By Scott Cohn
CNBC Senior Correspondent
Millions of Americans hunt, but it is fair to say none of them expect what happened to Justen Yerger of Monroe, Louisiana.
“My life changed forever that day,” he recalls in an interview broadcast on April 11 on Rock Center with Brian Williams.
Yerger was 19 years old, fresh out of high school; the star kicker on his football team, with dreams of playing in college. But all that was about to change.
Yerger had returned to his truck after dove hunting alone near his home. He says he leaned his shotgun--a Remington Sportsman 12--against the wheel well, with the safety on. As he tossed his gear into the back, the gun fell over and went off.
He insists his hands were “nowhere near the trigger,” yet the gun fired anyway. His understanding had always been that a gun is not supposed to fire without the trigger being pulled.
“That’s what I’ve always known,” he says. “Especially when the safety is on.”
The next thing Yerger remembers was lying flat on his back on the ground. He'd been hit in his left leg and was bleeding badly.
“Seemed like every time my heart would beat, it looked like a water sprinkler.”
A couple driving by saw Yerger and stopped to help. They rushed him to the emergency room at a nearby hospital.
“I was hit in my left leg - probably about three inches above my knee.”
Yerger’s ordeal was just beginning.
He spent three months in the hospital. Ultimately, it would take 13 surgeries, 128 units of blood and hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills for him to walk again.
He does not believe anything he did that day was wrong.
“I leaned my gun up. Gun's on safety,” he recalls. “There's not a doubt in my mind that I did not do anything wrong that day.”
Yerger sued Remington and the case eventually settled out of court. The terms of the agreement are confidential.
Now 34 years old with a family of his own and still suffering the effects of his injury, Yerger says his story is a cautionary tale for other gun users.
“They need to know that it can happen to anybody, anywhere, any time. I'm proof of it.”
No government agency can order a manufacturer to recall a defective gun. In fact, Congress specifically barred the Consumer Product Safety Commission from regulating firearms and ammunition, in keeping with the Second Amendment guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms. That means gun manufacturers police themselves.
But critics say Remington is shirking its responsibility when it comes to the firing mechanism used in some of the most popular long guns in America, including the shotgun owned by Justen Yerger.
Tom Butters, an engineer, marksman and a trained authority on firearms, has been paid as an expert in more than 100 claims involving reported malfunctions of Remington guns. He alleges Remington has been hiding a dangerous secret about the firing mechanism, which is known as the Common Fire Control or CFC. He says guns equipped with the CFC can go off without pulling the trigger, even with the safety on. And he claims the company has known about it for years.
“I would say it's been known to Remington ever since that first batch of guns went onto the market,” he told Rock Center.
That was in 1948, and since then, Remington has installed the CFC in some 20 million of its guns, and at least 20 different models. They include the 870 shotgun, which is widely used by law enforcement, the 742 semi-automatic rifle, and the Sportsman 12 that Justen Yerger owned.
The patented design of the CFC is unique to Remington. While the safety—the switch that's supposed to keep a gun from firing accidentally—locks the trigger in place, it doesn't block the internal parts from moving; specifically the hammer, the sear and the firing pin.
Butters says if those parts become disengaged, because of debris or even just bumping or dropping the gun, the result can be disastrous.
Butters and several other experts consulted by Rock Center say unlike some other gun makers that have changed their designs in response to similar issues, Remington has held firm.
Butters says Remington has done “virtually nothing” about the problem, and as a result, the owners of tens of millions of guns know nothing about it.
“And Remington does not want them to know about it,” Butters alleges, “because it will affect their market position.”
He claims Remington has essentially put profits over human lives.
“And I have made that allegation under oath on a number of occasions.”
Remington denies there is any problem with the CFC, and insists its guns are safe.
The company declined Rock Center’s requests for an on-camera interview, instead providing a written statement.
“The only defect rests with NBC’s inaccurate and biased reporting,” the statement says.
"(T)he fact remains that these guns are owned and used by tens of millions of waterfowl and upland hunters, competition shooters, law enforcement officers and military personnel—men and women who have relied on these firearms under the most extreme conditions over the last 60 years. These field, home and battlefield experienced users stand as a sophisticated and time-tested testament to the quality and reliability of these iconic firearms."
While the statement does not directly address the allegations of a design defect, Remington has confronted the issue head-on in numerous court cases. The company has consistently maintained its guns are safe, and that every incident can be attributed to modifications made by the user, poor maintenance, or careless handling.
