I had posted about Old versus New Models, having seen an ad for a Ruger that I did not understand (and now can't find again). Anyway, the responders started talking about why Ruger changed the design and I thought I would weigh in. Figured I'd post it as a new thread:
I went to law school in the mid-1970's and since I had been interested in guns long before that, I followed Ruger's struggles with this issue at the time.
Before roughly the 1970's, two very important tenets of law were "assumption of risk" and "contributory negligence". These two terms were basically other ways of saying "use common sense--stupidity/carelessness will not be rewarded". These were excellent legal standards that have unfortunately been eroded over the years to the point of meaninglessness. This happened because of lawyers who cared nothing for the "rightness" of law, only how they could twist and pervert the law in order to line their pockets (remember, a lawyer is writing this).
In the "common sense" era, someone who had just sent a bullet the length of his leg after hitting his holstered, fully-loaded Ruger single-action's hammer with the butt of his rifle would have been told "too bad--you ASSUMED a risk by carrying a powerful weapon in that manner and your ignorance of how to carry such a gun safely or your carelessness was the cause of your accident"(he CONTRIBUTED to the discharge because of his own NEGLIGENCE).
Little by little--and the Ruger cases were very much in the forefront of this trend--lawsuits that LITERALLY would have been laughed out of court not many years before were allowed to proceed. And although many cases would be dismissed at some point in the proceedings or correct verdicts returned, it was inevitable that some weak-headed juries would be won over by clever lawyering or bleeding-heart judges would apply their own personal standards.
Now the above is somewhat simplistic--"assumption of risk" and "contributory negligence" were, and to a much-reduced degree, still are broken down, percent-wise to render a verdict. In other words, a jury might say "We find the dumb-a** who shot himself 95% liable for his injury/death, and Mr. Ruger 5% liable for making the gun that way. But these days the above percentages are much more likely to be reversed as society continues down that road of blaming someone else for one's mistakes and failings, and never accepting responsibility.
I went to law school in the mid-1970's and since I had been interested in guns long before that, I followed Ruger's struggles with this issue at the time.
Before roughly the 1970's, two very important tenets of law were "assumption of risk" and "contributory negligence". These two terms were basically other ways of saying "use common sense--stupidity/carelessness will not be rewarded". These were excellent legal standards that have unfortunately been eroded over the years to the point of meaninglessness. This happened because of lawyers who cared nothing for the "rightness" of law, only how they could twist and pervert the law in order to line their pockets (remember, a lawyer is writing this).
In the "common sense" era, someone who had just sent a bullet the length of his leg after hitting his holstered, fully-loaded Ruger single-action's hammer with the butt of his rifle would have been told "too bad--you ASSUMED a risk by carrying a powerful weapon in that manner and your ignorance of how to carry such a gun safely or your carelessness was the cause of your accident"(he CONTRIBUTED to the discharge because of his own NEGLIGENCE).
Little by little--and the Ruger cases were very much in the forefront of this trend--lawsuits that LITERALLY would have been laughed out of court not many years before were allowed to proceed. And although many cases would be dismissed at some point in the proceedings or correct verdicts returned, it was inevitable that some weak-headed juries would be won over by clever lawyering or bleeding-heart judges would apply their own personal standards.
Now the above is somewhat simplistic--"assumption of risk" and "contributory negligence" were, and to a much-reduced degree, still are broken down, percent-wise to render a verdict. In other words, a jury might say "We find the dumb-a** who shot himself 95% liable for his injury/death, and Mr. Ruger 5% liable for making the gun that way. But these days the above percentages are much more likely to be reversed as society continues down that road of blaming someone else for one's mistakes and failings, and never accepting responsibility.
