Well, latest update for anyone still following:

Got ahold of Winchester. They sent me a pre-paid shipping label for the unused ammo, so I boxed it up and sent it back to them. They requested that I contact Ruger and have the gun sent to them for inspection. When I contacted Ruger, apparently the last person I talked to about shipping the gun to Winchester didn't leave any notes on that, so the initial response I got was that Ruger would ship the gun back to me (from New Hampshire all the way to Washington State), and I'd have to ship it to Winchester on my own (back to Illinois). I mentioned it seemed kind of ridiculous to ship the damn thing back and forth across the country rather than just straight to Winchester. No go. So I contacted Winchester, and they volunteered to send me another pre-paid shipping label to send the gun to them. Later Ruger did call back and offer to ship it to Winchester, but only if a) they had a specific name to ship it to, and b) it would be returned to *them*, not me upon completion of Winchester's inspection. Given those conditions, particularly the second, I declined and told them of Winchesters generous offer of pre-paid shipping.

Hopefully as we speak Winchester will be conducting pressure tests on both boxes of the ammo, and when they get the gun, can come to some conclusion as to WTF happened. I'm starting to not like Ruger a whole heck of a lot over this, though admittedly this is the first 'run-in' I've had w/ a big gun company. Winchester (so far) is a heck of a lot nicer to deal w/, though this is the ammo company Winchester, not USRA the gun maker.

Monte

I'd be interested in the results of this situation,..please do keep us posted.

This has gone way down the road and the advice that Malm. gave was not listened to.

What may happen is that those companies will bury the information. They will wear you out with baloney that nothing is wrong.

If I were injured by a gun with factory ammo I would contact a lawyer and name everyone including the person who sold you the gun.

I happened to buy a new Savage 12fvss in 270 WSM last year. It gave very high pressures and velocities with factory ammo. There were other issues such as the fact that the bore showed deep tool marks and hard inital bolt lift. I sent the rifle and ammo back to Savage and they returned it with at test target shot with another brand of ammo and said that they changed the extractor and polished the chamber.

Those things had nothing to do with the complaint! They don't even know how to read a letter! This is why we get junk in the first place.

Since I was not injured I sold the rifle. I lost over $200 on that deal but that's cheap.

The thing to do is to call a lawyer and have him send letters to Winchester and Ruger. You have damage to your face etc.

No, I didn't see retaining a lawyer as a path I wanted to pursue in this instance. Yes, I tooks a small amount of primer shrapnel to the face and thumb. Could it have been very, very bad? Sure. But in all honesty, I've done/seen worse from silly things I did as a kid. I don't really feel any 'personal damages' are applicable in this situation. I'm personally not happy w/ the lawsuit-happy society we live in, and don't feel a need to add to it over a relatively minor injury. I've injured myself worse shaving or sharpening a knife over the years. If anything, I'm more 'offended', than injured. Firing a gun implies a certain amount of trust in the ammunition maker and the firearm maker. When I touch off factory ammo in a factory gun, and it malfunctions like this, someone let me down. The biggest thing I want from this is to know what happened, why, and who's fault it is. After that, if the gun isn't actually damaged (doesn't appear to be) from the incident, a sincere apology would be in order. If the gun is damaged, I want it repaired to as good as or better than new. That's about it. I'm not in this for monetary damages, or to drain the companies affected dry, or to line the pockets of some damn lawyer (apologies to those here in that profession). What's pissin' me off now is Ruger's attitude so far. The person who inspected the firearm apparently is the supervisor of the ladies who answer the tech support lines. I have no idea as to his actual qualifications. For him to tell me that having a local gunsmith be able to close the bolt on a Wilson No-Go gauge, and that the fired cases clearly protrude from a case headspace gauge, both made to SAAMI specs quote doesn't mean anything, and then try to grill me into admitting that I really blew up the gun using handloads not factory ammo, pretty much torqued me off. Supposedly by their headspace gauges, which 'are calibrated regularly', there is absolutely nothing wrong w/ the headspace of the gun. Now I'd say that there are some interesting tolerances there. Couldn't get him to say what their headspace tolerances were, at that point.

