82. The Perfect Trigger (Remington Arms)

Support for swindled comes from Simply Safe.

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But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

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This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

I sent him to school and I think he's going to come home and he just didn't come home.

The doctor came in and told me that it was no hope for him, that he was brain dead and they had to take him off to life support.

So, you know, I held on to him as long as I could, and then we decided just to let him go.

We love him, we miss him, and I wish he was still here with me.

In November 2006, at an elementary school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a soft plastic dart from a toy gun became lodged in the throat of 10-year-old Desmond Young when he accidentally inhaled it while chewing on it at school.

According to news reports, Desmond fell to the ground convulsing as his teacher frantically performed CPR.

The 10-year-old passed out from a lack of oxygen and was pronounced brain dead at the hospital.

Desmond Young was taken off life support the next day.

Nine months later, nine-year-old Kintrell Rogers in Chicago died from choking on that exact same toy.

Like Desmond, the little suction cup tip of the dart had blocked Kintrell's airway when he accidentally swallowed it.

You cannot get the dart out of the child, the chair of the federal government's Consumer Product Safety Commission told CBS News.

It's a perfect fit.

It's like a stopper.

Most reasonable people agree that if multiple children choke to death on a particular toy, that toy probably represents a dangerous design at the very least.

But technically, the dart gun in question had not qualified as such.

A spokesperson for the CPSC told the Chicago Tribune that the agency did not initially recall the toy because it did not violate a mandatory safety standard at the time.

The company that imported the dart gun from China certainly agreed they had committed no fouls.

A lawyer representing Henry Gordy International, the Plainfield, New Jersey company that repackaged and resold the toy, said the dart gun adhered to all federal safety standards.

Quote, There really isn't any reason to put this plastic dart in your mouth, and I really don't think it's an unreasonably dangerous product.

So Henry Gordy International did nothing.

Actually, that's not true.

The company did notify its insurance company about potential liability after the first kid died, so they were aware of the issue.

Maybe if they had reacted in some way after Desmond Young's death, Kintro Rogers might still be alive.

Should we do something, boss?

I don't know, stupid.

Depends on how it affects our bottom line.

Henry Gordy International had performed those calculations in years past.

In 1990, the company recalled 40,000 egg-shaped trucks that posed a choking hazard.

In 2007, Gordy recalled a bunch of bootleg Power Rangers-looking action figures called Galaxy Warriors because the paint on the toys contained unacceptable amounts of lead.

A year later, Henry Gordy International recalled almost 900,000 magnetic dartboards over another choking hazard.

There were no incidents or injuries reported relating to those recalls.

But now that there were two dead children, Henry Gordy International had no interest in accepting responsibility.

Perhaps doing so would be admitting fault.

Admitting fault invites liability.

Admitting fault would mean certain death in a court of law.

The families of Desmond Young and Kintrell Rogers eventually sued Henry Gordy International.

Both cases were settled out of court for undisclosed terms.

Ultimately, it was a win for the company, which managed to avoid the disastrous PR and extensive financial damages that could arise from a class action lawsuit.

Henry Gordy International paid the families off and never admitted any wrongdoing.

Fortunately, after some urging from the CPSC, Family Dollar, the retailer that exclusively sold the toys, lived up to its name and issued a voluntary recall.

If the company hadn't agreed, The CPSC does possess the authority to issue a mandatory recall, but the litigation involved would have taken forever.

Luckily, this time, an involved entity held itself accountable, which is always the best case scenario.

The news alert a major recall this afternoon.

Nearly 2 million toy dart gun sets are being recalled after two choking deaths.

The autofire dart gun sets sold nationwide at family dollar stores.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says a nine-year-old boy in Chicago and a 10-year-old boy in Milwaukee died after they chewed on the one-inch soft plastic darts which slipped into their throats.

We really take things like this very seriously and while we don't have any of the product on hand now, we do want to let folks know that the stuff at Family Dollar, the toys and things that you get for your family are perfectly safe.

Family Dollar, which had stopped selling that particular dart gun over a year earlier, announced that it would provide a full refund of $1.50 to anyone that returned the toy to one of its stores.

In addition, the company spread awareness of the recall on its website and through traditional media.

It is unknown how much the recall cost Family Dollar,

but we do know that it only cost Henry Gordy International $1.1 million,

which they paid in the form of a civil penalty, plus whatever amounts they agreed to pay the families in private settlements.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission alleged that the company made a material misrepresentation to the agency during the course of its investigation.

And, the CPSC alleged, Henry Gordy knowingly failed to report the safety hazard to the agency.

Federal law requires manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to report potentially dangerous defective products to the CPSC within 24 hours after a reasonable determination.

Furthermore, companies must specifically report choking incidents that involve balls, marbles, or balloons.

The dart gun imported by Henry Gordy was no exception, but only because it was a toy.

Unsurprisingly, the only industry in America not beholden to the CPSC's safety standards is the firearms industry.

It's true, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has the power to recall a toy gun, but not a real gun, even if that real gun is defective and dangerous.

When Congress passed a law in 1972 establishing the Consumer Product Safety Commission to, quote, protect the public against unreasonable risk of injury associated with consumer products.

It barred the new agency from asserting any regulatory control over firearms.

The industry polices itself even to this day.

What could go wrong?

Excellence is not born from complacency.

It is the fruit of hard work and determination.

It is nurtured by breakthrough thinking and emboldened by an unwavering commitment to continual improvement.

Welcome to the new Taurus.

We're not just setting new standards in product, development, and value.

We're elevating the entire firearms industry and we're doing it in historic fashion.

On July 29th, 2013, a sheriff's deputy in Iowa dropped his Taurus PT-140 Millennium Pro pistol while pursuing a suspect on foot.

