Courthouse News Service:

Gunmaker Remington has asked a judge to halt what it characterized as an unreasonable and unconstitutional demand by the Massachusetts attorney general for its customer information.

Remington Arms Co. filed the petition for injunctive relief on Aug. 29 in Suffolk County Superior Court, saying Attorney General Maura Healey’s civil investigation demand is “excessively burdensome” and tramples the Fourth Amendment rights of the company and its customers.

“The AG’s demand that Remington produce each of the Product Service files without redacting customer identifying information violates the privacy rights of its customers, chills lawful conduct in exercise of the Second Amendment, and substantially interferes with Remington’s business and customer good will,” the petition states.

Remington’s demand comes on the heels of a March 9 civil investigation demand by Healey, seeking a copy of each product service file Remington has for every one of its customers.

Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office, said the demand is part of an investigation into how often Remington’s guns had potentially dangerous defects.

“There are scores of public reports about defects involving firearms, including accidental firing, misfiring, overheating problems and low ‘trigger pull’ leading to horrific stories of accidental shootings by children,” Roy Gonzalez said in an email.

Lack of product-safety oversight in the gun industry makes demands like these critical, the spokeswoman added.

“Many years ago, the gun industry managed to exempt itself from federal consumer product safety oversight, resulting in no public access to consumer complaints about the guns they manufacture,” Roy Gonzalez said. “This lack of transparency is unlike nearly every other consumer product sold in this country. As the chief law enforcement office in Massachusetts, we are seeking that information to better inform our residents and to protect them from any safety or manufacturing issues with guns sold here. It’s unfortunate that these gun manufacturers have taken our office to court rather than comply with a simple request for consumer complaints and related information.”

Here is a test question for readers.  Where in the constitution of her state does it give SJW Healey the right to demand customer information over an investigation into product safety when no laws have been broken?  In case you missed that one, here’s an extra credit question worth 100%.  Where does the constitution of her state give the AG the right to spend taxpayer money to perform studies and inform citizens concerning her opinions on product safety, or to rank products according to her own criteria?

Every reader should have scored 200% on that examination.  It’s a shame that Remington has to petition the court for injunctive relief, rather than gathering some local gun owners, apprehending Maura Healey and using some hemp rope to hang her from the nearest lamp post as an example to other social justice warriors to mind their own damn business.

Prior:

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey Attacks Gun Manufacturers

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s Crusade Against Guns

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is now known for fabricating gun control laws ex nihilo, just because she wants to, for no other reason than to be a bully.  So is Ms. social justice warrior finished?  Not on your life.  She’s just beginning, at least until someone punches back.

The Boston Globe:

Attorney General Maura Healey has launched a sweeping investigation into possible safety problems involving guns manufactured by at least two major companies, Remington and Glock, according to lawsuits filed by both firms, which are fighting Healey’s efforts.

The lawsuits reveal that this year, Healey invoked her powers under the state’s consumer protection law to demand that both companies turn over a wide range of documents, including safety-related complaints from customers and the companies’ responses.

The investigation is the second prominent battle Healey is waging against the gun industry. In July, she angered gun owners and manufacturers when she moved to bar the sale of military-style rifles that have been altered slightly to evade the state’s ban on assault weapons.

In her newly disclosed legal action, Healey argues Glock firearms are “prone to accidental discharge” and makes clear in court papers that she is concerned the company may have been warned about the problem and failed to act.

Responding to Glock’s lawsuit, she referenced news stories about a sheriff’s deputy accidentally firing a Glock pistol in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice, a Los Angeles police officer who was paralyzed from the waist down after his 3-year-old son accidentally fired his Glock pistol, and a Massachusetts man who was dancing at a July 4th party when his Glock handgun fired while it was in his pocket.

The attorney general said her ban on so-called “copycat” assault weapons is clear, enforceable, and already working.

A Healey spokeswoman said the attorney general is asking gun manufacturers to turn over customer safety complaints because firearms are one of the only products not regulated by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“As the chief law enforcement office in Massachusetts, we are seeking that information to better inform our residents and to protect them from any safety or manufacturing issues with guns sold here,” Cyndi Roy Gonzalez said. “It’s unfortunate that these gun manufacturers have taken our office to court rather than comply with a simple request for consumer complaints and related information.”