The company has also challenged the credibility of Tom Butters, suggesting he is an expert for hire who has testified against a number of gun companies.
However, when Rock Center asked Remington to offer an expert of its own to counter Butters’ claims of an unsafe design, the company declined.
Butters says one of the most troubling aspects of the issue is that the guns can fire with the safety on, which is exactly what Russell Chaney of Pryor, Oklahoma says happened to him in 1984 while he was out on a boat, duck hunting with friends.
“I had my gun setting up on a bench. Kind of a seat,” he says.
He says as the gun slipped off the seat of the boat. As he tried to grab it, his hand slipped over the gun’s barrel. Just then, the butt of the gun hit the bottom of the boat. The gun went off, and blew off two of Chaney’s fingers.
A retired police officer, Chaney has been around guns his whole life and says he had never seen anything like it. Wondering how his gun could go off with the safety on, he sent it to an independent lab for testing.
“They duplicated the discharge, just like it happened, just like we did,” he says.
In its report, obtained by Rock Center, the Oklahoma forensic lab said it took the gun "with the safety off and no pressure on the trigger" and dropped it butt first.
"(T)he weapon discharged," the report says.
The test was then repeated with the safety on.
"(T)he weapon discharged again."
The report notes that in both tests, “the hammer had disengaged from the sear and had struck the firing pin, a condition which should only exist when the trigger is pulled."
So Chaney decided to write a letter to Remington.
“I was involved in a hunting accident because my gun goes off on safety when bumped on the butt,” he wrote. “Would Remington be interested in this gun for research?"
Chaney says he wrote the letter with one purpose in mind.
“I didn't want this to happen to somebody else.”
Remington agreed to look at the gun, but the letter the company sent back offered a much different conclusion than the independent lab.
"(T)he fire control, as received, showed no defective parts which could have caused the incident although the trigger was loose," Remington wrote, adding "(T)he firearm was repeatedly bounced on the butt from as high as thirty (30) inches without any discharge."
“I don't believe what they wrote to me in saying that it wouldn't go off,” Chaney says.
Asked if he thinks Remington was lying to him, Chaney says, “Well, I believe they probably were.”
Chaney decided not to sue Remington, but says he is troubled by the fact that he alerted them more than 25 years ago, yet incidents continued.
“Just kinda sad that these people are injured or killed,” he says, “after I know that they knew about the problem.”
Determining just how many others complained, though, is not easy.
While a source close to the company insists Remington keeps records of every complaint, court testimony shows the company began destroying at least some records in the 1980s. But before that change, Remington had compiled a list of 119 complaints over a ten-year period.
Records or not, the problems continued.
A five-month investigation by Rock Center has uncovered 125 incidents—including 75 injuries and seven deaths—all linked to alleged malfunctions of the Common Fire Control since 1973.
In Alaska, Paul Flynn was left quadriplegic when his Remington went off, and 15-year-old Philip Kensinger was shot in the face.
But many gun enthusiasts swear by their Remingtons. Jack Burch runs an Olympic training center outside Kerrville, Texas. He says Remington should alert the public if there's a problem. But over the past 11 years he says he has never seen any evidence the Remingtons are flawed.
“We see thousands of them come through here,” he says. “Kids shooting them, everybody. Just not an issue.”
Asked why more users are not aware of the customer complaints, Burch says, “I'm suspecting because it's not as common as people would like to think it is. It’s just not a pervasive problem that we see. Not only in this range, but I talk to ranges all over the state.”
Remington does include all kinds of warnings with every gun it sells, including what the company calls "The Ten Commandments of Firearm Safety."
By the book, Russell Chaney and Justen Yerger violated at least two, including the first commandment, "always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction,” and the third, "don't rely on your gun's safety."
But critics say that only proves that even the most experienced shooter isn't perfect, and the design of the CFC should take that into account. Yet Remington has turned down a number of patented design changes, offered from inside and outside the company. They include a mechanism patented by Tom Butters and a colleague aimed at keeping the guns from going off unless the trigger is pulled.
In court cases, Remington has contended that Butters’ criticism of Remington’s fire control is motivated by a desire to make money from his alternative design, which Butters denies.
“Well, if I were all that interested in pushing the design I would have protected it,” Butters says. Instead, he allowed the patent to expire.
Remington contends the design change is unnecessary because the theory advanced by Butters and others that debris can compromise the CFC is implausible. The company maintains its engineers have never been able to duplicate the problem, and one of Remington’s paid consultants has called the debris theory “a mythical allegation.”
