what is it with Remingtons?

[allaroundhunter]

When Remington kept getting reports of this happening, they offered to take a look at the guns and tried to mimic the malfunction that caused the supposed AD. Hardly any of the guns that were claimed to have problems were actually sent in, and of those that were, not a single one could be made to discharge without the trigger being pulled. There was video evidence of some of the tests, and you can watch some of them. Some users claimed that closing the bolt too hard caused an AD, but when a rifle with that "defect" was sent in, the bolt was rammed home over and over and nothing happened. While AD's do happen, they are not as widespread as many will have you believe.

I fully believe that JMR40 has problems with his, but if I was him, I would at least call Remington to give them a chance to fix it (on their dime).

That being said, I absolutely love my Remington 700. For a long range target gun, it is hard to beat. Now, don't take me for a fan boy, I also enjoy my Savage, and it is my big game and hog gun.

Sent from my HTC One X

[Scott429]

accidents happen, equipment fails, welcome to the real world. I have seen a few oops happen, the men say my bad and dont let it happen again. The rest say it was the guns fault and bash the manufacturer or some other excuse. Yes there have been unintended discharges but they are exteremly rare with the major manufacturers and unmodified firearms. The press seems to feed off of this sort of thing and hypes the crap out of it. I have made a few mistakes in my life but I blame nothing and no one but myself.

[guf]

Search Rem. Walker trigger and come to an INFORMED conclusion after seeing/reading all the all that is presented! jmr40 tells it like it is

[BIG P]

My 700 has k's & k's of rounds fired,No problems in 35 years.
I'D buy one now if it was a good deal.

[old roper]

Here is something from Remington

http://www.drinnonlaw.com/docs/Remington-79-80-Memo.pdf

[JimPage]

lognierbill: Pressing the trigger and releasing it then clicking off the safety is dangerous with any gun. That is taught in the Hunter Education classes that are nationally recognized. I doubt that it is peculiar to Remingtons.

[emcon5]

Here is something from Remington

http://www.drinnonlaw.com/docs/Remington-79-80-Memo.pdf

Excerpt:

..a gun capable of being "tricked" into firing when the safety lever is released. "Tricked" in this context means, safety lever placed in between "safe" and "fire" positions, trigger is then pulled, and the safety lever is subsequently moved to the "fire" position and the gun discharges.

So let me get this straight: Some people are really bent because Remington didn't recall 2 million rifles so they could find the ~20,000 that may be susceptible to going off when the trigger is pulled after the rifle is not put on safe. "Between "safe" and "fire" positions" is not on safe.

I also recall from the video, they guy who is came up with the dirty trigger theory has never been able to get a Remington 700 to go off in the conditions he describes. You know, the guy who makes half of his income from testifying against gun companies.

[Big Shrek]

I've got numerous firearms and NONE of them can be set off by placing them on "Safe", pulling the trigger, then moving the safety lever to "FIRE"
That to me would indicate a faulty design.

Remington is the only MFR that I've run across this particular problem with...

That being said, the Marlin X-7 series is less expensive, Sub-MOA from the box, and hasn't got any dangerous issues...
Heck, I'd even go with Savage or a Japanese Weatherby before I grabbed a Remmy 7-series

[emcon5]

I've got numerous firearms and NONE of them can be set off by placing them on "Safe", pulling the trigger, then moving the safety lever to "FIRE"
That to me would indicate a faulty design.

What about halfway between "safe" and "fire"? That is apparently the problem here.

[Bart B.]

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2...on-under-fire/

I knew a Remington field rep years ago that quit Remington in the 1970's over the Rem. 700 trigger problems not being properly addressed; he started his own gun shop business. It's also why he used a Win. 70 action to shoot matches.

As usual, when something goes bad with anything, there'll be countless numbers of people using the same "thing" without incident. A 1/10th percent failure rate does not include every "thing" made. It means that 1 in 1,000 "things" will probably go bad. If there's 10,000 "things," 10 of them will go bad. If someones' use of "things" without problems gets them to belive it happened somewhere outside their environment is BS, their reasoning's flawed. Proof of this is they don't know their reasoning's flawed.

The issue at hand is, nobody knows when their "thing" may go bad when others with that "thing" have had it go bad; it might be tomorrow or 93 years from now or in 10 operations from now or maybe 7,654 times from now. So folks get to decide what their own margin of safety is and whether or not they'll accept the consequences.

Friend of mine had mentioned to his daughter and son in law they really should wear seatbelts in their car. Both told my friend the odds were in their favor of surviving. A few days later, they rolled their car; both were ejected. Only his daughter survived but stayed alive hospitalized for about a month before passing.

[Big Shrek]

What about halfway between "safe" and "fire"? That is apparently the problem here.

Technically, that shouldn't happen either...it should either be ON or OFF...
shouldn't be any stop at Halfway...it ain't a half-cock like on a lever-action

Also shouldn't fire when you close the bolt...which is another issue Remmy seems to have in several models...

