Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Do you own a Remington bolt-action model 700, Seven, Sportsman 78, 673, 710, 715, 770, 600, 660, XP-100, 721, 722 or 725 rifle? If so, you’re not alone. Some 7.85 million Americans are right there with you. Time for you and your 7,849,999 fellow Big Green bolt-action rifle owners to get a new trigger. cnbc.com reports that Remington has settled a class-action lawsuit for its bolt-action rifle’s defective not-to-say deadly triggers. They’ve agree to replace the trigger on any and all of the above-named rifles – for free! That said, there could be something of a delay . . .
I’m no math major, but if it takes ten minutes to replace and function check one Remington bolt-action trigger, that’s six trigger jobs per hour. If Remington charges 50 employees with making the swap, that’s 300 triggers per hour. Yielding 2,400 triggers per day. That’s 876,000 trigger jobs per year.
Using those numbers, it would take Big Green roughly ten years to replace all the triggers named in the agreement. With no time off for good behavior.
Of course, Remington won’t get anywhere near that many guns in for new triggers. Nor will the Freedom Group’s showcase brand hire 50 employees to spend eight hours a day swapping triggers. But they will get thousands of rifles in for repair. Maybe even tens of thousands.
No matter how you crunch those numbers, owners sending Remington their guns for repair will be looking at a looong waiting period before they get their rifle back.
The wait will be a strong disincentive for owners to surrender their rifles – if the owners even know about the recall. Sorry, free trigger-swap offer. There’s no word on whether there’s any court-ordered publicity for the recall, or what the wording might be.
This “I’ll keep my rifle and take my chances” reluctance will work in Remington’s favor logistically, not to mention financially (can you imagine the shipping costs?). But it will do nothing to restore the brand’s already damaged reputation (cough R51 cough). Nor the Freedom Group’s rep (cough Marlin cough).
We’ll see the devilish details and how Remington announces the judge’s ruling. I’d hate to have spin that one, but Big Green pays its PR peeps big bucks. Watch this space.