Mass. Attorney General Questions Remington and Glock Safety Features

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has safety concerns over guns manufactured by Remington Arms and Glock. She wants to further investigate firearms she deems “prone to accidental discharge.” She wonders if the gun makers knew about the defects but failed to correct them, Boston Globe reports.

A spokeswoman for Healey said she put in a request to gun manufacturers to hand over customer safety complaints “because firearms are one of the only products not regulated by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission.”

Glock and Remington filed lawsuits in Massachusetts to fight the attorney general’s subpoenas. Remington refers to her request as “unreasonable and excessively burdensome.” Glock cites the probe as an intent to rock an industry that the attorney general strongly dislikes and is using it as tool to stay in headlines. Healey responded to both companies’ court filings by calling their accusations “incorrect and irrelevant.”

“When we became aware of potential consumer product safety concerns with some of these guns made by these gun manufacturers, we took the action we’d always take … to ask questions and investigate,” Healey told reporters on September 2. “That’s what we’ll continue to do.”

The executive director of guns right advocacy group in Massachusetts spoke out on the lawsuit. Gun Owners’ Action League executive director, Jim Wallace, calls the investigation a “fishing expedition.” Mass Live reports that Wallace said this about the attorney general’s “attack on anything firearm related and anything Second Amendment related.” He added that she’s using her office as an intimidation tactic against anyone she doesn’t like in politics.

Healey’s spokeswoman justified the probe of Remington and Glock by saying that the gun industry isn’t as transparent when it comes to federal consumer product safety errors and that there isn’t public information on consumer complaints. Reports of firearm defects, accidental firings, overheating problems, and low “trigger pull” have allegedly led to tragic accidental shootings of children, the spokeswoman said. The attorney general wants the information more accessible to the public to better protect them from manufacturing issues with guns.

Court records reveal that both lawsuits are pending.