But documents from the 1950s paint a different picture.
In 1957, when a gun shop owner in Michigan wrote to complain about a customer's gun going off with the safety on, he mentioned "gunsmiths around here have told us this is a rather common occurrence and that the guns are unsafe."
Remington responded the incident was "most unusual."
But just a year later, in a 1958 internal memo, Remington engineers identified the problem, that "might be aggravated by dirt or foreign matter in the fire control.”
And in 1985, when an insurance adjuster asked whether there were any problems with the model 1100 shotgun, Remington responded that it "had no problem," even though we found at the time of that letter, Remington had already faced a dozen lawsuits involving that model alone.
“As a professional engineer, my first canon of ethics reads, ‘I will hold the public safety paramount in each professional act,’" Tom Butters says. “I don't believe they did that.”
Leave a Comment:
Below is the actual letter I sent in with my firearm into Remington regarding my accidental discharge.
_________________________________________________________________________________
November 22, 2010
To Whom It May Concern:
Firearm Details:
Remington: Model Four - 243 cal.
Serial Number:XXXXXXXX
On opening day of firearm deer season (November 15, 2010), this firearm spontaneously discharged. I was sitting in my blind and had the firearm lying across my lap. The safety was on and my hands were resting on the armrest of my chair when the weapon spontaneously discharged. I immediately pointed the gun in a safe direction and inspected the firearm and noticed the safety was still on. I then unloaded the gun and as I walked out of the woods, I heard a “click” with the safety on, which was the gun spontaneously dry firing.
I will not use this firearm until I know the problem has been identified and corrected. Significant damage was done to my blind, not to mention, myself or someone else could have been killed. I own multiple Remington firearms and have always trusted their product reputation. Please inspect and inform me of your findings. Again, I hope a reason for this mishap is identified so I can salvage this family heirloom.
I would like to mention that no trigger work/modifications have ever been done/made on this firearm.
Concerned,
_______________________________________________________________________
All that I got back in reply from Remington was they could not reproduce the discharge. The found a "bur" on the hammer but felt that was not capable of the cause for spontaneous discharge. The replaced the trigger mechanism in attempt to restore confidence in the firearm. I'm still not convinced!
A loaded firearm is is exactly that. Loaded I mean a round in the firing chamber. The safety in most cases just prevents the trigger from being pulled. Trigger movement (or pulling) only releases stored energy i.e. spring tension. This stored energy is capable of firing the firearm at any time it is released regardless of the safety being on or off. Dropping or striking the receiver of the firearm may disengage the sear without any trigger movement allowing the discharge of the stored energy (the gun will fire).
The NRA and firearm instructors around the country have tirelessly educated safe gun handling to those willing to listen. Apparently there are people who would lean a loaded gun against a tree or vehicle or point it in an unsafe direction when loading or unloading. Personally it's not a manufactor defect but more of an ignorance issue.
Also a good friend slid off a highway in Wyoming a year ago, hit a guardrail and was injured. The air bags in his Ford F-150 did not deploy. Thats something one might take to task.
What a bunch of Whacko Bas*****, This is a documented fact, most of you don't even know what end the bullet comes out. Yes the incidents are rare taking how many rifles and
shotguns are out there, BUTT!!!! it does happen and it is a problem than can be fixed. I have seen it happen with a Remington rifle and I have shot more than most of you joe blows have ever seen. Remington is LYING.
I agree with you, and the point that some people are missing is that if you practice sound firearm safety not a single person would ever be shot "accidentally" regardless of the "alleged" design flaw of the firearms in question; agreed?
Another antigun advocate posing as a gunowner. If you had the experience you claim you would recognize that "Lying finger" is pointing the wrong direction.
Maybe all these problems could be avoided by not chambering a round until you are ready to go out on the hunt.
If you hunt ducks. you will have a round in battery while you are sitting in your blind, boat, or canoe. When the flock is flying towards you, you don't move. Not until you are ready to pick up and shoot. I've hunted with Remington 870s, Berettas, several types of Benellis, Browning A5s, for 40 years. Regardless of the make or model, Rule 1, don't get your body or allow anyone else to gets theirs in front of the business end of a shotgun. Ever.
For hundreds of years, firearms did not have devices to interrupt the firing mechanism. It's simply a matter of (in my mind inferior) design. If you want a firearm with a mechanism that interrupts the firing mechanism, then buy one. They're produced by many different manufacturers.
