Limiting Your Liability

First off, let me say that I’m not a lawyer and am not qualified to give legal advice. But I’ve been a gunsmith for along time and I have a few thoughts to share about the gunsmith’s liability situation, what might happen, and the position you could find yourself in. Any person who repairs anything’be it a gun, an automobile, or a toaster’is liable in some way if the repair was of such poor quality as to increase the probability of injury. But we’re talking guns here, not toasters.

Guns can malfunction, go off at the wrong time, blow up, and do any number of things that could result in a lawsuit. And guns can be just as destructive at the shooter’s end as they are at the other end of the barrel. I’m not aware of any published history of the numerous lawsuits against the manufacturers of guns and ammunition or against individuals who repair or modify guns. But nobody has ever made a foolproof gun or cartridge, nor has anyone ever made such a repair.

Fortunately, most guns, ammunition, and repairs do exactly what they’re supposed to do, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be sued by an idiot who misuses a gun. And even if you win the suit, you could still lose the farm due to the attorney’s fees. So here are some thoughts on how to protect yourself and your assets: 1. The best advice I can give you is: Get some insurance. For many years, there was no national association of gunsmiths, and no simple or inexpensive way to get a liability policy.

Fortunately, that changed when the American Gunsmithing Association was founded. You can call the associatio h Chiarello & Co.; tell them you’re an Ad they’ll give you all the info. 2. Even without insurance, there are other ways to protect yourself, and the next one on my list is incorporation. Under most circumstances, this removes your personal liability. And you don’t need a lawyer to form a corporation. Any paralegal firm can do it for a hundred bucks or so. 3.

If you don’t want to incorporate your business, I suppose you could put your house and everything else you own in your wife’s name. That way, if you lose a lawsuit and someone tries to collect on a judgment, there’s nothing for them to collect against. But you’d better have a lot of trust in your wife to go this route. 4. All of the options above can help you if you get sued, but the best way to limit your liability is to avoid doing anything that will get you sued in the first place.

And you know what I mean when I say to be careful of what you do and who you do it for. Don’t agree to repair a gun that should be scrapped rather than fixed, and always be conscious of the quality of the repairs you do. Test fire every repair. And I don’t mean just once or twice. Test it, and add the cost of your time and ammunition to the bill. Let’s use firing-pin replacement as an example. Improper protrusion is the big thing here.

If that pin cuts through a primer and lets gas back into someone’s face or burns a hand, you’ve got potential trouble. So check it. It would take many pages to list all the "dangerous" repairs, so I won’t attempt it. Rather I’m suggesting that you examine each repair with a "what if" approach. Think about what dangers could arise if your repair fails. If you’ve worked on a locking system’ and there are many poor ones’be sure it locks and continues to lock before you turn it loose.

One of the most dangerous designs I know of is a series of bolt-action shotguns. These guns are designed to lock the bolt closed with the bolt handle down against the forward righthand receiver. The firing pin in some cases further locks the bolt down. But these guns will fire without the bolt being fully down, and the rearward thrust can actually throw the bolt back into someone’s face. They might have been cheap and popular, but I won’t repair one.

I also avoid repairing old, wornout pump guns that have lost the ability to lock up tight. They might be all right with light or field loads, but there’s no way to ensure that’s what the customer will use. Tell your customer that the time has come to buy anew gun. Be happy with a minimum charge to examine these guns, but don’t attempt to repair them. 5.

Last but not least, if you’re in doubt as to the safety of any gun, have your customer sign a disclaimer. (Have a lawyer draft this.) This will provide evidence that you advised the customer that the gun, in your opinion, was unsafe to shoot. This could save you a lot of headaches later on. I hate the fact that articles like this tend to cast a dark shadow over the work we do. But liability is something we can never forget.

At the end of the day, you can listen to the advice of an old gunsmith like me who’s never been in court’or you can just pray a lot. And, come to think of it, it wouldn’t hurt to do some of both. I