[NVDave]

For the same reason the Remington 700 became the most-sold rifle in the civilian market: it was the cheapest. The military gives the contract to the lowest cost bidder, not the guy with the best product design.

The entire history of the Remington 700 is one of cost reduction. That’s why it has a round receiver, why it doesn’t have controlled round feeding, why it has a flimsy extractor, why it has a three-piece bolt that is soldered together rather than a one-piece forged bolt that is selectively heat treated. Cost reduction. It certainly isn’t because round receivers are stiffer than flat-bottom receivers. It is because it is easier to machine a round receiver, because you can chuck it up in a lathe and dial it in very fast, without the use of jigs.

That’s what caused Winchester to drop the controlled round feed Model 70 and go to a push feed: cost. Competing with the 700 made it impossible for Winchester to sustain the cost of labor in the Model 70 after the early 60’s.

That said, the Winchester trigger (even post-64) is still a better design, and the three position direct-acting safety on a Mauser or Winchester is clearly superior to trigger blocking safety or (as in the original Remington trigger group) a safety that blocks the sear from dropping.

Cheapest isn’t the best. It is just the cheapest.

[thinkthenpost]

NVDave, you must have missed the post about the OVERWHELMING majority of custom and long range rifles are made on or clones of the 700 action. The number of action makers that are basically making Remington actions is longer than I know and I can come up with double digits of the top of my head.
People spending money not on factory guns, but custom built rifles are buying Remingtons. IMO if Remington had a clue they'd tighten up their tolerances and step the Quality Control and maybe recapture a bit of what they've lost to the custom gun builders.

As for the CNBC special, if a rifle I had did anything like the footage they ran I'd consider that gun broke and would then fix it the idea of immediately removing it from service is,.... hard for me to believe. Remington has the same basic action with a 2oz. trigger (40x) and NO safety, safeties are mechanical and anything can fail. I believe if it were a negligently bad design MANY more folks would be dead, and Remington would either be out of business or everyone would have a new trigger
As for a potential hang fire. I'd have to clear the action pointing down range, if it was safe for me to pull the trigger it ought to be safe to open the action pointing in the same direction.
Finally like another posted: You don't let the muzzle cover anything you don't want to destroy!
I try to follow that at home, out and about, anytime I'm handling a weapon even if I handled it last, or if I just reloaded it