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.”
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We have used Remington 870's in training new cadets for Law Enforcement for over 10 years. We have had students double feed and one of the ways to clear that is to ram the buttstock to the ground with the barrel upright to clear one of the rounds. You do this kneeling and you keep your head lower than the muzzle just in case. We have NEVER had a round go off while doing this with the 870's. We cleaned and properly maintained the 870's and even with the Rookies mistakes, NEVER had a negligent discharge from our 10 870's. If the weapon was leaning on something and slid or fell over how do we know if the safety might have been knocked off by hitting something before hitting the ground. Simple solution, If Remington is not in your hands - UNLOAD IT - then the weapon can not go off in anyway. But Common Sense can not be legislated, handed out, injected or put in place by others. So we are stuck with what we have left, learn about any tool or weapon before using it and respect the safety rules that come with them. If no safety rules - Find some - it may save your life.
Broadly speaking, all the "safety" does is prevent movement of the trigger, but does not necessarily prevent the rest of the action from operating. Therefore, in numerous designs besides Remington, the firearm can discharge, even if the "safety" is applied.
The only solution, which will work no matter what, is to do what many other people in this forum have advised: always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction, even if you think the gun is unloaded. During times of storage, I always avoid the possibility of the gun falling out of place, assure that it has been safely unloaded, and that the "action" is disabled by leaving the bolt open, cylinder open, etc.
I didn't read all the comments so sorry if this is repeated --
This is NOT AN ACCIDENT! This is a case of a gun being handled carelessly. If Justen Yerger thinks that he did "nothing wrong that day" then he MUST attend an NRA class on safe gun handling. NEVER NEVER EVER EVER -- I REPEAT NEVER EVER LEAN A LOADED WEAPON AGAINST A CAR!!! It doesn't have to drop to go off!!! The static charge from the car can make the weapon fire -- EVEN IF THERE IS NO BULLET OR SHELL IN THE CHAMBER!! That being said - The Remington trigger design on ALL of their weapons is dangerous -- that's why I don't own one...
As I recall, my older Ruger Blackhawk single action 357 Mag. did not have a hammer interceptor that would prevent the hammer from hitting the firing pin if the hammer was accidently hit (BANG - oopps). When holstered we always carried it with the hammer over an empty chamber. Later designs had a trigger interceptor, but we usually still carried as before.
never leave a loaded rifle, shot gun, or even a hand gun in a manner in which it could slide or slip and fall creating a concusion and trip the trigger mech. I've carried a gun of some sort all my life (over 40 years) never had a problem but I've been around some people I know that simply do not respect a loaded gun, I've had to tell grown men hey don't leave that shot gun leaning like that or don't leave a round in the chamber the life that you endanger is not JUST yours but mine too. Some guys just don't get it.
This person would never be allowed to hunt with me or my friends. You NEVER lean a loaded firearm against a vehicle and you ALWAYS clear (empty) the chamber of any firearm when you are done hunting/shooting etc. I've been a firearms instructor for over 30 years and it's always the same old thing...someone does something STUPID and tries to cover for it by blaming the firearms manufacture....REMEMBER, always clear your firearm when you are finised hunting/shooting...but you know that now don't you STUPID...
All of these firearms mishaps could have been prevented by simply reading and FOLLOWING the safety instructions that are included with every firearm. The mandatory, unbreakable safety rules are always spelled out very clearly for just this reason. If you are the kind of person that would trust your life, and the lives of friends and family, to a mechanical safety device alone you really shouldn't own a gun of any sort.
i'm never going to buy another remington.
why on earth would anyone buy such an unreliable product from a manufacturer that doesn't give a damn to modify its questionable and deadly flaw?
i'm never going to buy a remington and the one i have is going to the pawn shop!
here is a more "balanced" response
here is another view on the issue
The gun was loaded. A round in the chamber. Asking for trouble. Kid should have made sure it wasn't loaded. Where was the NRA, too busy Politicking to do gun safety classes?
