The other thing to think about halamrose, is if you do go down any form of compensation route, and you havent indicated that you are, talking from experience you need to do nothing to the rifle now, i.e dont try and remove the heads etc, and commission a gunsmith to carry out a full inspection and report. If you dont do that there are to many other ways the manafacturer can get out of any responsibility.
The down side to that, is that the cost of the report may not be worth the value of the rifle, and the cost to try and recoup any money would lie with you unless you were successful.
I