Choosing it and then complaining is like buying a car with no seatbelts and then complaining that you got ejected from the car in an accident.
A gun is a mechanical tool, and subject to failure, not unlike ANYTHING ELSE. If the DUMBASS had simply followed gun safety rules- The responsibility of where the muzzle is pointed is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS the responsibility of the shooter, EVEN IF IT FALLS. It is HIS job to protect it from falling over. This wasn't an accident, but NEGLIGENCE on the part of the DUMBASS who propped a LOADED GUN that had the potential to fall over. This guy needs to be added to the Darwin Awards.
I've known a gun could misfire if it fell over since I first shot a gun when I was a boy about 7 years old, that was 40+ years ago. Everyone qualified to handle a firearm knows that. Remington is not at fault, not accepting responsibility for your own carelessness is the problem in this case.
I feel for all those who have had damage due to accidental discharge. For home defense, using a Remington 870, a round should NOT be in the chamber. Racking the slide makes a racket. This will possibly scare an intruder away, and the shooter will not have to fire. The shotgun can be stored safely in the home with an empty chamber.
However, when grouse hunting, or deer hunting, racking that same shotgun slide will make a loud racket in the field and scare away the game. The shotgun has got to be foolproof when carried with a round in the chamber. Yes, proper safety proceedures should always be followed, but there is always the accidental trip, stinging insects, or any number of reasons why a shotgun may fall to the ground. The safety has got to work.
I've had a Remington 870 Express for years and have never had a problem. However, I've never dropped the shotgun with a round chambered.
Bottom line, be careful when handling any weapon. Don't treat it like a hunk of metal, treat it like a fragile glass tube. Have respect for the possibility that the safety MAY fail. It could save your life, or the life of someone who is near you.
I say this to not only Remington owners, but Mossberg, Benelli, Beretta, Ithaca, Winchester, ALL weapons should be treated like their safeties could possibly be defective. Remington has to come clean here, are their guns a problem? So far I've heard great arguments for and against, but the jury is still out. I'd like to see an independent laboratory like Consumer Reports do a definitive test.
Stay safe.
Joe R.
Even the best trained gun owners can have a mistake moment that could cause the gun on safety to go off.
Remington you should engineer a solution, not hide behind a public statement of denial and lawsuits.
Even if it's only 1% of your guns that have a problems it's 1% too much when your dealing with a deadly weapon.
Don't have a problems with any of my Weatherby or Browning rifles and handguns.
Interesting you won't provide a expert to defend your CFC like the expert witness challenged you on.
Makes us wonder what your hiding or know is wrong and your evading the issue.
By the way I have 3 of your shotguns and three of your new made in NY .45's.
Will definitely have my gunsmith check them out and make sure there isn't a accidental fire problem.
I can't depend on Remington for the answer.
Since cars kill far more people than firearms, using your logic not one vehicle would be allowed on the road. I doubt you even own a firearm.
NBC has been running this story on cable and dish for months. It has failed to gain traction because it is flawed and without merit. I believe Al Gore's channel has also tried to start some sort of movement. These guns - or at least the actions that are claimed to be the problem - have been in use for decades, close to half a century. They are used by the USMC - by choice of the users. Brian's new show is failing - it has already been moved to a new time slot. The response is typical of NBC - resort to sensationalism. The story and the show both deserve to be deep sixed.
I own a Remington SP-10 Magnum ten guage shotgun with which I have hunted many times and have never had a problem with it. I did sell my Remington 700 BDL in 7mm Rem Mag and bought a Weatherby Vanguard bolt action rifle in .300 Weatherby Mag to replace it because I did not like having to disengage the safety on the Remington to unload it which I believed was an inherently unsafe design.
Sounds like Expediting Evolution to me.
Good comments, NEVER lean a " loaded gun" against anything, He broke a cardinal safety law, And the gun manufacturer pays???
Ignorance is no excuse. Guns don't kill people. Stupid people with guns kill people.
Setting any gun down with a round in the chamber is inviting disaster. Muzzle direction is absolutely important. Guns are complicated machines which are prone to failure. That is why there are gunsmiths all over the place. My own experience is that they can break easily. I bought a new rimfire rifle, shot it once, cleaned it, reassembled it and it then failed to operate. This gun has a flawless reputation and I have to say I was stunned. Nonetheless, the above applies. Never, ever depend on a mechanical safety to absolve poor handling practices regardless of the design or manufacture.