Both Remington and Glock have sued Healey in Suffolk Superior Court, arguing that she is abusing her authority by casting a broad net for documents, including those related to accidental discharges, past lawsuits, legal settlements, and product recalls.

Glock Inc.’s lawsuit asks the court to quash Healey’s inquiry.

The company, based in Smyrna, Ga., points to statements Healey has made calling gun violence a “public health crisis” and an “epidemic” to argue the “true purpose” of her investigation is “to harass an industry that the attorney general finds distasteful and to make political headlines by pursing members of the firearm industry.”

Healey responds in court papers that Glock’s contention that she is politically motivated is “both incorrect and irrelevant,” given the concerns she has about the company’s handguns firing accidentally. She also says the state’s consumer protection law clearly gives her the authority to investigate safety concerns about products, including guns, that are available in Massachusetts.

Glocks can be sold only to law enforcement officers in Massachusetts, because consumer sales are banned under state law. As such, Glock argues, Healey is misusing her investigative powers “for the ulterior purpose of harassing an out-of-state company that does not engage in in-state consumer sales.”

But Healey says that, despite the state’s ban, 10,000 Glocks were sold in Massachusetts between January 2014 and August 2015, including 8,000 to buyers who do not appear to be law-enforcement officers. She said the handguns ended up in the hands of Massachusetts consumers “irrespective of whether the sales were made legally or not.”

“The investigation is appropriate,” Healey’s office writes in its rebuttal to Glock, because Glock may have liability under the state’s consumer protection law for “product defects, misleading marketing, and for failure to honor warranties.”

Remington Arms Co., based in Madison, N.C., contends Healey’s investigation is “unreasonable and excessively burdensome” because she is seeking product files from every state and country, even though fewer than 1 percent of the files relate to Massachusetts customers.

Because Healey’s office “has provided virtually no information concerning the subject or object of its investigation, one cannot imagine what possible relevance product service files from Hawaii or Manitoba, Canada, could have on the AG’s investigation in Massachusetts,” Remington states in its lawsuit, filed Monday.

Remington is asking the court to limit the scope of Healey’s investigation and allow it to remove customer information from the documents it turns over.

If customer information is not removed, the company argues, its customers’ privacy rights would be violated, conduct protected by the Second Amendment would be chilled, and Remington’s business would be harmed.

Healey has not yet responded in court to Remington’s accusations.

Healey’s court papers, however, indicate that Remington and Glock are not the only gun makers she is targeting. Both are “part of a larger series of similar gun safety investigations,” Healey’s office wrote.

Healey, a Democrat who took office last year, has made reducing gun violence a top issue — a crusade that has won her support from national gun-control advocates and the ire of gun owners and gun rights groups.

In December, she warned the state’s 350 licensed gun dealers that they must obey the state’s strict gun laws and began investigating several dealers suspected of selling illegal firearms.

In May, she led a dozen attorneys general in calling on Congress to allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study gun deaths as a public health issue.

A day later, she spoke at a White House gun violence summit, where she decried the legal immunity Congress has granted to gun makers.

“This is the only product of its kind for which Congress has given the industry extensive freedom from liability,” she said at the White House. “That’s not right. The gun industry should be held to the same liability standards as the manufacturers and sellers of other consumer products.”

In July, she drew national attention when she moved to bar sales of so-called copcyat assault rifles that had been modified slightly to evade the state’s 1998 assault weapons ban.

Gun enthusiasts snapped up the rifles in a buying frenzy, and then protested outside the State House.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, meanwhile, said it would challenge Healey’s ban in court, arguing it hurt gun dealers and “made potential felons out of tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens.”

