Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Embrace The Truth - Catastrophic Gun Failure

That's why you carry insurance. You can't protect idiots from themselves, so you protect yourself from idiots.

If you want to talk about hand loading and the foreseeability that it will be done, go look at the Handloader Magazine Facebook site.

I schit you not, it is a Handloader Magazine cover with a TC Encore on it.

Kind of hard to argue that hand loading is bad when you let your product get pimped out in Handloader Magazine.

Lest anyone get overly invested in the "Brian used handloads" line of reasoning, remember that TC manufactured, and for all I know still does manufacture, barrels and thus firearms that could not be used with anything but handloaded ammunition. I happen to own two of those barrels - a .30 Herrett and a 7mmTCU. There are many others besides those two examples.

So, despite what the manual is saying about not using reloads or handloads, the reality is that TC is/was well aware of, and significantly responsible for, the use of handloads/reloads in their products.

P.S. No SAAMI specs on those cartridges at the time of barrel manufacture either - so there goes that line of reasoning as well.

Last statement is a hell of a good point. I haven't heard of any manufacturers taking Handloader to task for using their products on the cover or writing articles suggesting handloads for those products. Seems the manufacturers want it both ways, does it not?

Scott Thornley makes perhaps an even better point immediately above!

I seem to recall lots of gun manufacturer adds in them as well.

+ 10

Actually, JoeBob didn't do it, it was the OP, but he still thinks TC is at fault...

Its amazing so many evidently feel there should be an unwritten law that all arms mfgs should be immune from liability of their products if handloads are used. That should really help.

Steelie
Your comment about mother nature!! My reply isn't that the truth.
You can never idiot proof it for all idiots, there will always one who can get around the safe guards no matter what.
Thanks for the comment. Cheers NC

Quoting Joe Bob: "You obviously, don't get the point. Firearms manufacturers know that firearms will be used with hand loaded cartridges. If they ACTUALLY believed that hand loaded cartridges were unreasonably dangerous, they could with a few rather simple design changes, manufacture firearms that could not shoot reloaded ammunition."

Just exactly WHAT "rather simple design changes" are you talking about sir?

And as to Brian, I'm sorry he blew up his rifle and got injured. That was simple human error, and is regretable, always.

However, he admits he DID use a realoaded round. Now I have the dubious distinction of having blown up a Super Blackhawk. I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that my loads were not only AOK, but absolutely, positively reliable and safe. A STACK of Bibles, mine you! But the gun blew up. Thank God that neither I nor my son sitting on a friend's shoulders, nor my friend were injured in the process.

It took me a week to trace down HOW it happened, but I found I'd poured powder from the hopper of my measure into the WRONG CAN after reloading very late one night. I've probably reloaded and shot nearly or over half a million rounds in my time. Only one was bad. But that was enough.

In short, it was MY fault, and NOT the fault of the firearm or its manufacturer. In fact, if I'd been shooting anything but a Ruger, I'd likely have died or at least been injurred. Therefore, I never even THOUGHT about suing. Ruger found that out through my friend and Ackley/Pachmyr trained gunsmith and friend. They still offered me a replacement at jobber's cost, which I humbly accepted most graciously and thankfully - NOT with a lawsuit just to pay the medical bills, etc.

I know from personal experience what kind of temptations one faces when they blow up a gun. Many will encourage you to sue to get money, and there'll be no shortage of shyster lawyers who'll be glad to help. Product liability is BIG MONEY, and BIG MONEY is the new "God" of our New Millenium. I resisted, and got quite angry at those who suggested I do something I damnably well KNEW wasn't right in ANY way.

Most people today see things quite differently, and it's gonna' be a real experience to see them get what finally MUST come of this kind of idiotic self-destruction.

I don't know ALL the facts about Brian's case, but from what he himself has offered us here to judge by, it looks to me like he was just hurt, and wanted and needed help, and sought it in a lawsuit. Whether that lawsuit was factually, morally, ethically proper or not is quite another matter, and is rightfully subject to the age old measures of what constitutes "right" and "wrong."

