Grayzer86-
"The remington 700s have an easy to operate safety, however it is also a safety prone to failure. There have even been TV documentaries about it. We thought it was a over publicized so we took out my buddies 700 30.06 and sure enough, more than once we got it to fire even with the safety on. we went through all the guns we had and found that his savage 22 semi auto could be fired by a sharp palm strike to the butt, (safety off) and that my winchester model 94 lever gun also fired once from slamming the lever closed fast and hard. Gues thats why the safety rules are so important. Needless to say the old 22 got trashed, the 700 went for repairs, and the model 94 has never left the safe again. "
Grayzer86 - Good point! The SAFETY on the gun IS THE SHOOTER. No mechanical device is ever 100% fool proof, IMHO. If you don't want something destroyed, don't point a gun at it, ever. I taught my kids to shoot and the one thing that was stressed was that the gun was always loaded and was to be treated as such.
About the Remington 700 safey issue, I have two 700's, a sniper style .308 with a very light custom trigger, and a hunting 7mm Rem Mag. Both have been checked for safety issues and I can't duplicate the problem shown on the TV program. What I think is a problem is that the guns may not have been cleaned, lubricated, or stored properly causing the trigger mechanism to be fouled to the point that the sear didn't properly seat when the gun was cocked. The jar of releasing the safety caused the sear to slip thus releasing the firing pin. This problem of improper maintenance can happen on many firearms.
Also I think that some folks pulled the trigger out, broke the seal that Remington has on the trigger mechanism and attempted to adjust the trigger pull weight themselves. With millions of Remington 700's sold it seems strange to me that so few have experienced this problem.
The easiest way to check for a safety or trigger problem is to simply cock the gun (empty), put on the safety, and drop the gun butt first on the floor from a height of two feet. It the safety doesn't hold then it is off to the gunsmith. With the safety off if the trigger doesn't hold then off to the gunsmith.
I don't think you need to drop thousands of dollars to get a decent, reasonably accurate rifle. There is a lot of hype about sub-moa but unless you are a real target-shooter, rifle-tweaker, bench-rest, 20X scope guy you will probably not get this accuracy. We had a contest at our gun club for a ham. You had to put five shots in a five inch bullseye at 100 yards from a standing position. You used your gun with your sights/scope. Hardly anyone could do it. One of the few that could was shooting an M1 Garand with peep sights.
A gun I bought recently for my previously gun-shy, had never been shooting daughter-in-law (who had only just recently only shot my son's AR15) that I really like is the Remington Model 770 bolt action rifle scope combo in .243 Winchester. I paid about $300 for the rifle and scope combo. It is accurate and easy for her to shoot. She has the "youth model" due to her smaller size. Recoil is about non-existent and she is very comfortable and confident shooting it.
Here is the Remington video about it. You can also find out about it on YouTube.
http://www.remington.com/en/products/firearms/centerfire/model-770/model-770.aspx
Watch this guy clang steel targets at 400 yards with the resaonably priced Remington 770 rifle-scope combo in .30-06
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoI85kBsf6U
I think it is a great bang for the buck, perfect for the beginner.