So we are reminded of a number of things in this report.  She (Ms. SJW Healey) is a moron.  “Accidental discharges,” discussed so pointedly here on the pages of this web site, result from people putting their fingers inside the trigger guard and pulling the trigger.  A machine manufacturer, i.e., gun maker, cannot be responsible for people intentionally pulling the trigger and then blaming the gun for discharging a round.  It’s what the machine is designed to do.  It would be like blaming a car for accelerating when you depress the gas pedal.  If it didn’t accelerate, the automobile maker would be responsible for loss of life due to failure of the car to respond to input by the driver.  Similarly, gun makers would be responsible for loss of life if they designed guns that didn’t shoot when the trigger was pulled.  The simple solution to this problem is to teach people not to pull the trigger if you don’t want the gun to shoot.  This was all put in simple terms that the idiot SJW can understand.

Second, she is a bully of the highest order.  She probably shoved other little girls around on the playground, and when she couldn’t do it to the boys, she talked other boys into doing her dirty work for her.  You see, she doesn’t really hate guns.  She wants her Lieutenant bullies to have them.  She just doesn’t want people she doesn’t like to have them.  She isn’t calling for disarming the police, just peaceable men and women who want to protect themselves.  Ms. SJW doesn’t want people to be able to protect themselves.  She wants to be head bully, meaning that people have to come to her for protection.  She is a bitch.

Finally (and there are actually many more lessons from this sad affair), people like this will be bullies until someone punches back, very hard.  If Glock or Remington kowtow to this bitch, they deserve everything they get.  Seriously,  I will have completely lost respect for any company that cooperates with this bully, and I’ll never do business with any of them, ever again.  Gun manufacturers will find that there is a high cost associated with complying this communists like this.  I suspect that the cost will be more than they can bear.

Note to Remington and Glock.  Do not comply.  Tell her to go to hell.  And ditto that for any other gun manufacturer she tries to tackle.

News from Connecticut:

BRIDGEPORT – The maker of the type of gun used at Sandy Hook and several other mass shootings won a partial victory in a Bridgeport courtroom Thursday.

The hearing is part of a lawsuit that several Sandy Hook families brought against Remington Arms.

Remington Arms is fighting to keep certain company documents related to the marketing of the AR-15 rifle secret.

The judge in the case said Thursday that she is willing to seal at least some of the documents from the public to protect the company’s business interests.

Sandy Hook family members believe certain internal marketing strategies will prove AR-15 makers are negligently selling military-style weapons to civilians.

If they win, it could open gunmakers up to hundreds of wrongful-deaths all over the country.

You’re “willing,” are you?  Thy will be done, Barbara?  Here’s what else you should be willing to do.  Go to your supervising judge, turn in your robe, go before the media, and tell the world that because you are a loathsome political hack and a toad who cares nothing about the law, you are resigning your position and beg mercy from the people you abused in your station.

Can we count on your being “willing” to do that, Barbara?

Prior:

Sandy Hook Families Call Remington Repugnant In Court Documents

Judge Barbara Bellis Says Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Against Remington Goes Forward

Update On Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Of Remington

Discovery In The Sandy Hook Families Versus Remington Case

Remington filed a motion to withhold certain information concerning its Bushmaster brand of AR-15s, based mainly on the proprietary nature of said information.  For those of us who deal with technical information or trade secrets, this is routine and customary.  It is certainly not out of the ordinary, and the motion could have to do with information Remington wants to keep from being disclosed.  What if they have studied the rifling twist rate to  tweak it to produce a little more stable bullet flight, or studied barrel length to make it effective at longer distances, or whatever.  I don’t know, I’m just making this up as I go because I don’t know what they know after having invested their time and wealth in making a better rifle.  That’s the point, and that’s why Remington wants its information withheld from public disclosure.

Enter the Sandy Hook families again.

The families suing the maker of the AR-15 rifle used by gunman Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook massacre called a request by Remington Arms to keep company materials secret so that the company keeps its competitive advantage “repugnant,” according to a new filing in the case.

“Remington did not become the country’s leading seller of military weaponry to civilians by accident. It ascended to that position through its calculated marketing and pursuit of profit above all else,” lawyers for the Sandy Hook families wrote in a response objecting to a protective order filed by Remington.