Ah, well. I'm getting all wound up again on this. I'll see what Winchester finds out. It may indeed be the ammunitions 'fault'

Sir

I can certainly understand your not wanting to "line a lawyer's pocket" in this instance due to the fact that you suffered minor superficial injury. However, perhaps a bit more here is at stake than what happened to you.

By that I mean that the reamer that chambered your rifle may also have chambered many other rifles, and that this could happen to somebody else. In addition, something could have been wrong with Winchester's machines on the day in which your ammo was made, and there could be faulty ammo out there that could injure somebody else.

I also understand that you did not want to invest much money in shipping and other costs in order to get this issue resolved.

I think that the better course here would have been for you to have had somebody with much more credibility than yourself handle these transactions for you. Perhaps a local warranty station for Ruger or for other guns, or perhaps a well known gunsmith, or maybe even a local firearms expert that testifies in such cases.

Moreover, due to the possibility of danger to the general public, I would have certainly called whoever it was in my state that should be aware of such matters and advised them of the situation so that it rose to the "governmental" level, or at least I would have advised Ruger that I was going to do that and did they want to participate in something on the order of a recall on automobiles.

At a minimum, I would have gotten affidavits from Wilson as to the correctness of their headspace guages, and had that guage kept by someone else (maybe a local law enforcement agency) so that nobody could say you used a different one.
I would have gotten affidavits from the local gunsmith as to exactly how he understands headspace to be measured and how he measured it.

I certainly would have held on to a few rounds of that ammunition and had an independent expert check it, as well as having an independent expert check the headspace of the rifle.

After I had gathered all of that expert witness stuff, I would then have contacted Ruger and Winchester with the evidence, and proceeded from there, whether that be a lawsuit or whatever.

I sincerely doubt that either Ruger or Winchester would want to spend thousands of dollars defending a lawsuit (especially a class action one due to public safety) when all you wanted was a $500 rifle replaced.

But then, that's just my opinon.

Ok. You do have a point that sometimes this sort of thing is indicative of larger issues. But to what lengths, how much money out of pocket am I supposed to go to before even sending the gun or other stuff off. I realize people are trying to be helpful, but to some degree this smacks of 20/20 hindsight, and spending other people's money on lawyers, supposed expert witnesses, travel time, time off of work to arrange the meetings (assuming places like Wilson even want to get involved in the first place), getting signed affadavits from people. And as far as some sort of local Ruger service center, well, check Ruger's site. There is exactly one (1) service center for this kind of gun, and it's in New Hampshire. I took the gun to a gunstore, and a gunsmith, and if push really comes to shove, I am fairly sure I can get both of them to sign statements as to what they found.

Hindsight being what it is, I'll concede that sure, I perhaps should have retained a few of the fired and non-fired cartridges just in case. But I didn't, and no amount neener'ing and told-ya-so is going to change that. I'm mainly posting updates for people interested in how the companies in question are handling the situation. I really don't need the other abuse about 'should have' done this or that.

Monte

Monte



I wasn't speaking from "hindsight" but rather from the experience of being an attorney. Moreover, your post is entitled "need some advice".



Kevin

Kevin,

I can understand that as a lawyer, if you wanted to build an air-tight case from the get-go, your approach would have merits. But for those of us w/ no interests whatsoever in getting lawyers involved except as an absolute last resort, it assumes a lot.

And despite what the original title of the thread was/is, I thought it was blatantly obvious to the most casual observer that events were already set in motion, and further details as to what 'should have' taken place in the past really weren't what the most recent posts were about.

YMMV,

Monte

Monte

I assume nothing. Rather, the point I was trying to make is that when one deals with a large corporation such as you are, one of the first things the corporation does is to look at whom they are dealing with. Moreover, as I pointed out, as we live in a society, then we must all have some sort of duty, even if only a moral one, to report to those in authority something that may be dangerous to others in the society.

Lastly, my posts were not intended to "abuse" you, but rather to offer perspective.

Kevin