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

It is so easy to follow, you confused yourself and wrote a sentence with two clauses that are 180 degrees different from each other in meaning.

RE: Brian Ward - New Member
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That is just the way jury instructions are written.

right, its the reason we have litigation for people frying their dick pissing on electrified rails, "keep hands and feet inside the bus" placards, and "don't feed the f'n bears" signs as well.

Not really, but keep on fighting the good fight.

Far be it for some guy to load a cartridge within SAAMI specs and actually expect a firearm to remain intact. I mean the manufacturer told him not to use hand loads and all.

I can't wait for Remington to issue a warning that its firearms are only to be shot with Remington ammunition and then tell anyone who blows one up with Winchester Super X to piss up a rope and say, "We warned you."

You assume that cartridge was to SAAMI specs. Without anything more than the OPs word (and he's already omitting a ton), none of us know that to be the case. A double charge, or the wrong powder, could lead to catastrophic events in most any firearm.

JoeBob, you continue to make this a mini-crusade, but we don't have much of anything to go on at this point. And, it's certainly not like jury instructions are even written wrong, or juries make a serious mistake on a verdict...

For the record i did not confuse myself.

All YOU have to do is read the material that comes with any firearm these days.

It is in black and white.

Just a question:

Do you reload your own ammo?

Not trying to do anything but find out.

Also assuming that prior load development wasn't always within spec and that it didn't stress the frame prior to the final catastrophic gun failure.

Of course, the jury had more info than we do, and maybe they did assume that?

I don't assume anything. I'm merely making the point that the mere fact that a cartridge is hand loaded does not make it unsafe and that therefore, THAT one fact in and of itself is not enough to absolve a company of liability.

Maybe he was trying to inform and edumacate.

Perish the thought but maybe he wants you to realize anything can fail, expecially if these failures with handloads have happened before but since the cases were not won the injured cant spread the news without risk?

I had a .300 WM Encore rifle that was brand new from the factory that had 2/3 of the first Federal Classic factory loads separate just above the case head when fired, and the third had a nice line around the brass in the same spot. The gun didn't detonate like a grenade, or even open up for that matter, but gas did escape the sides of the action. I sent the barrel back to TC and they replaced it. Didn't have any issues with the replacement.

TC also had a recall for unhardened lugs that made it out of the factory that did lead to catastrophic failures regardless of the loads being used so that would be another possibility.

Every time a maker tries to make something more idiot proof, mother nature makes better idiots.

How the [bleep] can you design to cover every idiot?

Yes, you did. You said that if you shoot hand loaded ammunition, you're up schit creek, unless, you could prove that it would have failed with factory ammunition as well.

Well, which is it? You say hand loads, schit creek. Then you qualify that statement.

You can't. That is why the legal standard revolves around a concept called "foreseeability".

I'm guessing that's why they say 'Don't use reloads, because we don't know what kind of idiot you are'

That seems to be foreseeability. Because the one thing I know is you can't cover something for every type of idiot/scenario that will come down the pike.

You can't. How many successful verdicts have you ever heard about where a gun blew up with reloads? I can think of very very few, if any, other than this one. Why is that? Because the burden will be on the hand loader to prove that his reload was safe. Unless he was videoing it, how does he do that? Even then, he can't necessarily rule out a double charge or something like that. Almost impossible to make a good enough case out of that. And even then, maybe his prior reloads stressed the steel. So tough as to be nearly impossible.

But, still the point is, the company sells a product in which it KNOWS people are going to use reloads. And further, it does nothing to mitigate that. So, it doesn't get to get blanket protection by saying, "We told you not to use reloads."

One thing hits me in reading this thread.

Most of us reload and shoot ammunition that we load and, with prudent loads, it is safe! All the firearms owner's manuals I've read contain the admonition to only use factory loads or the warranty is voided.

How do we reconcile this conundrum?

Y

You very well could be correct. I have no way of knowing his exact intent. I've just seen several instances of this as first few posts. Personally, and IMHO, it would carry much more weight if coming from a more established member.

Not having enough information to comment on the original case, but commenting on the feedback:

Those who are quick to absolve manufacturers of all blame based on the use of any handloaded ammunition are not doing our community any favors.

Certainly one can manage to blow up just about anything with a case full of Bullseye, but that is not the issue. I suspect there are many cases where experts could determine there was a high probability (which is all we truly have in most cases) that the ammo was within acceptable pressure specs.

To quickly let manufacturers off the hook effectively discourages hand loading and plays right into the hands of those who would love to disarm us completely.

Owner's manuals and warranties are written by lawyers to protect the manufacturer. I purchased a new Colt Double Eagle 25 or so years ago and read the manual - remember this was designed to be a defensive handgun that had police sales in mind as customers.

The manual advised the owner to keep the firearm unloaded until the need arises, THEN load it. No wonder so few actually read owner's manuals.