glockman55

I saw this first hand in Deer camp last year. I'm sure he had the 700 series, He was showing us his rifle in camp, ( unloaded, Thank God) and when he opened and shut the bolt it fired on anempty chamber. Good thing he had another rifle to use. That was the first time I heard anything bad about Rem.

The Rifleman

Back in the day, when I was about 15 or 16, we were at deer camp and were getting ready to go into the camp and when we were unloading our rifles, I was using my dads 721 - '06 and when I was cycling the rounds with the bolt to unload it - it went off and I had my butt chewed out for about 1/2 an hour.

I had the rifle pointed towards the camp, since there was 3 of us and we all pointed in a different direction - when we were unloading and the Blazer was right in front of me. The bullet went under the Blazer and nobody got hurt.

Now according to my dad, it was all my fault. Because I shouldn't have been unloading that gun with my gloves on.

But Remington did recall it and dad never did get it fixed.

That is just one of them guns that you buy it and you use it until you can afford something better. Then it sits in the gun rack for a generation or two.

EKM

So did it "go off by itself" or do you think your gloved (cold?) hands may have nudged the trigger in the cycling process?

Paul L Mohr

In my opinion if you close the bolt on a gun and it fires it has more severe problems than a safety malfunction issue. I think in most cases this happens when people mess around with the trigger and make it too light. When and if this does happen it should not be loaded again and should be taken directly to gunsmith to be looked at. Why would anyone have a gun that does this and keep using it?

And this in not the problem in this particular recall. They are simply saying the safety may or may not work every time, not that the gun is discharging on its own.

I will probably get bashed for this, but I rarely use the safety on any of my guns. I normally don't load a round in the chamber until I am ready to shoot something and I don't put my finger on the trigger until I am ready to fire. In 30 years of owning and shooting various fire arms I have never accidentally discharged one. I have owned too many fire arms that didn't have safeties to rely on them. I will add that I don't sling a rifle with a round in it and walk around, or set a loaded weapon in a corner. If the gun is loaded it is in my hand where I have control of it. If I am not going to have control of it I clear the action in most cases. My exception to this rule is with single shot/single action weapons that have an exposed hammer.

Many won't agree with these practices I'm sure, but then again I see lots of people that think they are being safe doing things that scare the crap out of me. So to each his own I guess. I saw a guy pull a loaded rifle up into a tree once with the muzzle pointed towards him[]. Hey, the safety was on though.

I am in a agreement though, the 710 is a pretty sorry excuse for a bolt action rifle. I would be ashamed of it if I worked at Remington. John Browning is probably looking down from heaven shaking his head in disgust.

Paul

EKM

Paul,

I agree with you except your second paragraph.

The problem was indeed that the rifles were firing when the safety was taken off and no pull on the trigger, i.e. going off by themselves.

Personally a 700 needs a replacement trigger and safetyanyway. Lots of good trigger companies. Gentry makes a nice Model 70 style three position safety for the 700 with bolt lock down on rear most position. Amazing how long Remington chose to pretend that there was no problem, then when they "fixed it" it was a damn poor fix.

Paul L Mohr

That is a model 700, the recall in question in this post is the model 710 and in the recall notice it states nothing to the effedt that the gun is discharging on it's own. Simply that the safety is not returning to a safe position when you flip the lever. Which means that if the trigger is pulled it will fire, not that it will fire on its own or when the safety is engaged or disengaged.

It sounds to me like Remington doesn't have a very good track record with safety issues. Like I said, I have heard of guns doing this, but normally it is a trigger problem, not a safety switch problem. The majority of the time when I see it you cycle the bolt to load a round and the firing pin goes off on its own. Normally from having too light of a trigger or something. I guess depending on how the safety is designed it could go off when the safety was disengaged.

Out of curiosity, do you know if the people sued Remington over it?

My biggest question though is why would you disengage the safety with the weapon pointed in an unsafe direction? I mean it sucks that it happened but come on why would you do that?

Paul

glockman55

I didn't mean to start anything and I know that this has nothing to do with that particular recall on the 710. Some of the guys in camp said that they had heard of this problem with that Mod. (700)in the past.I guess I was wondering if Rem. recalled any 700's with this problem, firing buy just closing the bolt. And on this gun the trigger was not modified in any way. The guy was the original owner.

EKM

Remington 710's, 700's, and 721's had been discussed thru the course of the thread.

I didn't pick up on that you were returning to the start (710); to me looked like a response to the Rifleman (721-700).
My bad.

Paul L Mohr

No problem, I figured that is what happened. The internet can get a bit confusing. And I don't help the situation at times.

Paul