Treblig,
While retaining a vintage design is admirable and your advice on hunting and gun handling well meaning and probably practicle to adhere in many situations, hunting in itself often pushes the physical limits of hunters and events often occur which can lead to potentially unsafe situations. There are undoubtedly stories all here can tell. Of course, one can point out the faults of the hunters/gunhandlers in each situation cited. However, the fact remains; guns pointing in unsafe directions or being dropped, mishandled, or an AD happens and it happens relatively frequently.
Managing risk is part of the biz I'm in. We can't eliminate it but we evaluate risk using all available good tools and information. Service history is a big one. Regardless of how we recommend a product be operated, service history is the reality. It cannot be ignored where lives are at stake. If we instruct operators to use our product a certain way, yet there are numerous examples of operators using it another way where a hazard is created, if the consequences and probabilities of occurrence are high, we explore a solution that will reduce the risk to an acceptable level.
It's a matter of deciding if the Lefever design is within an acceptable risk and if further reduction in risk is needed or desirable balanced against the cost(effort, time, money, etc.).
This discussion is a good one, IMO. Now is the time to have these discussions and to see if practicable design solutions can reduce risk that is known in the proposed design.