There really should be an NRA Hunter Safety Instructor behinh every tree in the forest. Numbskull.
The question is Martin/Zimmerman, the answer is, let's see how much we can dig up on guns.
I purchased a new Remington Wingmaster 870. On the first box of trap loads that I fired through it the internal mechanism locked up and I could not eject the spent cartridge. I took it back to BiMart to trade in on a different brand of shotgun and they do not accept return of faulty weapons. It was sent to Remington and I followed with a letter asking them to send me a new weapon instead of "repairing" a new one. Remington did not respond. When my shotgun was returned there was a note saying they had "reamed it". I have not had a chance to fire it since.
I read article and many comments on the safety issue, and while I agree that there was some degree of responsiblity to be using the shotgun in a more safe manner than leaning a loaded(round in chamber) against the truck or anything else, Rem. should have a safety that blocks the hammer at the very least. A safety that allows the hammer to fall onto the firing pin under ANY circumstance is NOT VERY SAFE, and should be re-designed into a hammer blocking mechanism. There are many good firearms to be had that DO block the hammer from falling, however there are also a great number of firearms that do not block the hammer, and because of this I treat all of them as NOT HAVING A SAFETY at all when I carry any firearm. I make it a point not to have a chambered round until I am firing the weapon, I keep the bolt unlocked with a loaded round so I can quietly close it to shoot and carry all weapons unchambered with bolt open at other times when possible or unloaded chamber with bolt closed if open bolt carry is not possible. The only time a cocked hammer and loaded chamber is allowed is if one is protecting themself and family from harm by intruders; I know law enforcement carries 45 autos in cocked and locked position with loaded chamber but they are the exception since their lives are in danger 24/7 and while I would not carry that way they have a reason to do so.
All I can say is when I first learned this years ago I tried the same drop test with just the shell and primer no bullet in my 870, 1100 and 700 none of them would fire.
Always remember the 1st rule of gun safety is the gun is always loaded never point it at anything you don't want to kill.
Happy Shooting
If you mess with the triger [lighten it up] you will have problems, as I have had, with 1964 Rem BDL 7mm mag 4 times it went off, closing the bolt, or moving the safety.
Always point the barrel in a safe direction, this is # 1 most important. Remington is guilty of hiddding a problem, far back when first disscovered, they might need a new triger system, money took over comon sense. Do the next best thing sell off your Remingtons, buy a Ruger or Savage
Concerning the young football player who upon returning to his vehicle accidentally shot himself two rules of safe gun handling were broken. 1, the firearm was not unloaded. Period. When you are finished using the firearm clear the chamber and the magazine. Period. 2, NEVER lean a firearm against an object that will allow the firearm to fall over, this is an example of not having control of the muzzle. Lay the unloaded, breech open firearm down in the bed of the truck, on the tailgate of the truck or secure the firearm in a case. It is tragic what happened to this young man, however to blame a mishandled firearm for his injuries is not right. I do not care what brand of firearm he was using, it was not handled in a safe manner and as a result the accident happened.
It seems like MSN likes to drag out this same old story over and over. They could find many positive stories to run now that the NRA national convention is getting set to take place but instead search their archives for any negative story they can find.
I have seen same thing happen with Benjamin pump pellet rifles. Safe gun practices are important but there are times when you are hunting that you carry a gun loaded with the safety on . If you drop the gun you expect the safety to work.
Whoa pardner! It don't take much to set you off does it? Just because someone has a different opinion than yours, isn't an excuse to go high and to the right. I think that most would agree that there can be mechanical failings in firearms. Just like everything else out there that is mechanical. I don't believe any shooting enthusiast, or hunter would call these folks liars either. Plain and simple fact is, that even a firearms manufacturer warns against 'relying on the safety solely', and advises one to familiarize themselves with both the firearm and safe use of them. When many of us out here, with 30-40+ years of handling and using firearms, have had no similar incidents it's not likely that we're going to look at the firearm first. That doesn't mean that there can never be a fault with the firearm, it just means that far more of us have not had similar issues. And I'd be willing to bet that most of us attribute that to our experience, knowledge, and just plain old common sense. I'm not an NRA member. I have used firearms from almost every make and model. I have over 20 years of military (infantry & combat) experience with firearms and weapons. I have respect for firearms. But most of all, I exercise common sense with firearms. It may not be prevalent in most out there fooling with guns, and that is most unfortunate. Ranting and name calling are not examples of informed debate. Might want to give the same credit to others as you expect from them...as a gun owner. Something to ponder.
