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Anyone watch the 60 minutes hit piece on the Remington 700 going off by itself, without the trigger being touched or pulled?

It was the cause of class action lawsuit that ended with Remington recalling all their 700 series rifles without admitting any guilt.

Never had a problem with a 700 stock trigger, even after adjusting them down to 3 lbs for a hunting rifle. The rest were changed out with Jewells.

Yep, watched it. In fact, The Wife gave me a heads up on it in time to text a few buddies to watch it too. Tonight's show indicates a possible problem even with their newer trigger. But there are still over 7 million of them out there with the original "Walker" trigger.

In all of our hunter ed classes we have a segment where anyone who has had an unintentional discharge of any kind gets to tell the class what happened. In the past 20 years of doing the classes, I have had at least a dozen students describe their 700s going off unexpectedly. Sometimes by simply taking the safety off or working the bolt to chamber or unchamber a round. One our other hunter ed instructors has heard similar from about the same number of students (and sit-in parents) that I have.

Another instructor from Lubbock had a story of his own from the 1980s. Fearful of letting his 11 yo unload a .243 around other people, he took it (ADL model) from him and began jacking rounds out on the ground. The first few went fine, but the last one blew out side window of (unoccupied) Suburban then exited the roof. And as a certified hunter ed instructor, he had 2 hours to drive home and explain that one to his wife.

Caviot, I only load one bullet at a time, and I don't ride or walk around with a round in the chamber " only a few in my front pocket". I only neck size rifle bullets and set the bullet in a bit long and slightly loose. They set themselves against the lands. I rarely unload a live round.

Greybeard wrote:Yep, watched it. In fact, The Wife gave me a heads up on it in time to text a few buddies to watch it too. Tonight's show indicates a possible problem even with their newer trigger. But there are still over 7 million of them out there with the original "Walker" trigger.

In all of our hunter ed classes we have a segment where anyone who has had an unintentional discharge of any kind gets to tell the class what happened. In the past 20 years of doing the classes, I have had at least a dozen students describe their 700s going off unexpectedly. Sometimes by simply taking the safety off or working the bolt to chamber or unchamber a round. One our other hunter ed instructors has heard similar from about the same number of students (and sit-in parents) that I have.

Another instructor from Lubbock had a story of his own from the 1980s. Fearful of letting his 11 yo unload a .243 around other people, he took it (ADL model) from him and began jacking rounds out on the ground. The first few went fine, but the last one blew out side window of (unoccupied) Suburban then exited the roof. And as a certified hunter ed instructor, he had 2 hours to drive home and explain that one to his wife.

I own three Remington 700s and never had a problem. All three were manufactured in the 60s.
Back in the late 70s I went hunting with a friend [who was in my hunter safety class].
His Remington 700 30-06 rifle discharged a round when he engaged the safety.
Fortunately the muzzle was pointed in a safe direction.
He got a big blood blister on his thumb from the recoil.

Watched it with great interest. I recently got my great grand fathers Model 721 in 30.06. It was manufactured in 1951 and has the Walker trigger. My Dad had it for many years. The last time he hunted with it, it fired when he released the safety to unload the rifle. Fortunately it was pointed at the ground away from camp. That was many years ago and he didn't use the rifle after that.

I had done some research and found many complaints about the rifle firing without the trigger being pull. I also saw the lawsuit that was approved in 2014 and is still waiting for approval from a judge. I took the rifle to a range and couldn't make it malfunction.

I contacted Remington support and explained the above situation. They sent a pre paid shipping label and said that they will repair it under warranty. It was shipped to them about 2 weeks ago and I am waiting to hear back. I will post their answer and solution when I get it.

I'm guessing that they will replace the trigger in an effort to avoid a potential law suit should it malfunction again and cause damage.

gguess66 wrote:Anyone watch the 60 minutes hit piece on the Remington 700 going off by itself, without the trigger being touched or pulled?

I missed it. Sounds like an interesting piece. Is this the article version?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/popular-rem ... y-defects/

If so, then this is probably the youtube clip from JimmyDickens1 they used to describe the failure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa0cNr2_fSE

Acronym 2/20/2017 9:38 AM

If some of the model 700's can be as dangerous as some here have experienced was the 60 minutes really a hit piece or did they say untrue things...?

I watched the whole article. I don' think it is fair to call it a hit piece. They exposed some pretty damning evidence against Remington, which appears to be validated by some of the comments in this thread.

They're still flogging this dead chestnut? Must be a slow news day. Maybe they're worn out by trying to take down Trump and failing.

I find it interesting that ,although I have read of antecdotal evidence, I have not a single scientific study nor of a single successful law suit despite today's letigious society.

I didn't see the 60 minute piece, I haven't watched 60 minutes in years, so I can't comment on anything they aired. I do believe that there is still a contingent out there, who looks for anything to demonstrate how "dangerous" guns are. I mean, just think, if the family was sitting around the dinner table, and dad got his model 70 out and without touching the trigger killed a child eating his mashed potatoes. If they can show how deadly non-military looking, bolt action hunting rifles are, they can then make the leap that a semi auto "assault weapons of war" would suddenly go full auto mode while riding in a car, and kill hundreds of people.

