The Aleksich lawsuit was over a 1988 incident similar to the one that killed Barber’s son. Fourteen-year-old Brent Aleksich was shot through both legs by his brother, Brock, when the Remington 700 Brock was holding fired after he released the safety, the lawsuit said.
Of course, the question I would have is why you were pointing a rifle at your brother’s legs? This is why we have the four rules. I don’t know enough about the Remington 700 to have an opinion as to whether the trigger is flawed, but this is why we don’t point guns at people.
My opinion is, I have a Rem 700 action that does that; it did it as a complete rifle, too, but I tore it down to have the action modified for a swap-barrel bench gun I never got around to building. I planned on changing out the trigger and safety when I got to it.
I believe that Remington has an issue there. I believe the 4 rules do a lot to prevent injuries.
But it’s one of my gripes. Ruger gets a lot of flack for its recalls. But was very pro-active. And the issues were very very minor.
Far worse recalls have been relegated to the back pages of websites. At least Ruger was open, honest and erred on safety. They should NEVER be criticized for that.
And Ruger’s recalls were NOT significant. I mean, if you are dropping your firearm, you are making an actual fault. Where as activating a safety SHOULD NEVER cause a firearm to fire. Granted, the four rules are there to prevent situations just like this.
This happens when a live round is loaded in the chamber, bolt closed, and the safety is released? The gun goes off? Yeah, that’s a definite defect. Thing is, I own one and I never had this happen in this circumstance. However, in doing some reading, it appears that Remington replaced the trigger system in the 700 models sometime around 2006 and apparently the new trigger (the X-Mark) does not have the problem. But the fact that there is a problem that was probably (quietly) acknowledged may be indicative of a cover-up. Remington should definitely be swapping out old triggers with X-Marks if this is the case and not complaining about it, either.
Remington, should post a HUGE SPLASH PAGE alerting everyone to the issue. They should then buy full page adds in NRA magazines and other magazines.
I mean, this is what Ruger did for a dropfire issue on the SR-9 that couldn’t be replicated by 90% of the people who tried to replicate the issue.
Let’s give flack where it is due…
My understanding of the “issue” is that, if someone’s monkeyed with the trigger, it can be induced to fail this way. In other words, only modified triggers failed. In a couple of cases I remember reading about (sorry, no sources to cite, as this was a couple-three years ago), the owners of the firearms finally admitted they had tried to “lighten” the trigger, which resulted in a failure. In a couple others, the people claiming malfunction were not the original owners of the rifles, and upon examination of the rifles, they all looked as though someone had botched a trigger job.
I have a Remington 700 from this time period, with original factory trigger, un-modified. I’ve tried to get it to do this, repeatedly, and haven’t been able to get it to malfunction once. My grandfather’s 700, likewise, steadfastly refuses to exhibit this failure.
I can only conclude, based on personal observation and memory, that this “defect” is no defect at all, but simple botched home-gunsmithing. Leave the Dremel alone, and your 700 should be fine.
I’ll change my opinion if and only if someone can present two examples of trigger malfunction on unmodified rifles. Not one, but two, to show a trend. So far, my opinion has been unshaken.
TLDR: Blaming Remington for this “issue” is like blaming Colt because your 1911 went full-auto on you after you tried to do a trigger job.
See my post below. I haven’t modified either trigger on either of my Remingtons. But had a definite safety induced triggering – albeit of a Remington 700ML. And they had the balls to charge me %100 to repair the trigger.
Fuck them.
The 700 has a trigger with three adjustment screws. One changes the pull weight, the other controls overtravel, and the third one sear engagement. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can easily get a trigger that will release the striker when you move the safety. In general, if you don’t monkey with the sear engagement, you’ll be fine.
I followed these instructions and ended up with a very nice, 3 pound trigger that passes all the safety tests.
CNBC has done a couple of documentaries about this. It is a real issue on older Remington 700s. Former employees and old Remington documentation show this to be a known problem that could have been fixed years ago, but wasn’t due to a very small cost issue (still much, much cheaper than recalling millions of rifles years later. They showed military videos of the guns going off untouched, and interviewed a range master who said that it happens so often at his range that they refer to it as “a Remington event.”
That entire segment was be.
All of those rifles had been altered. Even
The military rifles. They all had been altered.
I watched the same thing.
I recalled things the way John G just described them; but it was so long ago I didn’t want to comment from memory.
However I also could endorse what Kermit and pdb suggest; the 700 action I have was a rifle a “friend” picked up to use in some club “Production Class” Hunter matches, and after he didn’t do so well, suddenly offered it to me when I commented that I was thinking about building another bench gun. I would not be surprised if he or a prior owner diddled with the trigger. When I discovered the problem I was a little POed that he didn’t tell me about it before he sold it to me (which was a dangerous thing on his part, but probably kept the price up) but since I planned on working it and replacing the trigger anyway, I didn’t full around with trying to diagnose the cause. I just sent the barreled action off to have a fixed recoil lug welded onto the receiver. And then, life and making a living intervened. . .
Never had a problem. Mine is the best trigger. Best shooting gun I own.
From the seventies.
Literally Millions of M 700’s have been sold, if it was truly a defect ,you would think there would be more than a few incidents.
Modified or poorly adjusted triggers I can see this happening.
I also recall an article about getting dirt or grit in the trigger from not cleaning it, a good spray down with brake cleaner or spray gun cleaner does wonders.
This issue affects all Remington 700’s and predecessors (722 and 721) until at least early 80’s. However, Remington had a recall with a free fix for all guns affected from 1990 to at least 2006. I know this because I had a 1952 721 repaired under this program at Gander Mtn.
Red
Modifying a trigger = your fault
Adjustment screws = their fault
IMHO
I knew of the CNBC story but I guess I never actualy read the entire allegation (or perhaps I did before I had an incident). But reading this, it infuriates me. Enrages me even. And I would say this guy may have something here.
I have two Remington 700s. One, in .280 Remington, is fantastic and I’ve never had a problem with it. The other is an early Muzzleloader, the Remington 700ML. Yes, its a bolt action Muzzleloader (don’t ask). One issue with muzzleloaders is that cleaning them is a priority cause black powder is highly corrosive. Its also, somewhat impossible – especially on a modern inline muzzloader with a Remington 700 trigger system – to 100% clean all the little springs and nooks and cranies.
And so, over the years I guess mine had some corrosion developed. Which, perhaps should keep it from firing. Or make it less accurate. Neither happened. Instead, a couple of years ago I reached a point at the range (with the gun pointed safely downrange) where I switched the safety to fire, and as I did so, the gun fired. Boom. And scared the living daylights out of me. I also got yelled at because I hit the ceiling. Until the range officer realized – one the guy next to me that I didn’t actually fire it but that the gun fired itself when the safety was released.
I sent it in to Remington, and they charged me close to $100 to repair the trigger.
Reading this news article, I have steam coming out of my ears. Livid doesn’t even begin to describe my anger at Remington now.