Dangerous .22 semi-auto

I blamed my gloves, but when I ran through the routine without the glove it discharged again. After two hours of tinkering with the trigger mechanism I realized that I have a gun that will cock anytime, but will now only fire when upside down or vertical. This sounds like a recipe for tragedy to me.

Before I schedule it for a date with a cutting torch I thought I'd ask if anyone has ever had a Lakefield-Mossberg .22 do this?

As a former hunter safety instructor, I'd suggest that if you have one of these guns around home, keep it away from anyone but yourself until you are sure that it is safe. The local gun store guy blamed the failure on excessive oiling, and suggested that I take it to a gunsmith. I think a cutting torch would be better. I have other .22's which don't have a deadly design flaw.

I bought a new Sterling .22cal handgun for the wife. About 10 rounds the ejector broke off. I took it back to the dealer and "requested" He send it back to the factory for inspection and repair. Got it back a couple months latter and the same thing happened but this time ripped open my thumb so I called the factory and asked where to send the law suit papers. I found out the Dealer I bought it from had it repaired locally and had not sent it back to the factory. Factory repaired and no more problems. Dealer went out of business with-in a week of my phone call to the factory and I always wondered if the factory had anything to do with that.

I also had my over/under 12ga 3" discharge while closing the breech while sitting in a goose blind. It blew the breech closed thank GOD. I never did find out what caused that but suspect I had a grain of sand on the primer when I closed the breech but I couldn't prove that.

One just can't stress enough about gun safety. Just one little mistake can ruin a person life forever.

My Daughter-in-law father killed himself when he was carrying his shotgun on a sling and tried to cross a fence without setting down his weapon first.

He kicked the shotgun butt as he went thru the fence discharging the shotgun to the back of his head. His hunting partner observed this from the other side of the cannel. He had to run two miles to cross the cannel to see if he could help him, he couldn't swim, and was before cellphones as if that would have mattered. He no longer owns a firearm even tho the firearm had nothing to do with the cause of this horrible accident.

T_Bone

I collect old russian military guns-really cheap junk. I have an SKS (AK Knockoff)-it is a semi-auto but every once it a while when you shoot 1 round it will fire 2 or 3. Scared the snot out of me the 1st time-just always very careful now.

There was a similar problem with the Remington Model 788. Remington lost a product liability lawsuit to a man who was paralyzed by a 788 that discharged when the safety was taken off.

The Remington case is well known in the firearms industry; I'm sure any manufacturer is going to take a report of a similar issue very seriously.

I have to say I really have mixed feelings about the situation you described. One part of me is inclined to agree with what the earlier responders say about treating it like any other tool that malfunctions but can be fixed. Another part of me feels differently. Maybe repair will prevent that particular problem from ever occuring again, and maybe no other problem with the rifle will create a dangerous situation. But how will you know? You're not going to live forever (no offense,) so if that rifle is around when you aren't, someone else is going to have it. I don't know anything about Ontario, but I'd still bet that not as many people there have been handling firearms since before they were nine as when you were a kid.

I had a Jennings .22 LR pistol once that was probably the worst made firearm I'd ever owned, but I was always strangely fond of it. One time I was trying to determine why it was having a feeding problem, and it discharged while I was cycling a magazine of ammunition through it. Put a hole in my kitchen counter, and made me say "Gosh" real loud, several times. The spent casing didn't have a striker mark on the rim; it turned out that the extractor had hit the sidewall of the casing forward of the rim hard enough to set off the priming compound. Bad cartridge? Bad extractor? Scared dogs? Irate wife? Who was to say?

I went to the trouble of buying a new extractor and spring from the gun parts place that old told you about, but before I sat down to repair the pistol I thought, am I ever going to trust this gun again? Would I ever feel all right about someone else having it, whether they knew it's history or not? I decided the answer was no. Like you, I had other, and better, guns and no real need of this little Saturday night special. Besides, like I said, the only thing it ever had going for it was that I was somehow strangely fond of it.

All the best, Stan

An equally dangerous problem, but one that's even more common, is decockers causing a gun to fire. In some cases it's just considered SOP and to avoid using it.