As part of their lawsuit, families of victims have asked Remington to turn over its marketing materials in the belief that they will show that company intentionally marketed its high-powered rifles as “weapons of war” to civilians who had no business owning such guns.

“Plaintiffs lost family members, including children, in the service of that bottom line. Now Remington wants them to do more to protect its profitability,” the motion reads.

So let me translate.  We, the Sandy Hook families, don’t care about your God-given rights to defend yourself and your families the best way you see fit, nor do we care about the fact that in the court of public opinion, we lost and these weapons are entirely legal.

Furthermore, we don’t care that we don’t know what we’re talking about, and that virtually every gun in civilian use has a military application, from shotguns used for room clearing in Now Zad, Afghanistan by the Marines, to Remington 700 bolt action rifles used by Marine snipers in Iraq, nor that virtually every military weapon has a civilian application.

We don’t care about the fact that there isn’t the distinction between the two that we’re claiming, and we don’t care about the fact that weapons truly get tested by the civilian community, who has to spend their own money for the guns and reviews them on blogs and YouTube, rather than the military who has to use what the Pentagon buys for them, nor that vast improvements have been made to military weapon systems by applying civilian-based gun modifications or tactics developed in 3-gun competitions or the gaming community.

Hell, we don’t even care about the fact that there is a federal law against what we’re doing, called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and that we’re basically relying on a raving-bitch SJW judge named Barbara Bellis to help us through what would otherwise be dismissed with prejudice.  We don’t care that the weapon used in Sandy Hook was stolen.  No, we don’t care about anything but us.

The real morally reprehensible actions are being taken by the Sandy Hook families, not Remington.  How utterly despicable.

Prior:

Judge Barbara Bellis Says Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Against Remington Goes Forward

Update On Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Of Remington

Discovery In The Sandy Hook Families Versus Remington Case

Raw Story:

Connecticut judge has ruled that the families of the Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooting can gather facts to develop a civil action against Remington, the parent company for the Bushmaster AR-15 used by shooter Adam Lanza. If their case goes to trial, it would be a landmark challenge to the 2005 legislation that shields the gun industry from civil liability.

The plaintiffs are arguing that Remington bears some culpability for the shooting because their marketing deliberately targeted teenage males. The plaintiffs hope to gain access to Remington’s highly proprietary marketing plans to instantiate their claims. They may or may not succeed. But for the early 1900s, those marketing plans are hidden in plain view, in the historical archive. And they spell out how consciously and energetically the gun industry worked to cultivate the young male consumer in modern times.

The Winchester Repeating Arms Company, for example, developed what they shorthanded as a “boy plan” to encourage gun sales and love in young men.

In 1917, saddled by massive wartime expansion and debt, Winchester wrote a confidential letter to its jobbers and retailers about its postwar ambitions. “You are going to sell more guns this year than you ever sold before!” the company promised. “The need today is for more gun business.” Likewise, “the best way to make…ammunition business is to put more guns into hands of shooters.”

To support sales Winchester embarked on what it characterized as the “greatest commercial venture in the history of this country, probably in the history of the world.” They never lacked for ambition. In 1920 alone, they spent close to a million dollars on advertising.

A centerpiece of this effort was the company’s boy plan. Winchester prepared a letter about the .22 caliber rifle to send to boys between the ages of ten and sixteen. They asked retailers to send a list of the names of boys in their towns, so the company could send the letter to them under the retailer’s name.  The company intended to reach precisely 3,363,537 boys this way.

“Read this letter. Put yourself in the place of a boy of 14. Would you let another day go by before calling on your dealer?” The retailer’s task was to “Put a Winchester into the Hands of Every Youth in Your Town. When the boys and girls of your town arrive at the age of twelve years, they become your prospects.”

The company supported the campaign nationally with extensive advertisement in American Boy, Boys’ Life, Youth’s Companion, and others, as well as magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post.

Some of the boy plan selling points emphasized military readiness, and the idea that boys should know basic marksmanship, and how to handle a rifle safely. Capt. E. Crossman, something of a gun gossip columnist in the early 1900s, praised Winchester for trying to popularize preparedness through marksmanship, “even though it be from a purely business standpoint” and motivation. Other strands of Winchester’s boy marketing sold the gun on more mystical and deeply emotional terms.

