The Battery That Should Have Been Behind A Lock

Holosun Technologies built a business selling firearm optics to everyday gun owners across the United States. Their red dot and gold dot sights, marketed under model numbers HS503G-ACSS and HE512C-GD, were available at Bass Pro Shops, on Amazon, and directly through the company’s own website. The product looked professional. The marketing implied safety and quality. The reality was something else entirely.

At the center of each sight sat a CR2032 lithium coin battery, a small disc of stored energy that, if swallowed by a child or a pet, can cause internal chemical burns, perforations in soft tissue, and death. These risks are well-documented. They are the reason the U.S. government passed Reese’s Law, a federal consumer safety statute named after a four-year-old girl who died after swallowing a button cell battery. The law mandates child-resistant packaging and specific safety warnings for any consumer product containing or sold alongside a coin battery.

Holosun knew this law existed. The class action complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on April 21, 2025 states plainly that Holosun was required to comply with 16 CFR Part 1263, 16 CFR 1700.15, and 16 CFR 1263.4. Each of those code sections spells out exactly what companies must do to keep a coin battery out of a child’s mouth. Holosun skipped every single requirement. The battery access on the recalled sights required no tools, no special strength, and no adult-level reasoning to defeat. It was, by design, easy.

The sights were manufactured and sold for a period of 18 months, from February 2023 through August 2024. During that entire window, tens of thousands of these products moved through the supply chain into American homes. Households with children. Households with dogs and cats. Households where a curious toddler rifling through a gun cleaning kit or a range bag could find that tiny silver disc and put it in their mouth before any adult in the room knew what had happened.

“Ingesting these batteries can cause significant injuries, including death, which poses a grave risk of harm to gun owners’ children and pets.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued an official recall on February 20, 2025, covering approximately 9,400 units. The recall cited violations of Reese’s Law and federal safety regulations for consumer products containing coin batteries. By that date, the named plaintiff, Landry Hart of Fort Worth, Texas, still had two recalled sights in his possession. He had purchased them intending a product that was safe for normal use around his family. What he got was a federally recalled ingestion hazard sitting on a shelf in his home.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Numbers Cannot Measure

Every legal proceeding reduces human experience to dollar amounts. Damages, restitution, attorney fees. The number that shows up on a settlement check cannot capture the specific weight of a parent’s fear in the moment they realize their child has swallowed something dangerous. This section refuses to let those numbers do all the talking.

Think about what it means to be a gun owner in America. You take the safety requirements seriously. You store the firearm responsibly. You buy quality accessories from established manufacturers precisely because your home has children or animals in it and you want to minimize every possible point of risk. You go to Bass Pro Shops or log onto Amazon and you pick up a Holosun sight, a brand with a professional image and nationwide retail distribution, because you believe the product has been designed and tested to the standard it implies. The marketing does not say “this product may kill your kid.” The packaging does not say “warning: the battery inside can be grabbed by a toddler in under five seconds.” You bring it home. You mount it on your firearm. You put the box in the range bag or in a drawer or on a shelf in the garage. And you go about your life, not knowing that a federally prohibited hazard was riding into your home in a package that told you nothing true about the danger it contained.

That is the betrayal that sits underneath this lawsuit. The plaintiff, Landry Hart, purchased two of these sights for personal use. He states in the complaint that had he known about the ingestion risk to his minor children and pets, he would not have purchased the product, or would have paid significantly less. That sentence is careful legal language. Strip it back to the human reality: a father bought something he believed was safe for his household. He was wrong, through no fault of his own. The company had that information and chose not to share it. The power imbalance there is total. Holosun had engineers who designed the battery compartment. Holosun had legal teams who presumably reviewed federal compliance requirements. Holosun had access to the full text of Reese’s Law. Landry Hart had a product box and a trust he placed in a company that had not earned it.

Button cell battery ingestion injuries in children are uniquely horrific in their mechanism. Lithium coin batteries, when lodged in the esophagus or throat of a small child or a pet, do not simply cause a choking hazard. They generate an electric current through contact with tissue and saliva. That current drives a chemical reaction that produces hydroxide at the battery’s negative pole. The result is a localized alkaline burn that can destroy tissue within two hours of ingestion. Children have died from internal hemorrhage after a battery burned through a major blood vessel. Others have required surgeries to repair burned esophageal tissue. The CPSC and the medical literature on this hazard are unambiguous. Reese’s Law was passed in 2022 precisely because the voluntary compliance approach had failed and children were still dying.

Holosun launched these products in February 2023, meaning they entered the market after Reese’s Law was already federal statute. This was not a legacy product designed before the regulations existed. This was a product designed, manufactured, and shipped into American commerce in a post-Reese’s Law regulatory environment, with no child-resistant battery access and no adequate warnings. Every unit that left the warehouse after the law took effect was a choice. The complaint alleges that Holosun “actively concealed this knowledge from the public.” That language matters. It is the difference between an accidental compliance gap and a deliberate one.

