Remington has documented problems with their trigger going back to 1946 when the engineer (Mike Walker) who designed the trigger went to Remington management and proposed a new design. They decided not to make the change.
In that time there have been somewhere between 5,000-10,000 (depending on whose source you believe) reported incidents of Remingtons firing without the trigger being pulled. Remington managment used to keep records, but they conviently decided they need some extra file space and destroyed all the records about 30 years ago.
there has never been a single reported case of a 700 going off spontaneously, it may have fired if dropped on a hard surface with the safety off but there is no such gun that has ever just gone off of it's own accord.
I've got one that has done it on more than one occasion. The trigger has never been modified since leaving the factory and it was as clean as is possible to keep a trigger mechanism. See the paragraph above. There are lots of others.
I am going to wave the big red BS flag on this one.
Remington's rebuttal to the hatchet job:
http://gunblog.com/remingtons-respon...gton-700-story
Remingtons rebuttal was carefully scripted by company lawyers. Lawyers spend years in school learning how to not tell the truth without crossing the line into a lie. This is a perfect example.
Which remingtons went off like this?
Any Remington bolt action rifle made from 1946-2007 could do it at any time, or may never do it. Remington changed to almost the exact trigger in 2007 that was proposed by Mike Walker in 1946.
I've owned 2 700's, 2 788's and am about to own a 722. I have NEVER had one go off by it's self either. Probably someone adjusted the trigger down to nothing which the factory trigger isn't designed for, or is scapegoating Remington for their own mistake.
Improperly adjusting the trigger, or having a dirty trigger improves the odds of it happening. But there are too many cases of perfectly clean, unmodifed triggers doing this to blame all the problems on the shooters. Just because it never happened to you proves nothing. I've never been struck by lightening, but I know it happens.
OK, lets take the case where the round went though the camper injuring the child..............what would happen if that rifle was pointed up and down range like it was suppose to be...... no injury, no property damage.
Partially correct. If my gun fires, whether I pull the trigger or not I am responsible for where the bullet goes. If the gun fires because of a factory defect, that is on the company who made the rifle.
There is no safe direction for an accidential discharge. Even if the gun had been pointed up would it have made the mother feel better if it had come down and hit another hunter 2 miles away. Just an incident happened a few months ago when an Amish girl was killed when a shooter fired his muzzle loader into the air in order to unload his gun. A shot fired into the ground can ricochett or fragment injuring others in the area. In fact the bullet that hit the boy struck the trailer twice changing direction each time before hitting her son. It may well have done the same thing if it had gone off pointing down into the ground in front of her. Even if her son had been standing behind her. There is no way to predict where a bullet will end up when it ricochets.
But, I have read that the 'improved' bolt is still subject to unwanted firings.
I have heard of no problems with the new trigger doing this unless it was perfectly clear that the owner had modifed the trigger. You do sometimes hear of ANYgun doing this if the trigger is improperly modified. Remington is the only design that has a habit of doing it on it's own. And the evidence is overwhelming.
This isn't something new, lots of guys are blaming CNBC of a hatchet job, but anyone who wasn't fully aware of Remingtons problems at least 30 years ago is either just getting into shooting or has been living under a rock for 30 years.