In their internal sales publications, newsletters, correspondence, and bulletins to introduce the campaign, Winchester drew on the modern language of psychology. The company emphasized “a boy’s natural interest in a gun,” his “yearning for a gun” as a “natural instinct,” and the “inborn trait of human nature” that aroused a male’s interest in a display of guns and ammunition. This naturalized a boy’s desire to own a gun in a more urban, post-frontier America in which a gun was less necessary to his daily life. The Winchester Record, a company magazine, summarized it as the “the shooting instinct, which is present in most boys and girls.”

The company explicitly tied guns to powerful feelings about masculinity and authenticity at a time when Americans had anxiety about the softening effects of modern life and shifting gender roles. One group of ads claimed that every “real boy” wanted a gun—and that “every real American mother and father” knew that he should have one. Nothing was closer to a “real boy’s heart than shooting.” A lot of self-conscious effort reinforced the ostensibly obvious and irrefutable link between the gun and the “sturdy manliness that every real boy wants to have.”

But Winchester also invited its sales force to imagine a boy’s natural gun love as a by-product of the yeastily proliferating world of matinees, westerns, and the “countless boys’ adventure stories” that complemented the gun industry’s advertising. “Picture a red-headed boy in the front row of the movies. He’s on the edge of his seat, eyes still popping out of his head as the end is written across a … film where Winchester rifles were the star speakers. Up flashes your ‘ad’—boys earning Winchester sharpshooter medals …. What’s he going to save up his quarters for? A Winchester of course.”

It is strange to contemporary ears, but Winchester advised retailers to appeal directly to their “boy customers” and their allowance quarters, not to their parents.

I’ve lifted enough text out of the Raw Story article that hopefully you won’t have to visit the site to get the gist of the report.

So what the hell difference does any of this make?  How is this any different than marketing a car to a teen and that teen driving in an unsafe manner and harming someone?

Answer.  It isn’t any different.  The breathless report at Raw Story is just another reminder that the law only means something when it benefits the progressives, and can safely be ignored if it hinders their social planning.

America Is About To See How Guns Used In Mass Shootings Are Marketed:

When family members and survivors of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School filed suit against Bushmaster in December 2014, it seemed a lot like a lost cause. After all, a 2005 federal law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) was designed to prevent people from holding gun manufacturers accountable for wrongful deaths. Even last week, when a Connecticut judge shot down a motion to dismiss the suit, experts said she was just delaying an inevitable dismissal later down the line.

But then last Tuesday, that same judge, Barbara Bellis, of Connecticut’s Superior Court, issued another ruling that determined the suit would be more than symbolic. Specifically, she said the discovery process could begin immediately and set a tentative trial date for April 3, 2018. A jury hearing the case would be historic, but Katherine Mesner-Hage, an attorney for the plaintiffs, says that getting the gun company to open its books for discovery is arguably just as huge.

That’s because she and her co-council have constructed a creative PLCAA exemption, claiming, in essence, that the gun Adam Lanza used in the Sandy Hook massacre was specifically marketed as a killing machine. As part of discovery, they’ll dig through the gunmaker’s internal company memos and try to prove that the company was negligent.

I spoke to Mesner-Hage about how the gun industry became so protected from civil suits, what she and the other lawyers for the Sandy Hook survivors hope to find in discovery, and how their legal strategy is similar to the one used against Big Tobacco in the 90s.

VICE: What are you hoping to find in discovery that will be such a big deal?
Katherine Mesner-Hage: We’re looking for documents, and we’re looking to depose key people at Remington especially, but also at the distributor and the retail level. We’re asking for internal memos about how to market the AR-15 and how to market specifically the patrolman’s carbine, which is the one that Adam Lanza used.

We want to depose the head of marketing. We want to talk to the people at the company who are making the decisions about marketing. That’s how we build our case, although the marketing speaks for itself on one level. This is our chance to kind of peel back the curtain and see what’s really going on. One of the things about discovery in general is that you don’t know what you’re looking for before you start.