The class action structure of this lawsuit reflects another dimension of the human cost that is easy to overlook. The complaint notes that class treatment is necessary in part because individual class members could not afford to litigate a complex product liability case against a well-funded corporation on their own. This is the reality for most American consumers. Holosun can hire elite defense counsel. The gun owner in Fort Worth, Texas, who bought a sight at Bass Pro Shops for a few hundred dollars cannot. The class action mechanism exists to counterbalance exactly this disparity. Without it, Holosun could absorb individual complaints one by one, spending more on lawyers than any single consumer could ever recover, and continue doing exactly what it has been doing. The legal system itself required a collective solution because the harm was collective and the power was asymmetric.

Legal Receipts: Straight From The Complaint

These are direct citations and verbatim passages from the class action complaint filed in Case 2:25-cv-03503, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, April 21, 2025. Nothing here is paraphrased.

“The Products are defective and subject to recall because the cell batteries pose a potential ingestion hazard to children and pets.” Complaint ¶ 2 — Nature of the Action

“The button cell batteries can be easily accessed by children posing an ingestion hazard. Ingesting these batteries can cause significant injuries, including death, which poses a grave risk of harm to gun owners’ children and pets.” Complaint ¶¶ 22–23 — Factual Allegations

“The packaging of the product fails to include adequate warnings for these risks. The Sight’s button cell battery is not enclosed in child-resistant packaging.” Complaint ¶¶ 24–25 — Factual Allegations

“The product contains a significant defect: it allows easy access to its button cell battery, posing severe hazards in violation of federal safety laws and regulations. This includes, but is not limited to, violating Reese’s Law, 16 CFR Part 1263, 16 CFR 1700.15 and 16 CFR 1263.4.” Complaint ¶ 26 — Factual Allegations

“The Defendant marketed the sights without adequate safety warnings, failing to disclose the significant risks associated with defective packaging.” Complaint ¶ 27 — Factual Allegations

“Plaintiff bargained for a Product that was safe to use. Defendant’s design exposed minor children and pets to a safety hazard. As a result of the ingestion risk, Plaintiff, and all others similarly situated, were deprived the basis of their bargain given that Defendant sold them a product that could easily expose minor children and pets to significant injuries and possibly death if they ingested the button cell battery. This dangerous ingestion risk inherent to the Sight renders them unmerchantable and unfit for their normal intended use.” Complaint ¶ 31 — Holosun’s Misrepresentations and Omissions are Actionable

“If Plaintiff had been aware of the risk that ingestion of the easily accessible batteries posed to children and pets in the Products, he would not have purchased the Product or would have paid significantly less.” Complaint ¶ 35 — Plaintiff’s Factual Allegations

“Defendant was in a superior position to know of the Defect, yet as outlined above, chose to do nothing when the defect became known to them.” Complaint ¶ 74 — Count IV, Strict Liability – Failure to Warn

“Despite their knowledge of the Defect and obligation to unilaterally strengthen the warnings, Defendant instead chose to actively conceal this knowledge from the public.” Complaint ¶ 77 — Count IV, Strict Liability – Failure to Warn

“There are other Products and other Sights designed so that their battery access does not pose an ingestion risk, meaning that there were other means of production available to Defendant.” Complaint ¶ 87 — Count V, Strict Liability – Design Defect

“Defendant was aware of applicable federal safety regulations and knowingly failed to comply with them. Defendant’s breach of duty caused harm to the Plaintiff and Class. Such failure to comply with federal safety regulations constituted a reckless indifference for the rights and safety of Plaintiff and the Class.” Complaint ¶¶ 116–117 — Count IX, Violation of the Consumer Product Safety Act 15 U.S.C. §2072

“It is foreseeable that a poorly designed battery cap would cause injury if the battery was ingested if accessed by a child.” Complaint ¶ 112 — Count VIII, Negligence

“Unless a Class-wide injunction is issued, Defendant may continue in its failure to sell this, or similar products with a defective design and without adequate warning.” Complaint ¶ 49 — Class Action Allegations

“Defendant would necessarily gain an unconscionable advantage since Defendant would be able to exploit and overwhelm the limited resources of each individual Class Member with superior financial and legal resources.” Complaint ¶ 46 — Class Action Allegations

By The Numbers: The Scale Of The Recall

Societal Impact Mapping: Three Dimensions Of Harm

Lithium coin batteries are classified as hazardous waste when they enter the general waste stream. A CR2032 cell contains lithium, manganese dioxide, and a lithium salt electrolyte. When these materials leach into soil or groundwater from improperly disposed batteries, they contribute to heavy metal contamination that persists for years and resists conventional remediation. The scale of the Holosun recall, 9,400 units, each packaged with one CR2032 battery, means that up to 9,400 lithium coin cells were distributed into the consumer market with zero guidance from Holosun about proper disposal. The complaint confirms the packaging failed to include adequate warnings. This means consumers received no information about the battery’s hazardous material classification, no guidance on recycling programs, and no instruction about what to do with the battery when the product reached end of life.