The gun hit the ground clip first and fired a bullet into an unoccupied vehicle.

No one was hurt in the incident, but an unintentional discharge is never welcome, no matter the context.

Clearly, there was a problem with the Taurus PT line of pistols.

The issue was replicated in controlled tests, but the company denied it, even though there had been numerous complaints and lawsuits in recent years.

In 2009, Torres, the Brazilian budget gun manufacturer, was forced to pay a $1.2 million judgment to an Alabama man who shot himself in the upper thigh when his PT-111 discharged after it was dropped on the floor.

During the trial, the president and CEO of Torres testified that the company had not conducted drop tests on the guns.

A jury found them guilty.

Torres settled with the man out of court.

In early 2013, Torres was forced to recall almost 100,000 pistols of a different model that had been issued to the Brazilian police.

There were complaints and video evidence of the guns firing without contacting the trigger mechanism, even when the safety was engaged.

However, Torres still would not publicly admit that there was a problem.

But the previous cases were proof that the company had known its guns were defective for years, but never issued a recall.

And there was no regulatory agency in America with the authority to force one, not even the ATF.

Finally, a class action lawsuit was filed in late 2013 after the Iowa cop incident.

Taurus stopped manufacturing the PT pistols, but millions were already on the street and in shops still being sold.

While the terms of a potential settlement were negotiated between Taurus and the gun owners, More incidents occurred involving the defective firearm.

In November 2015, Donald DeWayne Sims filed a separate lawsuit against the company after his new Taurus PT-609 unexpectedly fired when he tried inserting the ammunition clip.

The bullet went through Donald's left palm before striking his wife in the arm and his son in the neck.

11-year-old DJ Sims died at the scene in his grandmother's living room.

Donald Sims claimed he never touched the trigger.

And in the weeks after his son was buried, the grieving father learned that his experience wasn't unique.

For more than 18 months, a class action lawsuit had been pending against Taurus, who refused to remove the defective handguns from the market.

Donald's wife had purchased the gun for her husband after Taurus was fully aware of the problem.

Donald Sims' lawyer said that if Taurus had recalled the guns and stopped selling its inventory, DJ Sims would still be alive today.

On July 27, 2016, a federal judge approved the class action lawsuit settlement.

Taurus agreed agreed to repair or replace nearly 1 million pistols that plaintiffs claimed were defective.

The settlement would cost Taurus up to $239 million,

depending on how many guns were repaired.

I am satisfied with the agreement, said Taurus Holdings President Anthony Ossatelli in an interview.

A company that stands behind its product and is willing to do the right thing for the customer actually gives us credibility.

If you look at cases where companies had safety notices and recalls, the general public looks on that favorably and says this is a company that's a good corporate citizen, that's taking responsibility for their products, and we're doing the right thing.

If you make a million guns, these things can happen, Ossatelli added.

In 2021, a new class action lawsuit was filed against Taurus regarding a different defective pistol.

This time, a Taurus TCP-738 exploded while being fired at a gun range.

The slide broke in half and sent fragments into the eyes and face of an Alabama man.

He suffered facial bone fractures in a detached retina requiring a cornea transplant.

The lawsuit alleges Torres had fraudulently concealed and intentionally failed to warn consumers of the slide defect with the, quote, intent to deceive buyers and the public.

A settlement in that case is currently pending.

Again, Torres has admitted no fault.

It's interesting to note that in most of these lawsuits, the plaintiff's lawyers and their gun enthusiast clients stress that the allegations are not an attack on the American citizens' Second Amendment right to bear arms, but it's a slippery slope, critics of the settlements agree.

What's next?

Are we going to start suing automobile companies?

Cars kill more kids than guns on an annual basis.

He's seen the bar graphs on Facebook.

Ben Shapiro's face was on it.

It's all the proof he needs.

I think anybody that manufactures anything should be afraid.

We're going to go after automobile manufacturers because criminals use it in getaway cars or to run a car into a crowd.

So I think this sets a bad precedent.

If those automobiles unexpectedly and defectively discharge a piece of shrapnel through a child's brain, then, yes.

Maybe we ought to consider regulating and inspecting automobiles like we already do.

Seems like common sense to me.

But again, there's no middle ground in this debate.

They're coming for your guns one draconian step at a time, I tell you.

Just 45 more false flags to go before they're knocking on your door.

Just you watch.

If you believe that, I have a gun to sell you.

It's a rifle made by Remington, the Model 700, the chosen toll of American freedom fighters and hunters for the past 60 years.

To some, it's a symbol of exceptionalism.

It's a symbol of ingenuity.

It's a symbol of liberty, which you will have to pry from their cold, dead hands.

To others, the Remington 700 represents one of the longest-running corporate cover-ups of our time.

It's a symbol of dishonesty.

It's a symbol of greed.

It's a symbol of the stranglehold the firearms industry maintains over the United States of America, as if we need another reminder.

A gun manufacturer denies that its most popular rifle is defective on this episode of Swindled.

They bribed government officials

clear violations of their interstate law clearly on ethical pay to plague and taxpayer dollars that were wasted

tens of millions of dollars

dummied up its books and records

and in control of some god of swindler

Support for Swindled comes from Simply Safe.

For the longest time, I thought home security security meant an alarm going off after someone broke in.

But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

The damage is done.

That's a reactive approach, and it leaves you with that awful feeling of violation, even if the intruder runs away.

That's why I switched to Simply Safe.

They've completely changed the game with Active Guard outdoor protection.

designed to stop crime before it starts.

Their smart, AI-powered cameras don't just detect motion.

They can tell you when there's a person lurking on your property.

That instantly alerts SimplySafe's professional monitoring agents in real time.

And here's the game changer.

The agents can actually intervene while the intruder is still outside.