[coyota1]

Providing this document is real, and not fabricated to perpetuate the myth, the 788 and the 722 are not mentioned.

[emcon5]

Technically, that shouldn't happen either...it should either be ON or OFF...
shouldn't be any stop at Halfway

There isn't a stop, a Rem 700 Safety is 2 position.

[Chettt]

I don't like NBC, lawyers or antigun people but I believe Remington built a wonderful rifle that has a safety issue and should have fixed it. Any hunting rifle that is used only two weeks a year will last two, three maybe four hundred years. How many people are going to own this rifle and fully understand how the safety works? As the rifle ages, will there be an increase in these accidental discharges? Are there decades of complaints of Lee Enfields, Mosin's etc. discharging while bumping the bolt or taking off the safety?

[emcon5]

I believe Remington built a wonderful rifle that has a safety issue and should have fixed it

Then you need to re-read the "smoking gun" posted by old roper above. The claim seems to be that "if you do something to you rifles it was not designed to do, pull the trigger with the safety positioned somewhere between "safe" and "fire", 1% of them might go off if you put it to fire"

And an ambulance-chaser-paid-expert-witness came up with the theory that if somehow dirt gets inside your trigger in exactly the right place, under the disconnector, it could go off, even though he has never actually got a Rem 700 to go off this way, or found one that conclusively had.

Unless there is more damning evidence that this or what was in he MSNBC piece, I am going to continue to call this BS.

[gaseousclay]

i'm curious. a lot of you seem to defend Remington and their faulty triggers like it's not an issue. some of you also state that other gun manufacturers inevitably have the same issue. i've never heard of any other firearm company that has had 'accidental' discharges with their rifles due to trigger design flaws. user error maybe, but not because of a flaw. are there any statistics available that show fatalities caused by gun discharges by companies other than Remington?

[coyota1]

i'm curious. a lot of you seem to defend Remington and their faulty triggers like it's not an issue

Because a lot of us own Remington rifles which includes me, and have not had the problems with triggers. I'm not convinced at all that the trigger groups are faulty. I do NOT believe the charges anymore than I believe in the tooth fairy. Not until I hear or see something concrete, empirical, or believable.

[tahunua001]

I'm with Coyota1. there has not been a single bit of solid evidence that these malfunctions are not user error rather than faulty design. that is like saying that glocks are notorious for accidental discharge because of their design rather than the fact that the knuckleheads with the ADs were doing something they weren't supposed to at the time.

[.300 Weatherby Mag]

I've got a new SPS with the X-Mark Pro trigger. Mine is crisp and after setting the pull (per their instructions) to 3-1/2 lbs works just fine. I think the tinkerers are at fault with that issue.

I have a 700, that I bought new that came with the Walker Trigger.. With a completely unmodified trigger, it would fire when you took the safety off... I've never seen another rifle did it, nor have any of my other Remington 700s done this... Remington replaced the walker trigger with the X-Mark Pro, piece of crap... Remington admitted no fault, but did replace the trigger at no charge... AND NO MY FINGER WASN'T ANYWHERE NEAR THE TRIGGER WHEN I TOOK THE SAFETY OFF!!!

[jmr40]

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...Rem_Doc_07.pdf

Here is a letter from Remington's repair facility admitting that they were able to reproduce the problem.

More evidence

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...Rem_Doc_08.pdf

Of 133 Remington 700's sent in that year Remingtons own people could get 89 of them to fire without pulling the trigger.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...Rem_Doc_09.pdf

Mike Walkers 1948 letter urging Remington to change the trigger.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...Rem_Doc_03.pdf

A 1947 letter from engineers advising Remington management of a dangerous trigger

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...Rem_Doc_02.pdf

Another letter from Mike Walker advising Remington management of a dangerous situation.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sec...Rem_Doc_06.pdf

Various customer complaints

[jmr40]

Just to make sure others understand my intentions. I'm not a Remington hater. I am not advocating anyone boycott the company. Current Remington management did not cause this problem. They inherited it from a management group that no longer works there and where most, if not all are dead now.

The guys who are burying their heads in the sand and refuse to see the obvious are going to get someone killed by just not simply addressing the issue. I've known about this issue since the late 70's when Remington was hit with a flurry of lawsuits resulting in them changing the safety so the gun could be unloaded with it in the "safe" position. There were Programs on TV back then just like the CNBC program. The CNBC program broke no new ground and did not report a single fact that had not been common knowledge for 30 years and well known within Remington management for over 60 years.

Even Remington ran full page ads in the shooting and hunting magazines urging Remingon owners to send in their rifles to be retro-fitted with the new safety. Yet some guys seem to think that CNBC is trying to do a hatchet job on your favorite gun company.