Has any other case against a gun company gotten to the discovery stage since PLCAA was passed? What are the broader implications of this recent decision?
I can’t think of any case that’s gotten to the point in which discovery was open in the post-PLCAA era.

Nothing good can come from this.  As I have said before, the Sandy Hook Families aren’t entitled to that information and the case has no merit.

I know what they’re after.  As I have documented before, the law protects firearms manufacturers, but excepts cases where there is “negligent entrustment.”  I recall thinking as I read this, “this is an oddball exception.”  The reason that it is odd is that firearms manufacturers don’t sell to customers.  They sell to distributors who then sell to stores (some manufacturers sell directly online, but go through a local FFL, e.g., Rock River Arms, LaRue Tactical, etc.).

They are thinking that this exception, the negligent entrustment clause, has not been tested in court and still need fleshing out as to its real definition.  But I don’t agree with lawsuits against gun manufacturers any more than I agree with Tobacco companies being sued over lung cancer.  Evil actions such as was perpetrated that day redound to federal headship in Adam, original sin, and the volitional decision to commit wicked acts.  Marketing has nothing to do with it.

Back in 2005 when I was headed for a professional conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I left Charlotte, N.C. that day and headed towards Western North Carolina.  Instead of driving one of those put-put-put cars companies like to put you in, the car rental agency apologized and told me that the only car left on the lot for me that day was a brand new 2005 Ford Mustang GT.  I recalled laughing out loud to the puzzlement of the sales clerk.  Little did she know, I thought.

I drove towards Murphy, N.C., and past the NOC (Nantahala Outdoor Center), and on the curvy roads past all of those TVA dams, curve after curve after curve, in a brand new Ford Mustang GT.  It was a great day, that Sunday, and I exceeded the posted speed limit by a wide margin.  A wide margin.  But I didn’t do anything unsafe, and I didn’t cause additional risk for anyone else on the road.

Or perhaps I’m lying or simply a bad judge of risk.  If I had harmed anything or anyone that day, it wouldn’t have been a great day, and I would have been responsible for it.  Ford’s marketing of its 2005 Mustang GT had nothing whatsoever to do with my decision to exceed the posted speed limit.

And Adam Lanza is in hell for what he did since he didn’t know Jesus Christ as his savior and advocate before the Father.  I’m certain that the parents have bitterness and heartache over what happened.  But they’re taking it out on the wrong person, the wrong company, the wrong workers, the wrong objects.  They are poorly trained, theologically and philosophically, and besides that badly mistaken that marketing carbines to young males is somehow responsible for the deaths of their loved ones (witness Charles Whitman who used a bolt action rifle, the best option for his choice of locations).

These parents are in danger of harm to their own souls with this continued blame of the wrong people.  The lawyers are going to get rich, and the judge is a wicked woman and will receive her just recompense eventually, and perhaps sooner.

Prior:

Judge Barbara Bellis Says Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Against Remington Goes Forward

Judge Barbara Bellis: Update On The Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Of Remington

In Judge Barbara Bellis Says Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Of Remington Goes Forward, we discussed the traitorous actions of Judge Barbara Bellis by blatant, intentional flouting of a federal law that forbids lawsuits against gun manufacturers based on potential criminal actions by users of those guns.  Barbara knows better than the U.S. House and Senate.  CNN has an update of this case.

CheaperThanDirt.com:

In October 2015, Winchester issued a recall and important safety notice for Winchester XPR rifles.

XPR rifles have the potential to fire an unintended round when the safety switch is manipulated. During continuous product testing, Winchester found that moving the safety switch on the XPR rifle “may cause movement in the trigger system that could result in unintended firing of certain XPR rifles.”

As such, Winchester is recalling all XPR rifles. Winchester is replacing certain trigger group parts in all Winchester XPR rifles free. Winchester requests all owners of XPR rifles send their rifles for retrofitting.

This is the right way to do it, the responsible and ethical way.  If you find a problem, recall it and fix it.  Unlike what Remington did with the Model 700 Walker Fire Control.

