Posted on 08/12/2004 6:37:27 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - A California teenager left paralyzed by an accidental shooting a decade ago placed a bid in federal bankruptcy court recently to buy the flawed handgun's manufacturer so he can shut it down.
Brandon Maxfield, 17, raised $175,000, much of it through his Web site, to buy bankrupt Bryco Arms of Costa Mesa, Calif. He wants to melt down 70,000 unassembled guns and close the company for good.
Bryco filed for bankruptcy in 2003 after a jury awarded the teenager $51 million in damages in a lawsuit.
Maxfield's bid to purchase Bryco was $25,000 more than the $150,000 accepted by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Jerry Funk from Paul Jiminez, the company's former manager.
Ned Nashban, an attorney representing Bryco's owner, said the bidding process was over. But Richard Ruggieri, Maxfield's California attorney, disagreed, saying Funk could decide to sell to Maxfield since receiving the higher bid.
Bryco founder Bruce Jennings and his Nevada-based distribution company were ordered to pay $24 million of a $51 million judgment in Maxfield's lawsuit. Maxfield has received $8.7 million - none of it from Jennings or Bryco - from others named in the suit.
Days after the verdict, Jennings moved across the country to Florida, where he purchased a $500,000 annuity and a $900,000 home and hangar in Daytona Beach. He filed for personal bankruptcy and for bankruptcy for Bryco in Florida, where state law allows debtors to keep their houses.
Maxfield, a resident of Mendocino County north of San Francisco, was shot in 1994 by a baby sitter who was trying to unload a .380-caliber Bryco handgun. The shooting left him a quadriplegic. Because of the gun's design, its safety mechanism had to be released to unload the round in the semiautomatic's chamber.
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So very wrong, go to Glock's site and learn for yourself.
Besides, mechanical safeties are only as good as the safety between one's ears. The babysitter blew it.
Sorry for the confusion.
Agreed.
1) Get off your high horse.
2) Do you know what Rule 2 and Rule 3 are?
I agree.
I can't afford a better, small carry gun, so I dropped $100.00 and bought a Bryco .380. I've had it for 2 years, carry often and with the exception of the first type of ammo (hollow point)haven't had one jam. Last time at the range, I was hitting decent patterns at 20ft.
My brother has a Walther PPK .380. He paid $3-400 used and has chronic jamming problems.
Sure, it's cheap and poorly made, not designed to fire thousands of rounds, but I can't really find much to complain about. And, I've never shot anyone while unloading it. In fact, I never gave a thought that it was a defect to have to switch opff the safety to actuate the slide. That seems like common sense to me. Babysitter was wrong, and the victim has been turned into a dunce.
2) Do you know what Rule 2 and Rule 3 are?
1) There was nothing factually wrong with my post.
2) I didn't call a "point of order"
3) Do you know what you and the high horse you rode in on can do?
This was a horrible law suit. Explain to me how it's the gun company's fault that someone was stupid enough to point a gun at someone while unloading it?
And as far as having to disengage the safety to unload, this is the case with a lot of semi-auto guns. Heck, the glock 19 I carry doesn't even have a safety (using the classical definition of safety here) and I wouldn't carry any other way. If I pull the trigger it fires. If I pull the trigger while trying to unload it fires. If I point it at someone while pulling the trigger while unloading it fires.
So, in closing if I'm dumb enough to 1) point the gun at someone 2) take the safety off 3) try unloading the gun while still pointing it at someone, and 4) somehow pull or hit the trigger firing a shot into them, I'm the one that should be sued for 51 million, not the gun manufacturer!
Take a DA/SA pistol to an IPSC match, or even out to a hayfield and time your splits. And that's only playing around. In a real stress situation, you don't have fine trigger control. I've seen guys shoot beretta 92's well, but I sure wouldn't sneer at the benefits of a consistent trigger pull in a combat handgun. Why introduce complexity?
TCR has already delivered the appropriate response. The question was whether "anyone could identify [for you] any semiautomatic pistol that could be cleared without disengaging the safety."
Personally, my "safeties" begin with the brain, run through the muscles of my shoulder, arm & fingers, and end at the gun. If the responses you received regarding a wide variety of semiauto pistols that (1) have mechanical safeties; and (2) can be cleared without disengaging those mechanical safeties weren't satisfactory, it was because you asked a stupid - or at least an imprecise - question. Then you exacerbated the error by responding that the safeties on the pistols listed in response weren't real "safeties" (at least that's what I'm assuming from your ambiguous use of quotation marks) or that they weren't relevant to clearing the weapon. Based upon your responses, what you apparently intended to ask was: "Gosh, are there any guns out there that don't have a thumb safety [or possibly even a mag safety] that must be manually disengaged in order to rack the slide for the purpose of clearing the weapon?" Unfortunately for the rest of us, we couldn't read your secret question and only answered the one you posted.
Frankly, the only purpose of any safety is to assist mechanically in preventing the gun from going bang when some moron is negligent in the handling of that firearm and violates the rules of safe gun handling. I've never heard anyone argue that a safety isn't really a safety if it has to be manually engaged or disengaged in clearing a firearm - except you and apparently the jury in the stupid babysitter case. Your purported distinction is nonsensical and your responses to good faith replies to what other posters apparently believed was a good faith question - especially your ridiculous "point of order" - are just rude.
The points remain.
1) You can't disengage the safety on a Glock. Nor can you engage it. It simply is. I don't consider the trigger thingy a safety.
2) You can engage or disengage the safety on a Beretta, and apparently you can clear the weapon with the safety engaged. That, and not the pointless nattering about Glocks, answered my question.
3) Spare me the "safety is between your ears" lecture ... I do a better job of giving it.
If that is true... can't argue with a Jury ruling that the manufacturers had a faulty product and liable for this persons injury.
Is the M1911 a defective design?
As far as I can see, your screen name is accurate, your claim to expertise is irrelevant, and I can totally understand another poster, such as TC Rider - and now myself -, "getting snotty" with you. Save the internet commando stuff for your trainees.
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