Alan, the bigger problem was that in a few cases big parts of the blaser R93 rife went through the shooters faces injuring them badly. If the would have had a Remington or almost any other rifle the might have gotten away with lighter injuries. Every rifle can burst for certain reasons, the way they burst is what matters.
edi
I think the preference for having a rifle that is
more likely to burst instead of one that is
less likely to burst is the curious logic. The chance of failure, the likelihood is what matters, and is the bigger problem.
I think you are confusing the difference between risk and hazard.
The
hazard of an action bursting is not good news whatever the rifle. Your face and hands are within a few millimetres of an exploding collection of lumps of shrapnel. They are all being displaced at a great rate, there can be no guarantee that an element from any make of rifle will not end up in your eye. As you say, they
might have gotten away with lighter injuries…equally they
might not
The
risk of an action bursting, i.e. the likelihood, is demonstrated to be
less with an R93 than with the Remington or the Browning.
The scaremongering stories are so scary because of the perception that damage to our faces is so unthinkable...however remote the chance. This is possibly due to our hard-wired priority to protect our face and head…why we sacrifice our hands and arms to take the brunt of a blow by wrapping them around our heads to ward off attack.
The logical conclusions of this can only be that rifles can injure the shooter if the action is overstressed beyond their action strength. The Browning and Remington actions burst with the barrel blocked the R93 didn't.
I think you wrote earlier that you would not allow your child to use an R93. Would you allow them to use the weaker Remington and Browning actions with the higher actual risk of injury regardless of whether it is face, fingers or forearm?
Alan