He states his suit was based on and due to a "defect" as he calls it in the arm, but fails to elaborate just what that defect actually was. He doesn't give what "specs" were out of line. All we've gotten is a mass of glittering generalities and essentially gobbledygook, and few real facts on which to base a solid or informed opinion.

I'm sorry you're blinded, Brian, but you're not making much of a case for yourself, and just to let you know what you HAVE done here, I should probably tell you that you appear, to me at least, to have just simply sued because you COULD, and were just lucky enough to draw a jury that really didn't know how to weigh the technical matters in the case - a not uncommon situation these days when knowledgeable people are generally at work and don't want and aren't willing to serve on juries.

Again, that's just my take and opinion based on what you've given us to work with. Maybe you're not so good at stating your case? I don't know, but thought you might benefit from at least knowing how it's coming across right now, so you might make amends somehow, if you wish. My opinion is just an opinion, and all I have to base it on is what you've given us to work with, and at least now you know how you're being perceived.

Always been my contention, just when you think you built something that you believe is idiot proof... God creates a better idiot!

Personally, I find a sample of 1 very difficult to draw conclusions from.

If there are more cases, the details of them need to be found and talked about. Especially on examples of catastrophic failure on Encores that had never fired anything but factory ammunition.

Doc the reason they put disclaimers in the boxes is because they have no way of knowing if the person doing the reloading is following the charges in the books or if they think that 9.0 grains of unique does ok then 12.0 would be so much better.

I take responsibility for all of the cartridges i load.

They are not supposed to blow up what they are shot in,but there are those that will use the fact that they screwed up to sue and not take responsibility for their actions.

As for just shooting factory in guns,for a long time i did just that.
,knowing that the factory loads more that not would not blow me up.

As far as leaving them blameless for making a time bomb,one needs to have some evidence of that,ether by metal flaw or design flaw.
Not in any of the posts about this has it been shown just what was supposed to have been the fault.

I do like 9.0 grains of unique with 200 swc in the 45 colt as shot in a colt lighting rifle.
But would never use 12.0.
Common sense seems to have fallen by the wayside a long time ago.
Get what you can while you can no matter who is to blame or is no one to blame?

Jeez, you still don't get it. I have no way of knowing if they were at fault or not. They might be. They might not be. I am simply saying that they don't get a free pass JUST because handloads were used.

This thread is Exhibit "A" as to why juries are often incapable of understanding the simplest legal issues.

There 10 years’ worth and 1000s of pages of documents and testimony being held with the 46th Circuit Court for the County of Otsego, Michigan if you want all the facts of the case. Public Record

The simple answer is what I have time for right now and it’s what I posted above” You can disregard everything I say but PLEASE if anyone has this gun or knows someone with one out of morbid curiosity check the headspace or have a gun smith check the headspace.” Then see what a qualified gun smith tell you to do.

There are plenty of examples of guns being made or designed improperly, ammo being made improperly by handloaders, and by factories, and people using ammo in guns that were never designed for the loads being used in them. Sad to see someone getting a permanent disability out of one combination of circumstances, but, it has happened before, and will happen again. Every time a person pulls a trigger, they take that chance, but, we choose to do so.
No different than waking up in the morning, it either happens, or it doesn't.

Brian, what reloading mistake did you make (according to the jury) that caused them to rule that you were 40% at fault?

Why won't you tell us this?

If you think we are going to wade through "1000s of pages" of documents from the court in some one-hourse town to find out, you're just a whining petulant …

You've wasted enough of our time. Put up or shut up.

So how do you think (or did your lawyer argue) excessive headspace made the gun blow up unless the load was severely overpressure or the frame/bolt gave out? Excessive headspace would make the case stretch, crack, and even possibly burst (detached case head) which I have had happen as noted above with my own encore .300 WM, but it most definitely didn't detonate and throw shrapnel.

The more Brian avoids answering all the questions about his culpability, and the more places he drags this schit show to, the more T/C's lawyers are going to love him.

Think "malicious misrepresentation of the facts", and go from there.

I wonder what the 'responses' are like on the other more civilized gun forums that the OP has posted on?