Talk to them through two-way audio, hit them with a loud siren and spotlight, and call 911 if needed.

It's proactive security, and that's real security.

I trust SimpliSafe because there are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

They've been named the best home security systems by U.S.

News and World Report for five years in a row, and I can see why.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new SimplySafe system by visiting simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

There's no safe like SimplySafe.

A good gun is the sum of all its parts.

That includes small parts, which are held to specified tolerances and just as carefully handled, heat-treated, and so on as the major elements.

A trigger is an absolutely critical small part.

Everyone knows the crispness of a Remington trigger pull.

Remington Arms bills itself as the oldest gun maker in the United States.

The company was founded in upstate New York in 1816 and played a prominent role in the Civil War, both World Wars, and pretty much every war thereafter.

Ownership of Remington has changed hands several times in the past 200 years, but its firearms have remained popular.

Namely, the Model 700 Series Bolt Action Rifle, which was introduced in 1962.

More than 5 million Model 700s have been manufactured and sold.

According to Remington, the rifle is unequaled in tactical precision right out of the box.

It's the top choice of elite military snipers, hunters, and thousands of mediocre cops.

The Remington 700 is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The Model 700's unparalleled accuracy is attributed to its unique trigger system, the Walker trigger.

named after Mike Walker, the young Remington engineer that designed it.

A simplistic explanation is that the Walker trigger consists of two separate parts, a trigger connector and a trigger body.

The trigger connector, a piece of metal roughly the size of a paperclip, was revolutionary because it introduced a smoothness to the action of the trigger and eliminated the slap where the trigger bounces back after the gun is fired.

This regulation of resistance contributes to a very crisp, precise pull.

Many gun owners have described Mike Walker's invention as the perfect trigger.

And something I've always liked a great deal is the Remington trigger.

It's a very, very crisp, precise trigger pull, which is something that I think is essential for good shooting.

I'm very trigger sensitive and I like good triggers.

The only thing more important than gun reliability is gun safety.

Nobody understands this better than the fine folks at Remington.

The company claims that each gun is rigorously tested before it goes out the door.

Safety's always been top top priority, and

it's very important for again our end users.

We want to make sure that the firearm operates the way it's intended to operate.

Being a hunter, you don't want things to go on in the woods or in the field that aren't supposed to.

And we want to make sure that that happens here before we give it to our customers.

It's no wonder that the Remington Model 700 has stood the test of time, the hallmark of dependability for over 50 years.

Mike Walker, the designer of the Walker Trigger, is not surprised at the rifle's everlasting popularity.

It should be popular.

I think it's a

real good rifle, which

the shooters all seem alike.

It is more accurate than any rifle that was ever made before.

Is it 50 years old?

Well,

we all grow old eventually.

We all grow old eventually.

And, in the end, the only thing that really matters is what you leave behind.

For some, it's a void of fleeting memories and regrets until your last remaining acquaintance follows you into the ether to ensure your existence is forgotten entirely.

For others, it's a Remington Model 700.

A priceless heirloom of precision that transcends generations, passed down to a son or a daughter from a father who received it from his father, who received it from his father, who purchased it at a sporting goods store in a strip mall somewhere.

Such a well-engineered tool can last a lifetime.

The Barber's Model 700 rifle had been in their family for years.

It was a trusty old thing.

They never went on a hunting trip without it, including the family outing in late October 2000.

near Manhattan, Montana.

As the hunting day was coming to an end, the Barber family packed up their gear.

Rich Barber handed the Model 700 to his wife Barbara to unload.

Their children, 12-year-old Shanda and 9-year-old Gus, were behind their mother, sitting atop a horse.

Mrs.

Barber was expertly familiar with the weapon and gun safety.

First, she pointed the muzzle in a safe direction towards an empty horse trailer.

Then she disengaged the safety switch before she.

Whoa,

the rifle fired around.

That wasn't supposed to happen.

Barbara's finger was nowhere near the trigger.

She swears her palm was open.

She just clicked off the safety and it shot.

Great.

There's a hole in the horse trailer now.

Wow.

Did you see that, Gus?

Gus?

Where's Gus?

At that exact moment, when Barbara Barber was unloading the Model 700, Nine-year-old Gus had run around the other side of the horse trailer to fetch his sweatshirt.

Rich Barber found his son crumpled into a ball on the ground near the trailer door.

The bullet had pierced the trailer, entered 90-pound Gus through his left hand, into his left abdomen, and exited through his other side.

The nearest hospital was 45 minutes away.

The Barber family did not make it in time.

Barbara Barber was adamant that she never touched the trigger.

It must have been some kind of defect with the gun that resulted in the death of her only son.

That was the only logical explanation.

Rich Barber never questioned his wife, and before Gus was even buried, Rich Barber confirmed Barbara's theory.

Rich Barber's research uncovered hundreds of instances of unintentional discharges involving the Remington Model 700.

Evidently, there was a fundamental design flaw in the Walker trigger.

that made the rifle susceptible to firing without the trigger being pulled.

Rich Barber dug up thousands of written complaints to the company.

At least two dozen people had been killed.

These were not freak accidents.

Well, the basic defect, Mike, is that the gun will fire without anybody pulling the trigger.

It is a danger to every gun owner who has it, to their loved ones, to innocent third parties.

That's the basic defect.

It actually stems from a fundamental design defect.

On top of that, Rich Barber discovered that since the early 80s, Remington had been sued dozens of times because of the Model 700's faulty trigger.

Most of those cases were settled privately for payouts of as little as $5,000.

In cases that went to trial, Remington had won the majority.

The company's defense was always the same.

Accidents involving the Model 700 stemmed from user error, not from product defects.

It had become a familiar company line.

However, Rich Barber obtained internal Remington documents that strongly suggested, if not outright proved, that Remington had been aware of the potential Model 700 trigger defect as early as 1946, 16 years before the gun had even gone to market.