Courthouse News Service:

(CN) – The Eighth Circuit revived a wrongful death claim against the Remington Arms Company stemming from a 2008 hunting accident in which a South Dakota man died.

The man’s wife, Carol O’Neal, sued Remington in December 2011, claiming a defect in a bolt action rifle the company manufactured caused it to misfire, killing her husband.

On November 9, 2008, O’Neal’s husband, Lanny, loaned a Remington Model 700 .243 caliber bolt action rifle to his friend, Mark Ritter.

Ritter later told investors that after spotting a deer, he moved the safety lever to the fire position and without his pulling the trigger, the rifle discharged. The bullet hit Lanny O’Neal, traveling through his stomach, spleen and left lung.

Despite their immediately calling 911 and getting O’Neal taken to a hospital, he died later that afternoon.

His widow claimed that Remington was aware a defect in that particular model rifle would cause it to fire without pulling the trigger once the safety lever was released.

She cited that minutes from a 1979 Remington safety subcommittee meeting, at which the defect in certain guns manufactured before 1975 was discussed and a possible recall considered. However, that meeting ended with attendees deciding against a recall because it would have required Remington to gather some 2 million guns ,when only 20,000 were known to be susceptible to the condition.

Remington argued that O’Neal couldn’t prove that the defect that caused the rifle to misfire was present at the time of it being manufactured. According to the gun maker, an alteration to the gun after purchase could have caused the misfire.

Complicating matters was that O’Neal, after being denied by two lawyers in her quest to pursue a wrongful death claim, had the gun destroyed because it reminded her of the tragedy. It wasn’t until several months later that she learned of the possible defect.

A federal court granted Remington’s motion for summary judgment, but the Eighth Circuit on Wednesday overturned that ruling, sending the case back to federal court.

In a 2-1 decision, the three-judge panel found that since South Dakota law allows a plaintiff to prove a defect through circumstantial evidence, O’Neal had presented enough circumstantial evidence to prove the defect was present at the time of manufacture.

“The fact that the subject rifle was used many times without incident from the mid-1980s through November 2008, and then suddenly inadvertently discharged, is consistent with the unpredictable manifestation of the inherent design defect in the Walker trigger,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kermit Bye wrote for the majority.

“In sharp contrast, if the subject rifle had been modified or altered prior to the mid-1980s in a way which would cause it to discharge when the safety lever was moved from the safe position to the fire position without the trigger being pulled, it is highly unlikely the rifle could have been used as many times as it was over the span of the next twenty-plus years without incident,” Bye said.

Oh dear.  This just gets worse and worse.  I’m not commenting on the gunsmithing accuracy of the court’s decision.  The problem is that Remington didn’t come clean on the Walker Fire Control System when they knew about it, they hid it, denied it, and sent their lawyers to argue with victims.

This was their destiny, and they chose it when they decided to be lawyers rather than engineers and gun manufacturers.  It was their destiny.

Other Resources:

Belk_Certification

Belk_Objection

Belk_Supplemental_Report

Prior:

Poking The Dragon

Update On The Remington 700 Settlement

Things You May Not Have Known About The Remington Walker Fire Control System

The Remington dragon, that is.  Jack Belk, whom I have discussed before, sends this note concerning his most recent interactions with Remington.

Remington served a subpoena on me Tuesday night that demands I show up for a video taped deposition in Twin Falls on Oct 21st.  My Supplemental Report tuned them up really bad and now they’re striking back in a big way.  The Dragon is fully awake now.  I’ve attached all my filings to the Court.

I bought six triggers so I’d have foundation parts to design and build a new trigger on plentifully available parts.   Of the six triggers, one  was found  defective and dangerous in a heretofore unknown way and the another is suspect. I saved those and tore  the other four apart for the pieces and have made two new triggers that I’m not ready to show anybody.

My lawyer friend-advisor in Wis. says  BS!! the subpoena  is harassment, a fishing expedition for Remington and unnecessary and un-needed and un-called for and is meant to intimidate a simple member of the ‘class’.