Consumer electronics and firearm accessory manufacturers have a responsibility to integrate end-of-life battery guidance into their product documentation. Reese’s Law, beyond its primary child-safety mandate, is part of a broader regulatory framework that recognizes the hazard profile of button cell batteries across their entire lifecycle, including disposal. When Holosun chose to skip the warning and packaging requirements of 16 CFR Part 1263 and 16 CFR 1700.15, it did not just expose children to ingestion risk. It distributed 9,400 hazardous material components into households that had no regulatory framework telling them what to do with a spent or unwanted lithium battery from a gun sight. Many of those batteries will end up in household trash, in landfills, and eventually in groundwater. The regulatory failure is environmental as much as it is a consumer safety failure.

Button cell battery ingestion is a documented pediatric emergency. The National Capital Poison Center and the CPSC have both published data showing that button cell battery ingestions, particularly lithium coin cells in the CR2032 range, are among the most severe foreign body ingestion incidents in children under six. The mechanism of injury is not simple choking. The battery, when lodged in tissue, completes a circuit using the body’s own fluids. The resulting electrochemical reaction produces hydroxide ions that cause tissue necrosis, a localized chemical burn that can progress within two hours to the point of requiring surgical intervention. Cases in the medical literature document fatal hemorrhage when a button cell battery burned through the aorta or the esophagus of a child.

The class action complaint states directly: “Ingesting these batteries can cause significant injuries, including death, which poses a grave risk of harm to gun owners’ children and pets.” This is not speculation. This is the established medical and regulatory consensus about what happens when a CR2032 battery ends up in a small body. Reese’s Law was enacted in 2022 after years of advocacy and documented child deaths. Congress acted. The CPSC issued regulations. Holosun, which founded its company in 2013 and had a decade of product development experience by the time these sights went to market in February 2023, had no excuse for treating these regulations as optional.

The risk extends beyond human children. The complaint specifically references pets as a category of victim. Dogs and cats regularly investigate small objects through mouthing and chewing. A CR2032 battery that falls from an inadequately secured sight compartment onto a floor where a dog or cat is present is an immediate veterinary emergency. Internal burns in animals carry the same severity as in children, the same tissue destruction, the same potential for fatal outcomes, with the added complication that a pet cannot communicate that they have swallowed something or where it hurts. Gun owners who are also pet owners purchased these sights with no warning that a CR2032 battery could fall free and end up swallowed by an animal in their home. The public health dimension of this product defect is broad and it is severe.

The class action seeks injunctive relief specifically because the court has determined that without a class-wide injunction, Holosun “may continue in its failure to sell this, or similar products with a defective design and without adequate warning.” That language signals that this case is about the future as much as the past. If Holosun can sell 9,400 defective coin-battery products during an 18-month window and face no systemic legal consequence, there is no structural reason they would change their design approach for the next product line. The public health calculus demands accountability, and the lawsuit’s prayer for injunctive relief reflects that demand.

The economic dimension of this case runs in two directions simultaneously. First, there is the direct financial harm to consumers. Landry Hart and every member of the proposed class paid market price for a firearm optic they were told, through packaging and marketing, was safe for normal use. They received a recalled product. The complaint frames this as a deprivation of the “benefit of the bargain,” which is the legal term for what you actually paid for versus what you got. Hart states he would have paid significantly less, or bought nothing at all, had the true nature of the product been disclosed. Every one of the approximately 9,400 units sold represents a consumer who paid full price for a defective product that federal regulators later determined should never have been sold in that form.

Second, and more structurally damaging, is the power asymmetry that the lawsuit itself documents. The complaint is explicit: Holosun possesses “superior financial and legal resources” compared to individual class members. Without class action treatment, each consumer who wanted to pursue a claim against Holosun for a product worth a few hundred dollars would face the prospect of funding their own complex product liability litigation against a company with corporate legal infrastructure. The math does not work. The cost of litigation would “unreasonably consume the amounts that would be recovered.” This is the economic trap that bad corporate actors have always exploited: make the individual harm small enough that no single person can afford to fight it, then multiply that harm across thousands of customers. The aggregate profit from selling 9,400 non-compliant units stays with the company. The aggregate harm of 9,400 families owning a product they cannot safely keep in their home is distributed across those families with no recourse.

Holosun sold these products through Bass Pro Shops and Amazon, two retail channels that reach a broad swath of American gun owners, many of whom are working-class and middle-class consumers who do not have experience navigating federal product recall processes or class action litigation. The CPSC recall exists, but participation in recalls requires consumers to be aware of the recall, to understand what it covers, to have retained their receipt or proof of purchase, and to navigate a claims process that corporate legal teams designed. For a working parent in Fort Worth, Texas, who bought a sight eight months ago and doesn’t follow CPSC press releases, the recall announcement on February 20, 2025, may have passed entirely unnoticed. Those consumers remain in the class and remain entitled to relief, but accessing that relief requires exactly the kind of organized legal action that this lawsuit represents.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now? The Resistance Ledger

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