On April 9, 1947, a Remington test engineer described the problem very plainly in a memo, quote, possible to fire the gun by pushing safety to the off position, the engineer added, This situation can be very dangerous from a safety and functional point of view.

In response, about a year later, Mike Walker, the designer of the Model 700's trigger, had proposed a solution to the problem.

He drew up plans to insert a blocking device that would keep the gun's internal mechanism from shifting while the safety is on, but that fix was never implemented.

Even after Remington executives acknowledged that Mike Walker's proposed change was the, quote, best design, It just wasn't fiscally feasible.

The project was already over budget.

Its disadvantages lay in the high expenditure required to make the conversion, the executives wrote.

That high expenditure was detailed later on in that same memo.

Remington calculated that including that blocking device and ensuring the safety of its customers would cost the company an additional five and a half cents per gun.

Remington decided it wasn't worth the expense.

The Remington executives' decision was validated after the company's patent lawyers chimed in, quote, Our usual potential liability for the safety of our product is augmented somewhat by our knowledge that some Model 721 safeties have misfunctioned.

However, our liability does not seem out of proportion to the advantage of retaining the present construction pending receipt of further complaints from the field.

In other words, since Remington was aware of the trigger malfunction, the company's potential liability might be increased if, say, the guns start accidentally firing and killing children.

But on the other hand, the lawyer offered, the potential settlements do not outweigh the cost savings of not including the fix.

Do we save lives or do we save dollars?

That was the moral dilemma at hand.

Naturally, the corporation, noted sociopath, took the money without a second thought.

And over the years, Remington has had plenty of opportunities to change course.

In 1968, the Model 700 malfunctioned 100 times during a consumer reports evaluation.

An experienced user might have caused a serious accident, the magazine reported.

It was a devastating review.

At the time, Remington was embarrassed internally, but publicly stuck to their guns.

There's no issue with the Model 700, they assured.

But behind the scenes, engineers began quietly working on a new trigger system over the next decade.

The project even had a code name, NBAR, which stood for New Bolt Action Rifle.

The trigger on the new gun would include a blocking device, just as Mike Walker had proposed.

The goal was to make the Model 700 safer, but Remington proposed giving it a different name to avoid the optics of there being something wrong with the original.

It's a 100% manufacturing defect that the company failed to

warn, recall, retrofit.

To their credit, Remington did consider consider recalling the Model 700 for a brief period in 1979.

A jury had just awarded $6.8 million to a lawyer in Austin, Texas, who became paralyzed from the waist down after his Model 600 rifle discharged unexpectedly.

That verdict led to the recall of the Model 600, which also featured the Walker trigger.

But ultimately, the company decided against recalling the similar Model 700 for two reasons.

One, a Remington analysis had found only 1% of the guns could be, quote, tricked into firing.

That would mean the recall would have to gather 2 million guns just to find 20,000 that are susceptible to this condition, a memo warned.

Again, not worth it, in the company's opinion.

And two, Remington concluded that recalling all of their bolt-action rifles would undercut the message they planned to communicate to the public concerning proper gun handling.

After that settlement in 79, Remington hired a giant public relations firm to update the company's 10 commandments of firearm safety to be included with every purchase.

Instead of a recall, Remington continued to blame its customers.

For decades, they didn't do this because it was going to cost them too much money, even while they knew people were dying, even while people were being named.

And even now, they still insist there's nothing wrong with this trigger when they know it's actually defective in killing people.

In 1994, Remington reconsidered recalling the Model 700 when a Texas jury awarded a man almost $17 million after his Model 700 unintentionally destroyed his foot.

The plan was to call back about 3 million Model 700s in one fell swoop, but that was before the company calculated what it would cost them.

$23 million.

Never mind.

What else you got?

Instead, Remington once again pointed to its customers' poor etiquette, this time blaming the defect on people improperly adjusting their weapons or not performing routine maintenance.

What we've seen in the past is a lot of people after decades of use without proper routine maintenance, they'll develop a lot of debris or stuff in the trigger

that needs to be removed from the from the mechanism.

And when we see the problems with the guns where someone has had an accidental discharge, normally it's because the parts cannot move with all the debris in it.

And that's what we mainly see.

Or we see people who've improperly adjusted or modified the mechanism to where it doesn't function the way it did when it left the factory.

Rich Barber couldn't believe what he was reading, what it was hearing, what it was seeing.

His next step was the Sioux Remington Arms, who took one look at Barber's trove of evidence and settled quickly for an undisclosed amount in 2002.

As part of the settlement, the Barber family forced the company to launch what it called a safety modification program, which allowed owners to send in their pre-1982 Model 700s for a $20 retrofitting.

It was the closest Remington had ever come to issuing a recall, even though they refused to call it that or admit fault.

Rich Barber didn't just ride off into the sunset with his settlement money.

He couldn't.

Because he knew that nothing had changed.

People would continue to be injured or killed from the defective Model 700.

Because there wasn't enough awareness around the issue.

Remington had spent decades concealing a public hazard through its use of protective orders and confidentiality agreements.

The only reason Rich Barber had become aware of the defect was because it happened to his family.

I have no pity for myself.

I don't feel sorry for myself.

It's too late for us.

I feel sorry for the families whose lives have not been impacted yet.

Rich Barber's intuition was correct.

The unintended discharges continued to happen.

Even after Remington's safety modification program was introduced, even after a new trigger system, the X-Mark Pro, was introduced in 2007.

Similar issues remained.

This is my Model 7.

This video is to try to show what happened the other day while I was sighting in.

This no finger on the trigger?

Yes, it's been consistent.

Okay, so now I've demonstrated that the trigger does indeed go off when you move the safety lever from safe to fire.