If I can just get one knucklehead to understand that a Remington can quite possibly discharge on it's own might save one persons life. And you had better believe it is possible. Clueless people who simply ignore the problem give a false sense of security. I own Remingtons and if they ever make something else I like I'll buy another. But you better believe that they get carried with an extra measure of caution. As long as you understand the problem is extremely rare, but extremely real, and if extra caution is used you'll be fine.

[emcon5]

Originally Posted by gaseousclay

i'm curious. a lot of you seem to defend Remington and their faulty triggers like it's not an issue

What evidence you have that the triggers are faulty?

If there is some actual evidence, I will be happy to change my opinion, but lacking anything at all, the only "fault" I can find is that any moron with a small screwdriver can monkey with them and make them unsafe.

One of mine (early 1980s BDL) was like that when I got it. Way too light, way too little sear engagement. It has since been fixed, and I can beat on the rifle with a rubber mallet with the rifle cocked and safety off without it going off.

Originally Posted by jmr40

Here is a letter from Remington's repair facility admitting that they were able to reproduce the problem.

Well, they could reproduce a problem, but they don't specify what the problem they could reproduce was. The listed problem on the both rifles was a binding firing pin head, and the 600 had a binding safety. What exactly was the symptom those rifles were returned for? Binding firing pins were pretty much the opposite of rifles firing uncommanded, aren't they?

Originally Posted by jmr40

Of 133 Remington 700's sent in that year Remingtons own people could get 89 of them to fire without pulling the trigger.

No. "Unable to duplicate" means they could not get the rifle to go off. Of the 133 complaints 44 were verified, but there is no info in that document as to what those complaints were. They had ~75 reports of 700s going off by themselves (which I admit seems high) that they could not duplicate, the other unable to duplicate problems were different.

Originally Posted by jmr40

Mike Walkers 1948 letter urging Remington to change the trigger.

I can hardly read that, but OK. I agree, A trigger block on the safety is a good idea. It does not automatically mean that a safety without a trigger block is defective.

That being said, the old 700 safety design that locked the bolt was stupid.

Originally Posted by jmr40

A 1947 letter from engineers advising Remington management of a dangerous trigger

Actually, that says some of the parts are "out of design limits", which "can be be very dangerous from a safety and functional point of view" Were there any follow on memos that either the design limits were revised to meet the out-of-spec parts, or were the parts inspected and improved so they meet the specs?

Originally Posted by jmr40

Another letter from Mike Walker advising Remington management of a dangerous situation.

Which he fixed: "This change will be incorporated in the drawing as soon as tool procurement is completed". It is also referring to the 721 trigger, which predates the Remington 700.

Originally Posted by jmr40

Various customer complaints

What were the results of those complaints? What did Remington find when they inspected the rifles?

Originally Posted by jmr40

If I can just get one knucklehead to understand that a Remington can quite possibly discharge on it's own might save one persons life.

You should be getting the knuckleheads to understand that any firearm is potentially dangerous, and mechanical safeties do not cancel out the need for basic firearms safety. Any of those tragedies could have been averted by application of Rule # 2: "Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy."

[Clark]

I am nobody, so nothing can happen to me from badmouthing Rem700 actions, unlike Jack Belk, "past president of the American Custom Gunmaker's Guild".
You may remember his posting on AR last decade as "J Belk".

My schpeal contains only one complaint about the safety:
One can modify a Rem700 to try to bring it up to Win M70 standards:
1) Glue a shroud to the receiver to get a flat receiver bottom to resist bullet twist torque.
2) Get a Sako extractor modification to replace weak extractor with a bigger extractor.
3) Safety blocks trigger, not firing pin..... Gentry 3 position safety on firing pin
4) Recoil lug not attached... drill lug and receiver and then pin together.
5) Barrel may shake loose, apply glue. Vaughn also has proposed Rem700 design change.
6) Bolt handle soldered on and will break off, TIG weld on handle stronger
7) Not controlled feed... no cure
8) Plunger ejector instead of knife blade ejector... no cure
9) Failed case head shoots shooter in the eye with gas... wear eye protection

What does it all mean?
Rem 700 is the most stripped down nothing of a bolt action available. Of ~ 100 actions with the Rem700 at one end of the spectrum and custom Mausers [M70 parts added] at the other, all of the other actions in between are a trade off between the expensive to manufacture Mauser and the cheap to manufacture Rem700.

What does this mean to you?
The Rem700 action is so cheap to make, they can afford a better barrel.
So for the same price, the Rem700 is more accurate.

No one I know of uses Rem700 for dangerous game, but with eye protection, it may be the best choice for ground squirrels.

[nimbleVagrant]

Doesn't the Army and Marine Corps use the 700 action on dangerous game?

[mete]

Yes they use it as a sniper rifle !! I don't know what trigger is used though.

J.Belk -I couldn't remember the name when I posted before .Not considered credible by most gunsmiths.

Safe on - pull trigger - fires as safety is put OFF. I've seen this in 22 pistols ,the first was my own !! These were not defective design but incorrect dimension parts .It gets your attention !