Safety Panel Voting Today on a Recall of BB Guns

Pennsylvania - New Jersey - New York - Nationwide

By Julian E. Barnes
OCTOBER 30, 2001

The Consumer Product Safety Commission will vote today on whether to seek a recall of seven million Daisy BB guns that some contend can fire pellets even when they appear to be empty and that have been blamed for 23 deaths and many injuries in 30 years.

The vote — which will come a day before Ann Brown, the chairman of the commission, is scheduled to step down — has become highly contentious. The Daisy Manufacturing Company has maintained that its air guns are not defective, and the National Rifle Association has urged its members to oppose any action.

AT the center of the debate are two high-velocity air guns made by Daisy, the model 880 and the 856. The commission has been investigating whether guns made before 1999 are defective because BB's can lodge inside the guns that appear empty.

The commission is also investigating whether all of the high-velocity Daisy guns, including the ones on the market, are faulty because they do not have automatic safeties.

Andrew Youman, a lawyer who sued Daisy, said the company's high-velocity air guns had been responsible for 23 deaths from 1971 to 1998 and about 20 brain injuries. Daisy sells about 250,000 a year, Mr. Youman said.

Two of the three commissioners must vote to file a complaint with an administrative judge to force a recall.

Both supporters and opponents of Daisy said they believed that Ms. Brown would call for a broad recall of the guns, but they said they were unsure how the other commissioners would vote. Lawyers for Daisy asked Ms. Brown yesterday to abstain from voting. They accused her of leaking information about the recall.

Shanin Specter, a lawyer who worked with Mr. Youman to sue Daisy, said the model 856 Daisy rifle was defective because it could give people the impression that a loaded gun was empty. Mr. Specter sued Daisy on behalf of John Tucker Mahoney of Doylestown, Pa. On May 22, 1999, Mr. Mahoney, then 16, and a friend, Ellsworth Weatherby IV, had cocked and fired their Daisy gun about eight times and thought it was empty because no Bb's came out. Mr. Weatherby cocked the gun and aimed it at Mahoney, intending to blow his hair with a blast of air, Mr. Youman said. The gun discharged a BB into Mr. Mahoney's skull and severed an artery in his brain. Mr. Mahoney, now 18, can no longer walk, talk or eat, Mr. Specter said. He said Daisy knew about the problem and modified the design of the rifles in 1998 and 1999 to solve the problem. But the company did not report the problem or recall existing products, he said.