Alright, so you can see that this is on safety.

Okay,

doesn't happen.

This is funny.

This is funny.

It did it twice in a row with Aiden.

I know.

Wow.

There it went.

I didn't touch it.

Rich Barber continued his mission for another decade.

He refused to stop until Remington did the right thing.

I promise Gus that uh

it ends here and now.

He compiled an archive of at least a million Remington documents.

He consulted with other families who found themselves in a similar position.

And he sent information to news organizations, specifically CNBC.

Those documents clearly speak for themselves, Barber told them, and they speak volumes about what the company knew, when they knew it, what they did, and what they did not do, and what they continue to do today.

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Five million guns sold.

They shot more accurately than any other factory action gun I've ever known.

An American icon.

With accuracy like that, why would you go hunting with anything else?

But this icon is riddled with questions.

On Wednesday, October 20th, 2010, CNBC premiered an original investigative documentary titled Remington Under Fire, which examined the allegations that the Model 700 series rifle was prone to firing without pulling the trigger.

In the first few minutes of the report, senior correspondent Scott Cohn tells the story of nine-year-old Gus Barber and his father's quest for accountability.

Then, Cohn interviews a gunsmith named Jack Belk, who served as an expert witness in multiple cases against Remington, in which he testified that the Model 700 is, in fact, dangerous.

Later, CNBC features documents uncovered by Rich Barber to demonstrate how Remington has concealed the matter for over 50 years.

To compound that illumination, former Remington insider Roger James confirmed the company's culture of secrecy.

The Remington Way, Roger James confessed to Scott Cohn, is, quote, you just don't tell nobody nothing.

CNBC also tracked down the designer of the Walker trigger himself for an interview.

Mike Walker was 98 years old and living in a retirement community in North Carolina.

On camera, Walker confirmed that he had designed a safer alternative but was turned away.

You had another design when you originally were doing the original trigger.

I had a design that locked the trigger, yes.

But you don't know why they didn't use that in the first place.

Yes, it had something to do with cars.

Brimington Arms was not pleased with CNBC's portrayal of their company and its products.

The gunmaker sent the network an official statement ahead of the documentary's release.

It reads, For nearly 50 years, the Remington Model 700 rifle has been the preferred choice for millions of hunters, shooting sports enthusiasts, and military and law enforcement personnel.

Despite emotional reporting, of baseless and unproven allegations and plaintiff lawyer assertions, several undisputed facts remain.

The Model 700 is the most popular, reliable, accurate, and trusted bolt-action rifle in the world, with over 5 million rifles produced and billions of rounds fired over nearly five decades.

The Model 700 is the firearm of choice for elite shooters from America's military and law enforcement communities, and has been the platform for the United States Marine Corps and the U.S.

Army precision sniper weapon systems for over two decades, both of which specifically require the Walker trigger mechanism.

The Model 700, including its trigger mechanism, has been free of any defect since it was first produced, and despite any careless reporting to the contrary, the guns used by millions of Americans has proven it to be a safe, trusted, reliable rifle.

Both Remington and experts hired by plaintiff attorneys have conducted testing on guns returned from the field, which were alleged to have fired without a trigger pull, and neither has ever been able to duplicate such an event on guns which had been properly maintained and which had not been altered after sale.

Remington takes safety very seriously.

We support hunter safety and other educational programs nationwide and include with every Remington firearm the 10 commandments of firearm safety, which urgently remind every gun owner that if proper firearm safety rules are followed, no accidental injuries would ever occur.

The men and women who build, own, and shoot the Remington Model 700 take great pride in the product that over the last half century has set the bar for safety, reliability, and performance.

That statement is dated September 7th, 2010.

By the time that CNBC documentary aired in October 2010, recalling the Model 700 series of rifles would have cost Remington half a billion dollars.

Instead of doing that, the company spent $2 million on a response.

The company produced its own documentary to counter CNBC's allegations one by one.

Reporting the news is a serious business, especially when it comes to allegations that can damage reputations, raise doubt about the people and products we trust.

Sometimes, though, reporters don't get the whole story.

Remington Arms believes that shooters should know the truth about the Model 700, and it's a story they won't see on cable TV.

Remington announced that a review of CNBC's program uncovered numerous inaccuracies, misstatements, and mischaracterizations, all to support a false conclusion that there was a design flaw in the Model 700 that makes it prone to accidental discharge.

According to the company, none of that was true.

Take, for instance, the barber incident.

Remington said their gun was tested after Gus was killed and the defect could not be duplicated.

It's a sad story, the company agreed, but where's the proof?

At the end of the day, with the barber incident, we weren't there when that happened, and we feel for that family.

I mean,

I have the deepest sorrow for any family that suffers that kind of loss.

At the same time, CNBC did not make a factual tie between what happened during those personal tragedies and a defect in our firearms.

Nor did Roger James, the so-called Remington insider, interviewed by CNBC, Because Roger James wouldn't know.

The company said that Roger James never worked at the Remington arms plant.

Roger James merely handled customer complaints related to Remington ammunition, and he retired 17 years ago.

Plus, they have Roger on video under oath confirming that he never heard anyone at Remington discussing the Model 700 issue.

Nothing more than sour grapes, Remington supposed.

Remington's focus remains on information, not innuendo.

Remington also had video of Jack Belk, the gunsmith CNBC relied upon, under oath confirming that he himself had never observed a debris issue in the Model 700 during his examinations of accidents-involved rifles, nor had he even bothered to test his own theory.

My question, though, related to Remington Model 700s and 710s.

Whether you had ever examined any of those guns from the field and found there to be debris or manufacturing scrap causing a precipitous engagement.

No, sir.

Do you know of anyone who's ever found that?

No, sir.

