DuckSouth.com

Anyone else see the show they had on the Remington 700 last night? It was all about how they have a tendancy to go off without the trigger being touched when the safety is turned off. I own 3 Remington 700's and have never had a problem out of one of them. They talked to a bunch of folks who had family members die as a result of, what they said to be the gun firing without the trigger being touched. They also talked to the guy who invented the gun and the trigger in question. He said the trigger was flawed from the beginning and tried to get them to make it differently after the first round of production went out in the 1940's. They never did change it even when they were getting thousands of people writing in complaining of the same problem.

I have worked behind a gun counter of 3 outdoor retail stores from high school til graduating college , and own 3 and have worked on the trigger on all 3 of them, and read plenty of articles about working on the triggers. All this and I had never even heard of this problem.

My question is had anyone heard of this before now, or encountered this problem personnaly?

Yes had a buddy about to shoot a good buck 2 years ago click the safety off and the gun fired. His dad didn't belief him, they took it out and got it to do it 2 more times. He sent it back to remington and they fixed it no questions asked.

Wish I'd seen this earlier. Always been a winchester rifle fan. Earlier this month I broke down and bought a Model 700 CDL for my son for his 16th birthday. Beautiful gun but now I'm leery.

Dr. B

how many of those accidents could have been prevented with proper gun safety??? i've only heard of this when people do trigger jobs and get them too light...

Dr. B wrote:Wish I'd seen this earlier. Always been a winchester rifle fan. Earlier this month I broke down and bought a Model 700 CDL for my son for his 16th birthday. Beautiful gun but now I'm leery.

Dr. B

They've changed it in recent years that you can unload your gun without switching the safety off. That was the big complaint that when people would switch the safety off to unload it, the gun would go off

dukmisr2005 wrote:how many of those accidents could have been prevented with proper gun safety??? i've only heard of this when people do trigger jobs and get them too light...

All of them. The main story was a mom was unloading her gun after hunting and she shot her son who was standing on the other side of the horse trailer. She didn't know he was there, but if she had it pointing at the ground. But it truely was a freak accident. Other accidents were people that were accidents in the house when they were showing their guns off. But in my opinion, people who have loaded deer rifles in their house and showing it to their friends, aren't the brightest folks. So I don't really trust their word that they didn't accidentally touch the trigger.

Preach on dura

i always point mine up and away from people when unloading...

duramax wrote:

dukmisr2005 wrote:how many of those accidents could have been prevented with proper gun safety??? i've only heard of this when people do trigger jobs and get them too light...

All of them. The main story was a mom was unloading her gun after hunting and she shot her son who was standing on the other side of the horse trailer. She didn't know he was there, but if she had it pointing at the ground. But it truely was a freak accident. Other accidents were people that were accidents in the house when they were showing their guns off. But in my opinion, people who have loaded deer rifles in their house and showing it to their friends, aren't the brightest folks. So I don't really trust their word that they didn't accidentally touch the trigger.

My father has owned one since the early 80's and i have had several over the years and still own one today. From what I understand they corrected the problem years ago.

dukmisr2005 wrote:how many of those accidents could have been prevented with proper gun safety??? i've only heard of this when people do trigger jobs and get them too light...

There are two issues here. One being gun safety. The other issue is design defect. I dont know about you but I dont want to have a gun that goes off when you click the safety off. I dont care how careful you are with the muzzle.

It came back on last night and I got to watch it this time. In the early 80's we had Model 600s that would go off when you closed the bolt. We sent them back to Rem and they fixed them. The show did say that the recalled the Model 600s, but have not done it for the 700s.. After the show I went in and check my 3 Rem. The 700 and the 600 you had to push the safety off to unload it, but not on the model 7.

Remington sure could have done a better job of handeling this issue. Covering it up and not correcting the issue when they apparently knew about it sure does give big green a big black eye IMO.

The 700 did have this problem. Everybody is correct in what they have said. If you had 1 of them, Remington did NOTIFY
BIG TIME ABOUT THE PROBLEM. I didn't notice either til my 7 mag went off in my truck, doors and windows closed. I was not hurt
cept for the NOISE!!!! and a hole trough part of the motor.

I returned the 7 mag to Remington, they repaired it cleaned it up and returned it.
Wish I had known earlier!!!!!!

DUKLUVR wrote:The 700 did have this problem. Everybody is correct in what they have said. If you had 1 of them, Remington did NOTIFY
BIG TIME ABOUT THE PROBLEM.

That was the issue. They did NOT notify owners that there was a problem. The only rifles they recalled were the 600's. I own 3 700's, worked in hunting retail in high school thru college, and have worked on all of the triggers after reading up on how to lighten them. I had never heard of this problem. Not ever was there a public notice, nor did I ever read on this issue when I researched how to customize the 700's trigger.

I had this happen to me in the early 80's. I was unloading it in my truck because it was raining outside. I had the gun in the passenger seat pointing down toward the door. Click the safety off and BOOM! Shot a hole through my door and had a ringing in my ear for quite a while.

The only time I've ever heard of something like that happening was with a browning. Always having a winchester with a 3 point safety, it never occured to me that you had to turn the safety off to load or unload a gun. My buddy and I had just come out of the woods when we were both unloading our rifles at the truck. Suddenly, his went off as he was unloading it. It scared me so bad I couldn't sleep that night. Thank God he is a safe hunter and had it pointed at the ground when it fired.

Evidently you have to turn the safety off to pull the bolt back to get the bullet out of the chamber (or to pull it back to bolt on into the chamber). That just flys in the face of common sense and logic to me. Why in the H3LL would design a gun you have to turn the safety off to do anything but fire it?

Dr. B