Move to Fire: A Family's Tragedy, a Lone Attorney, and a Teenager's Victory Over a Corrupt Gunmaker

No parents should ever experience the traumatic, lifetime effects of their child being shot, especially when the bullet is from a defective gun made by a company with a history of bystanders and users being maimed and killed by its poorly made products.

When seven year-old son Brandon Maxfield was accidentally shot and seriously wounded by a defectively designed handgun, all his mother Sue prayed for was that he live. Comatose, on a ventilator in intensive care, the top of his spine shattered, she whispered into his tiny ear that If he woke up, she promised to be his arms and legs for the rest of his life.

Brandon not only lived, permanently paralyzed from the neck down, ten years after the shooting he and a lone, determined attorney became the focus of national, then international news when Brandon secured a first of its kind, twenty-five million dollar product liability judgment against the gun maker. When the company and its owner declared bankruptcy to avoid paying the judgment, and schemed to secretly resurrect the company, Brandon and his attorney created a plan to bid for the company’s remaining assets in a bankruptcy auction and destroy its inventory of defective guns so that, as Brandon himself explained, no kid ever had to go through what he went through.

Move To Fire follows Brandon’s and his family’s life before and after the accident, and explores the broader community and societal costs of a tragic accidental shooting. It also details the extent of the gun maker’s efforts to hide millions of dollars made from handguns so poorly manufactured, and of such inferior materials, the guns became known to law enforcement as crime guns, junk guns and, infamously, Saturday night specials.

Move To Fire’s compelling narrative illuminates events that captivated media outlets and people around the world. It is a cautionary tale, to be studied as gun manufacturing surges unregulated and exempt from product safety oversight, ghost guns proliferate, and already fragile firearm regulations are continually weakened even as firearm-related incidents remain the leading cause of children’s deaths.

"Urgent, poignant and powerfully written, this book reads like a thriller and makes us think hard about what sort of world we want to build." -- Seth Godin, author

Featured review from Publishers Weekly -- "Harkins crafts a taut legal drama reminiscent of Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action in this story of a heroic lawyer's quest for justice for the victim of a defective firearm. Brandon Maxfield was seven years old and living in Northern California with his mother and stepfather when in 1994 a bullet struck and paralyzed him. The firearm that caused the life-altering injury was a Bryco Model 38, which had a design defect: the safety needed to be disengaged before its chamber could be checked to see whether it contained any ammunition. Brandon's parents' initial attempt to sue the manufacturer went nowhere, but they get a second chance in 1999 when Brandon's stepfather, Clint Stansberry, seeks out solo law practitioner Richard Ruggieri. After learning about the family tragedy, Ruggieri launches a seemingly quixotic lawsuit against the manufacturers of the weapon, an effort that lasts well over a decade and is complicated by the manufacturers' efforts to evade responsibility by filing for bankruptcy. Harkins's understated recounting makes a powerful argument that the government should have the authority to recall defective firearms." -- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"...like a legal thriller...the suspense is compelling. Move to Fire isn't an anti-gun screed.  Move to Fire is a passion project by a writer who knows how to mine facts, build characters, and use them to tell a terrific story. I found it an engrossing, well-built narrative that pulled me through, page by page." -- Brian Fies, award winning author of Mom's Cancer and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow.

"All practicing and aspiring forensic engineers should read Harkins' captivating and detailed account of this extensive litigation, both comprehensively and brilliantly portrayed." -- Vaughn P. Adams, Jr., PHD, PE, InterACTION, official publication of the National Academy of Forensic Engineers