All I can say is: I was taught to remove all ammunition from ANY firearm after I was done shooting, and to NEVER rely on a safety. Nothing man does is foolfroof, anything can fail, and then there is Murphys' Law. 'Nuff said?
I've seen this with my own eyes... My cousin has a 700 BDL 7mm and I have a 700 CDL 7mm. Whenever he unloads his he has to move the safe from on to fire. I do not. But, when he does that the gun has fired. Numerous times. He has since taken it to a gunsmith to remedy the problem. My dad also had a BDL 7mm and he had the same thing happen to him in the 80's. He has had his fixed, as well, by a gunsmith. Both of them have served in the military, seen action in Vietnam and Iraq and all three of us are police officers. Gun safety with us is paramount.
I've perused a few of these comments, and without singling any one person out, I thought I'd toss in my two cents. I've seen people criticize some of these victims for chambering a round, for leaning the gun, resting it in on a bench, relying on the safety, etc. While I am no stranger to guns, I wouldn't consider myself an enthusiast. Never hunted a day in my life; I have nothing against it, just no real desire to do so. That being said, I would like to draw a comparison to gun safety and my profession as an electrician. In my field, anybody smarter than a bag of hammers uses lock out/tag out. This involves physically placing a lock on whatever disconnecting means is available, a lock with only one key, which you keep in your possession until such time as you are done doing whatever it is you are doing and are clear to safely turn the power back on. This of course also includes researching to make sure the equipment has only one source of power, and testing it once locked out to ensure that it is in fact 'dead'. Not one person who follows these couple of basic common sense steps has ever been electrocuted. The lock does not fall off, the electricity doesn't arc across the contacts/open knife switch/open breaker/pulled elbow, etc etc etc. It is intrisically safe 100% of the time. Is it really too much to ask that the 'safety' of the gun renders said gun safe? Is this a common problem with other manufacturers as well? By the tone of the story I would tend to think no. Suppose somehow your child got into your gun cabinet because you just absent mindedly left it unlocked, or perhaps in snooping around they've discovered the key, or perhaps they just happened to have seen you lock it up and put the key away. You also happened to leave a round/rounds in the gun, whether intentional or not. However, you are responsible enough to have a trigger guard/lock on the gun, and you always store them in the safety position. They play with the gun, and accidentally drop it, and it discharges. Now, I ask you again...is it really too much to ask for a safety to do as it is supposed to do, and render the gun safe? You might be sitting there right now saying to yourself that this would never happen, not in your house. And yet, you hear about this scenario playing out all the time, and generally with drastic consequenses. You don't hear about the near misses. I would have to think that if this unfortunate sequence of events happened in your house, and someone got hurt or worse as a result of it, you might be singing a different tune. I do not own a remington of any sort. Upon reading this story, I find it highly unlikely that I ever will.
I AM THROUGH WITH ALL THESE ANGRY REPUBLICANS TROLLING MSN!
I've seen it for endless months and it DOES NOT change my opinion .
GUN SAFETY = Manufacturer guarantees merchant-ability and fitness for a particular purpose (gun will perform to specifications)
If the safety is on; and the gun fires ; that's a failure of the gun manufacturer,
regardless if you were supposed to have it loaded with round in chamber or not.
I take the position that smart people don't throw their guns around in the back of a truck and have it loaded all the time either.
The safety prevents the trigger from moving. It won't magically make every round you buy have a perfectly seated primer or anything like that.