If there were/are issues with the trigger/safety, on model 70s they should have gotten them fixed by now. If not then it needs to be addressed with recalls, or reimbursements. All of the incidents, that have been listed here, involved guns which were pointed in a safe direction (with the possible exception of the Suburban) Which is one the most basic firearms handling rules. JMHO

The Annoyed Man wrote:They're still flogging this dead chestnut? Must be a slow news day. Maybe they're worn out by trying to take down Trump and failing.

Jusme wrote:I didn't see the 60 minute piece, I haven't watched 60 minutes in years, so I can't comment on anything they aired. I do believe that there is still a contingent out there, who looks for anything to demonstrate how "dangerous" guns are. I mean, just think, if the family was sitting around the dinner table, and dad got his model 70 out and without touching the trigger killed a child eating his mashed potatoes. If they can show how deadly non-military looking, bolt action hunting rifles are, they can then make the leap that a semi auto "assault weapons of war" would suddenly go full auto mode while riding in a car, and kill hundreds of people.

If there were/are issues with the trigger/safety, on model 70s they should have gotten them fixed by now. If not then it needs to be addressed with recalls, or reimbursements. All of the incidents, that have been listed here, involved guns which were pointed in a safe direction (with the possible exception of the Suburban) Which is one the most basic firearms handling rules. JMHO

It's just that this "story" is maybe 5 or 6 years old by now......and it keeps cropping up at regular intervals. They keep trotting out the same "witnesses". BTW, it's Remington's 700, not Winchester's 70 that is the focus of blame here. It's interesting to me that, after all the alleged witnesses to these rifles just going off by themselves, nobody has been able to duplicate the problem in a controlled setting.

Now, I will say this...... I have a Remington 700, and I DID have a problem with the rifle "firing" on closing the bolt........fortunately with no rounds in the rifle at the time. But the problem was easily traced. I had hired a gunsmith to lighten the factory trigger, which he did do, to a pull weight of about 2.5 lbs. The trigger worked great for a while, but after some time and a number of rounds, apparently whatever screw or mechanism kept it at that pull weight loosed up or something, and the pull weight essentially became 0 lbs. I took it back to him, he fixed it, and was profusely apologetic. But following that, I ordered a Timney, which my son and I installed and set to 2.25 lbs, and the rifle has been utterly reliable since then.

But my point is that, before I ever installed that Timney, we took a stock trigger, modified it to make it lighter, and the modification made it unsafe. Prior to having modified it, It was dead nuts reliable. It just had a heavier pull than I wanted, although it broke very cleanly. It was my decision to modify it that resulted in an unsafe trigger. Replacing the OEM trigger with one of higher quality that was designed to be adjustable and remain safe, not only restored the reliability of the original, but gave me the trigger feel I wanted.

I've had a bone stock Bushmaster AR15 slam fire on me a couple of times. Turned out to be the too-hot handloads, and not the rifle's fault. I did experience a couple of doublings with my XDS45 before returning it during the recall period. In that case, it was the gun's fault because of a design flaw. But in neither case did the gun "just fire by itself" when it wasn't being fired by me.

My mother once told me that the reason her car drove into the back interior wall of their garage was because "her car just leapt into gear and surged forward" without any input from her. Hmmmmm..... maybe. Apparently, it was the same thing that happened when she (TWICE!!!) backed her car into someone else's car in the supermarket parking lot. Then there was the time that her car "suddenly leapt forward" and rear ended the car in front of hers, in a line of cars waiting at a traffic light. Over time, this happened another two or three times, in more than one brand of car, over the course of a few years, both when she was trying to move the car, and when she was trying NOT to move the car. At some point, I stopped believing her when she said that her car did some damage to something else all by its onesies, without any input from her. Under the best of circumstances, my mother has always been a terrible driver. If you can imagine a spastic individual trying to walk, that's my mom behind the wheel of a car. Praise Jesus, she gave up driving a couple of years ago when she could no longer deny either her diminished capacities, nor her complete lack of the motoring gene. Now, a number of those incidents occurred when she was at the height of her powers. We're talking about a woman who had published more than a dozen books by then, and was a professor on the faculty of Caltech. But she just couldn't manage a car to save her life, and she was too proud to admit her lack of qualification in that area of her life.

Well, there are people who, no matter their rights, probably shouldn't have a gun either........or at least maybe not something so complicated as a bolt action rifle. Maybe a single-shot break-action is more their speed.

i don't watch 60 Minutes. They can slant any story they do to their own political beliefs. Anyone who thinks that the Remington 700 doesn't have problems though has their head in the sand. Remington has had recalls on this gun it seems like forever. I can't remember when I first started seeing recalls printed in gun magazines. This rifle needs to have the trigger fixed. Send it back, do whatever it takes. The problem is that people don't pay attention to the recalls.

TAM, you don't believe your mother? Seems like some Prius owners had similar problems and won some big lawsuits. My wife's Prius has never had a problem but these things all run on software. The automatic breaking sometimes can really surprise you when it goes off.