Remington also emphasized the fact that Jack Belk admitted that he earned more than 50% of his income by testifying against several different firearms manufacturers.

It was a not-so-subtle hint by Remington that Jack Belk knows on which side his bread is buttered.

You didn't mind them coming around?

Well, yes, I did.

I didn't actually tell them they should come.

But they came anyway.

Yeah.

The company also took exception to CNBC's interview with Mike Walker, the legendary inventor of the Walker Trigger.

Remington reminds its viewers that Mr.

Walker was 98 years old when CNBC tracked him down at that nursing home.

The company claims that Walker declined to be interviewed, but they showed up anyway.

Mike Walker is a legend in the Remington community.

He's one of our most distinguished inventors and engineers.

He's a revered employee.

We feel it's irresponsible that CNBC cornered the man and tried to get him to say things that were bad about Remington.

In summary, according to Remington, the Model 700 was safe and always has been.

The accidental discharges and debris theories and CNBC documentaries are much ado about nothing.

The company claimed that no scientific test had ever reproduced the supposed defect and never would.

as long as gun owners kept their rifles properly maintained and unaltered.

Despite Despite the emotion and exaggeration of some news reports, Remington believes the Model 700's history speaks for itself.

We couldn't have been selling these guns for five decades with the educated audience that we have, the well-trained audience that we have, the skeptical audience that we have, without them not buying guns anymore if they had a defect.

And for shooters who have enjoyed decades of accurate performance with the Model 700, the truth about accidental discharges is clear.

These things don't go off by themselves.

Rifle is an inanimate object.

Cannot think, cannot do anything without being orchestrated by its user.

The only accidental discharge involving the Remington Model 700 seems to have been the airing of the TV story,

which didn't report all the facts.

Oof, shots fired.

Intentionally, of course.

But according to Rich Barber and everyone else paying attention, those shots by Remington did not contain much truth.

There was a paper trail of contradiction dating back to the invention of the Walker trigger.

Remington said they had never been able to reproduce the defect, but their own internal documents proved they could.

Perhaps it was just far too late to admit defeat and accept responsibility.

The company had been denying the problem for so long.

What would it look like if 50 years later they started singing a different tune?

More importantly, there were half a billion dollars to consider.

To be honest, it would probably be cheaper just to let the unintentional carnage continue and pay off some more families of dead children.

June 2011, 15-year-old Zach Stringer and his younger brother Justin were alone at home in Columbia, Mississippi.

Some kind of dispute erupted between the two boys and Zach fetched his Remington Model 700.

He planned to load it right there in the living room, just to scare his little brother.

And I started to stand up off of the couch.

And when I had been at the waist and started up, I heard a click and it went off.

And

I remember the fire leaping from the barrel.

I remember seeing it hit.

It was just...

Half his head was gone.

Zach Stringer claims he did not touch the trigger, but in a moment of panic, he retrieved Justin's gun and placed it in Justin's lab to make the scene appear self-inflicted.

Zach met his father, Roger, on the front lawn and begged him not to go inside.

Zack Stringer was arrested six days later at his brother's funeral.

He was charged with manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Roger Stringer testified against his son at his trial.

Guns just don't go off by themselves.

It wasn't until a few years later that a conversation with a friend changed Roger Stringer's mind.

The friend had mentioned a story about a gun essentially pulling its own trigger.

It hit me like a ton of bricks, Roger said.

I googled Remington Model 700 rifle spontaneous firing, and voila, there it was.

Roger Stringer joined Rich Barber and others in the Remington rabbit hole.

All of the internal documents, the previous lawsuits, the earlier victims.

There was even a similar case in North Carolina six months after Justin Schringer was killed.

December 23, 2011, 16-year-old Jasmine Tharr and her cousin Jamesha McMillan were standing in the front yard of their grandmother's house waiting to go Christmas shopping when a bullet from across the street tore through Jameesha's chest straight into Jasmine's heart.

The shot also hit Jasmine's godmother, but she survived.

So did Jamisha.

16-year-old Jasmine Tharr bled out on her grandmother's lawn.

The shooter, a former Marine and experienced hunter named James Anthony Blackwell, insisted that it was an accident.

He was in his bedroom cleaning his Remington Model 700 when it just went off.

The rifle shot a bullet through a closed window.

Mr.

Blackwell said his hand was nowhere near the trigger.

No charges were ever filed.

Today, with the help of a well-known Florida attorney, Willie Gary, the family announced it's suing the gunmaker.

We feel that they are responsible.

The $150 million lawsuit claims the Remington 700 series rifle has a flawed trigger mechanism.

They have for a long, long time now gotten away with having a bad product on the market.

Remington settled with the family of Jasmine Tharr.

Terms of that settlement were never disclosed, but the terms of Remington's next settlement would be.

In 2013, A Missouri man named Ian Pollard claimed his Remington 700 fired without the trigger being pulled on three separate occasions.

He filed a class action lawsuit against Remington, alleging negligence, breach of warranty, unfair and deceptive trade practices, and fraudulent concealment relating to and including the blatant lies contained in the company's formal response to CNBC's documentary.

The complaint alleges fraudulent concealment, and that fraudulent concealment had deadly effect.

And the fraudulent concealment was, in fact, fraudulent concealment of a deadly defect on Remington rifles.

As the court might know, we're talking about an iconic American firearm.

And that's part of the problem.

Because, in fact, since 1947,

Remington knew that its weapon misfired.

We're not talking about disclosure.

We're talking about active, fraudulent concealment.

As always, Remington denied that there was anything wrong with the Model 700.

It was the same message the company had consistently repeated ever since the first lawsuit against them 44 years earlier.

And as usual, Remington came equipped with their calculator.

The company decided it would be cheaper and probably less damaging to its reputation to settle the class action lawsuit instead of fighting it in court.