Funny, but gun owners were the ones who supported not giving the government any jurisdiction over gun manufacturers, now their whining and filing frivolous lawsuits because a US corporation is proving itself a sociopath, pricess, absolutely pricess. Too bad it didn't kill them and clarify the gene pool.
You're right. We did and still do support the legislation. Specifically to protect us against kool-aid drinking antigun, anticorporation, anti US folks like you. Always quick to point the finger at someone else and spout feelings and opinions but facts and rational thought are to be avoided at all cost. Funny how religious zealots and marxist socialists share the same traits. Be careful they may sneak into your gene pool when the lifeguard isn't watching.
It's about 'Profits before people' there are too many people who think the same way as this company.
I had a conversation with a person who said 'China pours pollution and soot into the air we breath so we should do the same to get back at them by increasing our profit margin and increasing the amount of jobs through polluting'.
Needless to say I got out of that conversation fast, Truckers they are too ignorant for the money they get. His attitude was if it costs his bottom line he says 'P##s' on some kids ability to breath it's same with Remington.
That ignorant trucker you so self rightously denegrate brings you everything you use to survive. If you come down from your ivory tower you'll find they are far more intelligent and educated than you can ever hope to be. And they provide your arrogant, ungrateful, self entitled butt everything you need while living just above poverty. They barely survive because the environmentalist blame America first crowd dictates irrational laws on them. But you don't care who you hurt because you are superior and only you and your social group know what's good for them and us. Wait a minute; are you Barack Obama?
Everyone of these unfortunate people and the so called "expert" are forgetting the first rule of firearm safety; "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SAFE FIREARM". Then there's rule #2; treat every firearm as though it were loaded. Rule #3 when not using the weapon unload it. As far as shooting yourself in the face the negligence of that incident is blatantly apparent. Finally "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ACCIDENTAL DISCHARGES, ONLY NEGLIGENT DISCHARGES". And those happen because people forget rule #1. Since there are so many ambulance chasers in this country the "expert" must be making a healthy income. Why is it our country is being controlled by people who truely believe they are not responsible for anything they do?
With over 50 years of experience with all types of firearms, I have yet to see a gun with an empty chamber discharge, regardless of the stupidity of the shooter or the malfeasance of the manufacturer. Any mechanical safety on a firearm is a redundancy; the primary safety is the shooter himself.
Roger that.
so only 175 failed out of like 20,000,000 over 50 years? who cares?
In 1974 while deer hunting my Remington 660 discharged when I chambered a round. Fortunately I was in a deer stand and no one was in the area and the gun was pointed up. My finger was not on the trigger. I had to endure all kinds of sarcastic comments from my brother who heard my gun discharge prior to sun rise and the official start of the hunting day. The teasing went on for months. I knew I did not have my finger on the trigger but I could not explain the gun going off. Since we loaded our own ammo I thought that perhaps the round I had chambered was poorly sized or something. A few years later a friend of ours saw a recall ad in a gun magazine for my specific model of rifle. I took my gun to an authorized gunsmith for the repair. I was relieved to find out that it had not been carelessness on my part, but rather a firing pin problem with the bolt action that caused my gun to fire. I can not imagine the emotions the individuals are going through who were injured due to a poorly designed safety. Remington should be hauled into court and forced to do a recall!
Just another piece of drivel from another mainstream media hack. Any chance these clowns have to get a dig into anything firearms related they start to salivate. Either this guy never had any proper firearm training or he was too stupid to follow it. And in our current "I'm not responsible for my own actions because I'm an idiot" climate, settling out of court was probably in Remington's best interest - IT IS NOT ADMISSION OF WRONG DOING as this media clown implies.
I would have some sympathy for this guy with his physical problems if this weren't so obviously an attempt to blame (and capitalize on) someone else for his own stupidity. As my Dad taught me many years ago, the only safety a firearm has is between the ears of the operator. If a person does not have that mindset, then that person should not be handling a firearm.
Unfortunately, it's morons like this guy who are pushing us towards the same type of society that we fought a revolution to be rid of.
I have Remingtons, Brownings, and Colts and never had a problem with any of them. It's the people that think they know how to use these weapons that have the problem. Not the manufacturer.
I have owned Remington products (870, 700, and 5xx - .22 LR cal.) for more than 40 years, and I have never had a problem of any kind with them. If you observe basic gun safety rules, you will stay alive.