My position is this— I found a fault with the Walker in 1969 and told Remington about it then.  They did nothing.   Am I supposed to ignore a recently mass produced trigger that doesn’t work now?   No way.  I made damn sure they knew about it and can’t hide it.  Of course I’m willing to let them see the two triggers that I found fault with anytime they like.  Write me a nice letter and send me a plane ticket and I’ll be right there…..with a lawyer, but when they push me in a corner I have no choice but to fight back out of it.

The subpoena is a REAL problem.   The ‘plaintiff’s attorneys’ are charged with representing the entire class of people victimized by having a Walker trigger.  That includes me.   I’ve approached the Court as a member of the class, not as a lawyer, engineer, expert or hired gun for anybody.  I was also the expert for the plaintiffs that refused to tell a lie on their behalf so they fired me.   The lawyers that should be present as my legal advisors in the deposition are the same ones that fired me.  That would leave me to have to hire a lawyer to be my ‘second’ in the sword fight that would be that deposition.  That is burdensome to one just pointing out a mistake and the judge is not likely to be happy about it.  I think Remington has over-stepped enough the judge has no reason not to knock them down big-time.  I’ve taken on the mantle of ‘whistle-blower’ to the Court….I hope.

In the mean time, I found a stash of Remington triggers and bought 37 of them last night.  There’s another 500 or so for sale and I’m likely to buy them all but I think I have the one that will finally show that Remington has more trouble than what they have been caught at.

Background— Last April 14th everybody in the gun world was blindsided by a voluntary RECALL (unheard of!!) of the new X-Mark Pro trigger.    The problem was said to be excess sealant that could cause the gun to fire at a certain low temperature when the safe was pushed to OFF.  It was hard to deny,  a guy posted a youtube video of his rifle doing it several times.  It made waves in the gun world and was widely publicized, but the word on the ‘internet street’ is that rifles sent to New York months ago are still there and hunting season is coming.  Most that know of the ‘recall’ just have an aftermarket trigger installed.  Thats where I get the ones I find.

THIS CLASS ACTION CASE is totally different and covers 7.83 million Walker triggers, not 380,000 XPM triggers of the recall,  but people that hear of the class action suit assume it’s the same one.   Remington has told the judge they have heard of no opposition to the deal so that means its a good one.   Then I showed up and Pennington came in late with good legal arguments that supports my position.   Now, the  Remington team is on the defensive and so are the plaintiffs.  The two objections threaten a $12 million payday for one and the relief (and total confusion) of over seven million bad triggers for Remington and Dupont.

The  “F Trigger” exhibits a fault at room temperature and has nothing to do with the safety and it’s also made out of a different material.  How many of those were made?  Nobody has said anything about such a model of XMP, who specified that material?  Was it tested? Where are the findings, they’re under court order to be produced?  If it works so well, why not use that material now? (too expensive? By how much?)  When was this trigger made?  How many of them were bought?  Where are the rest of them?  Do they work or are they as broken as this one?

It’s strange to think a trigger I paid $25 for will be responsible for many millions of dollars changing hands….and I have no way of grabbing any of it except to rent it out to lawyers!   ….UPDATE—those triggers!!.  I’ve been going through the sack full of ‘new’ triggers and have found two more defective ones.   This explains why Remington refused to let me see their returns.   I think this case is about to be blown wide open.  Remington has been keeping a LOT of secrets since 2006 and it’s catching up with them in a big way in the largest Court they’re subject to.

I got a call from my lawyer on vacation.  I told him I used his money to buy these triggers so how much did he want to defend what I found?  He’s hiring a lawyer to write a motion to bar the deposition.  He  (name witheld)  has  my back and he’s a good guy that I can trust.  He’s just catching up to speed on ‘The Remington mess’ and is in awe of the misbehavior over the years.   He has downloaded the entire case file for this class action because it has so much background information in it (300,000 pages).

I think the Dragon is not feeling well, but he’s still dangerous.

There is no safe direction to point an unsafe gun.

I’ll have more to say about this later, and I also have court documents (in PDF) I simply don’t have time to attach now.  This isn’t over yet.