally. I'm sure that there were some flawed units that could fire unintentionally. No mechanical thing is perfect.

The point in that comment was that to a lawyer prosecuting that suit, it is a fact. Reality is not germaine to the issue, only what the suit says, and that suit says that remington guns are death traps.

And believe me, the issue of abandoning what a lawyer could portray and possibly prove to have been a safer operating system, and continuing with the "old, flawed, death trap technology of the faulty 700 trigger that has been killing people for 50 years" could come up in court as proof that remington sought profits and held safety to be much lower in priorites.

I just spent $30 and bought a cell phone that has processing power almost equal to the guidance system of the old minuteman missile. You could create the electronic components of the electronically fired rifles for a few bucks; the only other expense would be the more complicated bolt, and the trigger system.

They will come back again, I think. Certainly not in combat weapons, and maybe not in competition, but I think that lots of people will eventually own them over the coming decades.
 
How would you like to hunt dangerous game with a battery powered rifle ?
You would definately want to use Energizer Batteries. :)
 
If electronic triggers in firearms are going to be as reliable as my cell phone or my laptop then you can keep them.

Compare it to the kick start and electric start on my motorbike, my electric start works MOST of the time, but my kick start works all of the time.
 
You said it, trg. The motorcycle analogy is perfect. I've wished that a couple of newer bikes still had a kickstarter more than once. Probably because I never worry about leaving the lights burning on the old ones.
 
If you look at W W Greener's book on firearms of the world, you will see that the electronic trigger has been around for a century or so. Beven the Tiger tank had an electronic trigger.
 
You know, I'm not really wanting to debate the merits of electric fire control. I think it could be great for prairie dogging or really low risk hunting, like deer from a stand, but definitely not for once in a lifetime trips, and to use electronic control in combat is insane, IMO

Any electronic device would be capable of failure, but so is a standard striker/hammer fired rifle. The standard mechanical action is, I'm sure, a whole lot less likely to fail, especially when abused or exposed to abnormal conditions. How many hundred year old firearms are still in use after being stepped on by elephants or being buried in damp warehouses for decades?

There's a lot of risk inherent in hunting kodiak bear. I'll guarantee you, nobody would be willing to trust an electronic trigger, no matter how reliable it is. I on the other hand, find it unbelievable that some people would hunt kodiak with a handgun. to me, the risk of either a messed up shot or a non-lethal hit on a bear the size of an abrams tank would be even greater than the risk of an electronic failure.
 
Definitely a good analogy on kick start.

As long as you kept the vehicle maintained, you could count on a 68 camaro to run every time you put the key in.

I think it was the early 80s that you had to start worrying about a chip breaking down and shutting your entire vehicle down until a mechanic tracked down what happened.

My mustang burned out a "black box" reliably ever 15-20k miles. Usually on the highway, miles from home. Give me a condenser and points instead of something that could break down in the middle of death valley with no warning.
 
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