Victory for the gun owners was near.

It was the plaintiff's hope that everyone with a defective Model 700 would soon have it repaired.

But you know what they say about hope, right?

It's similar to what they say about thoughts and prayers.

They're about as helpful as a bullet in the head.

There are seven and a half million of these rifles still out there.

Every single one of them is a danger.

Everyone has to, who has one of these, needs to file a claim in this lawsuit called Pollard versus Remington to protect themselves, to protect their family members, to protect their loved one.

The fact that you've had it for 20 years and it hasn't fired without a trigger pull doesn't mean it won't happen the next time you pick up the gun.

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A class action lawsuit against Remington Arms Company is now final.

The final step comes 18 years after the death of nine-year-old Gus Barber.

The young boy was killed in a hunting accident October 23rd of 2000.

In 2014, Remington Arms agreed to settle a nationwide class action lawsuit.

The settlement came after dozens of similar cases, thousands of complaints, and at least two dozen deaths over 50 years related to the Model 700 trigger defect.

Still, Remington maintained that its guns were safe and blamed user error.

But in order to avoid the, quote, uncertainties and expense of protracted litigation, the company agreed to retrofit an estimated 7.5 million rifles with a new trigger mechanism.

For certain models that were considered too old for a retrofit, Remington would give the owners vouchers worth as much as $12.50,

but only as long as they filed a claim during the 18-month window.

The proposed settlement would also require Remington to alert the public about the trigger replacement offer through direct mail, print ads, and its website.

To what extent had yet to be determined, but both parties were confident that they could hammer out a deal.

But it would take years.

Critics alleged that the settlement was structured to discourage customers from returning their guns to reduce the cost to Remington.

At the same time, the plaintiff's attorneys had 12.5 million reasons to speed up the process.

The settlement was structured around the company's public relations concerns, if anything, some alleged.

The settlement was undeniably weak, but the alternative was going to trial, where the class could possibly lose.

If that happens, zero guns would be fixed, which is the worst case scenario.

The initial notice of these settlement terms was communicated to gun owners in 2015, but only a tiny fraction of the qualified rifles were returned to Remington.

The judge presiding over the settlement delayed final approval multiple times until the company could figure out how to reach a larger audience.

At the current rate, the fees that the plaintiffs' lawyers would collect would far exceed the affected class they represented.

That's some sort of looms, the judge would later say.

Finally, on June 11, 2016, Remington agreed to boost its trigger replacement campaign by advertising on Facebook, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh.

The company also hired one of Obama's former campaign managers to help with the publicity.

Hope and change that trigger, buddy, if you know what's good for you.

But even with all that firepower, by January 2017, only 19,000 out of 7.5 million qualified Remington customers had filed claims.

That's about one quarter of 1%.

Not ideal.

Many were left unsatisfied.

One of the proposed settlement's harshest critics was Rich Barber.

He filed a formal, 40-page objection to the settlement, in which he accused Remington of using, quote, deceitful and misleading statements in its messaging.

Barber alleged that the company's continued assertion that the guns were safe was a deliberate attempt to undermine the settlement and reduce the number of claims.

It was all by design, and it was working.

At the very least, least, they should have to admit that the guns are defective for maximum safety.

In a rare move, Remington actually responded to Rich Barber's objection in a filing.

Dead been hesitant to publicly criticize the man whose nine-year-old son was killed, but not this time.

In the response, Remington accused Rich Barber of only objecting to the settlement after his initial demands went unmet.

Remington claimed Barber offered to support any class action settlement, stop making disparaging statements about the company, and destroy all of his research if the company gave him $1.5 million, two rifles, and 4,000 rounds of ammunition.

Remington asked the judge to ignore Rich Barber's objection to the settlement because of his, quote, vexatious behavior.

In an interview with CNBC, Rich Barber admitted to making those demands.

He said the demands were submitted by an attorney that no longer represents him.

Barber said the offer was made during settlement talks of his defamation case against Remington in 2014 for comments made about him and the company's video response to CNBC's documentary.

Rich Barber told CNBC that eventually he thought better of, quote, making a deal with the devil and resended his offer.

However, Remington claimed that Barber only withdrew the offer after his defamation case was thrown out and they had the emails to prove it.

Either way, Rich Barber did not approve of the class action settlement as it currently stood.

Neither did the Attorneys General in nine states plus the District of Columbia.

But just the fact that a settlement was even being negotiated was enough to set Zach Stringer free.

After five years in prison for accidentally shooting his brother, thanks to new evidence related to Remington's class action lawsuit, Zach Stringer was released in 2015.

His father, Roger Stringer, no longer believes that Zach meant to harm Justin.

Now for the bad news.

While the class action settlement negotiations dragged on for years, more people were killed by unintentional discharges from Remington 700 rifles, including Tanner Douglas, a 16-year-old in Laredo, Texas, who was shot in the ribcage by a ricocheted bullet that unexpectedly fired while his father was unloading.

Tanner Douglas' death was rolled accidental.

His family had never even heard of the class action settlement.

Not that it really mattered.

The gun that killed Tanner was so old, it only qualified for a $10 product voucher that couldn't even cover the cost of a Remington baseball hat from the company's online store.

A federal judge has approved what is being called a landmark settlement with the gun maker, Remington.

Some 7.5 million Remington guns were declared defective.

Under the judge's ruling, Remington gun owners will be able to have faulty triggers replaced free of charge.

U.S.

District Judge Orti Smith concluded that fixing some of the guns is better than risking none at all being fixed.

Finally, on March 14th, 2017, a judge approved the landmark Remington Rifle Settlement.

On April 13th, 2017, two gun owners appealed.

Remington announced that no rifles would be retrofitted until the appeal was resolved.

And then Remington Outdoors declared bankruptcy.

The entire settlement, which had already been approved, was all of a sudden back in jeopardy.

Remington Outdoor Company announced Thursday it's emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after shedding $775 million in debt.

The company had fallen on hard times in recent years.

They were setting on a lot of unsold inventory after Hillary Clinton failed to win the 2016 election.

Plus, those product liability claims, including the class action, were really starting to add up.

Plus, investors didn't want to touch Remington after that kid used one of their Bushmaster-branded rifles to murder 27 people at Sandy Hook Elementary and his mother at home.

That was a whole other issue progressing through the courts.

At that current moment, Remington had approximately $950 million in debt to reorganize.

Fortunately, when the company re-emerged, now controlled by its lenders, There were earmarks for the costs of the class action settlement, plus the lawyer fees.

Once again, the settlement was approved.

It's the last,

for the most part, the last milestone I had to achieve.

Now Remington is agreeing to retrofit new trigger mechanisms to an estimated 7.5 million rifles.

And the fix is there, and I want the public to be aware that if there was ever a time

where they had any questions in their mind, now they can have their rifles fixed free of charge.

The Remington class action settlement became official on October 24th, 2018.

For Rich Barber, it was a long time coming.

It felt like the end of an era, but not the end of the road.

He told CNBC, quote, I'd like to believe that I have a part in getting to this time and place in history.

I would like to believe that 15 years of my painstaking work and my detailed analysis of Remington's documents, putting the pieces of the puzzle together, made a difference in my son's memory.

But part of it means you're leaving part of October of 2000 behind, aren't you?

I have to.

I have to move forward.

My family deserves it.

And Gus?

I'll never leave Gus behind.

People don't die and are just gone.

What immortalizes us is that we're never forgotten.

Gus will be immortalized,

and I don't think that Remington will ever forget his name.

On October 6, 2020, CNBC reported that multiple gun owners had complained that the rifles they had repaired as part of the settlement were malfunctioning.

some of which had no issues before they were retrofitted.

It cost me an elk, William William Cook of Columbus, Montana told the network.

He said his rifle fired around when he switched off to safety, but instead of getting the gun fixed or destroying it, Mr.

Cook told CNBC that he traded it to a local gun dealer.

A rifle that fires unexpectedly.

Sounds like someone else's problem to me.

Rich Barber's work has continued.

He said he receives calls from families every year who are currently living through the tragedy that he lived through more than 20 years ago.

And it could have all been avoided if the one company responsible had taken responsibility.

The documents don't lie, the people at Remington do.

And I'm just going to keep going and disseminating this information.

And anything that I find in here becomes a matter of public record.

The hits keep coming.

On February 15th, 2022, Remington settled another lawsuit.

This time with the families of nine Sandy Hook school shooting victims, who, contrary to popular belief, did not sue the company for the wrongful death of their children.

They couldn't, thanks to a 2005 law Congress passed called the Protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act, which grants immunity to the firearms industry when its products are used in a crime, unless a state law is violated.

Instead, the Sandy Hook families sued Remington because of the company's marketing, which specifically targeted disturbed, weak little men.

Consider your man card reissued, read an advertisement for a Bushmaster AR-15 style rifle, similar to the one Adam Lanza used to mow down school children half his size.

The lawsuit accused Remington of promoting hypermasculinity and combat dominance while marketing a weapon designed to maximize battlefield fatalities to untrained civilians.

It was deceptive marketing, at least, the families argued, which violated the state of Connecticut's fair trade laws.

The U.S.

Supreme Court let the case move forward.

And after seven years of feet-dragging by Remington, whose second bankruptcy and refusal to hand over documents significantly delayed the proceedings, the case was settled for $73 million,

$40 million more than Remington initially proposed.

Tonight, a legal settlement for families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

The gunmaker, Remington Arms, settling for $73 million because of what experts call a crack in the shield that has protected gunmakers in the past.

It was the largest ever payout by a gun manufacturer, but it wasn't about the money.

The Sandy Hook families have said that the central aim of the lawsuit was to force change, to pry open the gun industry, to subject it to more scrutiny, to hopefully prevent the next tragedy from occurring.

But you know what they say about hope.

Today marks an inflection point when our duty of care to our children as a society finally supersedes the bottom line of an industry that made such an atrocity as Sandy Hook possible to begin with.

Today is a day of accountability for an industry that has thus far enjoyed operating with immunity and impunity.

And for this, I am grateful.

After Dylan's murder, I made a very early promise to do everything in my power to honor his short life by creating change that would save the lives of other children and prevent mass shootings like the one that destroyed our family.

This lawsuit has been part of that promise.

For eight long years, we've continued our fight to hold Remington accountable for its role in prioritizing profit above safety and using reckless marketing techniques to appeal to at-risk and violence-prone young men.

But how many more Newtowns?

How many more San Bernardinos?

How many more Auroras and how many more Orlando's?

And probably in six months, we can add another name to the list until the Remingtons of the world say, you know what?

It just isn't worth it anymore.

On June 3rd, 2022, The Texas Tribune reported that lawyers representing the family of a 10-year-old victim of the Uvalde school shooting have requested marketing material from the Georgia-based manufacturer behind the AR-15-style assault rifle used to kill 21 people at Robb Elementary.

Is this loophole our only hope?

The family of a Buffalo shooting victim may sue a major gun manufacturer that's planning to move its headquarters here to West Georgia.

The family has hired two lawyers since that time to investigate a potential lawsuit against Remington.

Probably.

Well, I'll I'll say so long for now.

It was mighty fine being with you for a few moments, and until we meet again, all of us at Remington will be busy working on new and improved products for good hunting and good shooting.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, aka The Former, Former, aka The Galaxy Warrior.

For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at SwindledPodcast.

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