Great ads - thanks for sharing.
As for studying this, I'm about 12 years ahead of you......
I have John Belton's (RIP) book and corresponded and spoke with him a few years back on the subject of the "Cooey Carcano". While I disagree that these rifles are of weak construction and are not safe to fire, I wouldn't say that he published "false statements", rather I'd soften it a bit to "unverified". The info he published regarding law suits was essentially hearsay, heard first-hand from someone who had worked for Cooey as I recall. Mr. Belton was never able to verify any law suit.
The other part of the "folklore" was that "many people were injured". Several tales of "someone knowing someone who was friends with someone who overheard a conversation about an injury" abound - again, nothing verified. All that said, I have owned several over the years and when I heard that they were "unsafe", I was skeptical, so I conducted some tests and disassembled two of them. I published my findings here (in 2006):
https://www.canadiangunnutz.com/for...on-Carcano-quot-A-Myth-Busted-Updated-2-June? Good discussion, although the original pics were "confiscated" by Photobucket
http://www.milsurps.com/content.php?r=303-Myth-Busted-Proof-Testing-an-Eaton-Carcano-Rifle Pics are here!
All of the 10 or so I've owned and/or examined, were constructed the same way as the one that held together under ~100K psi. That isn't to say that someone wasn't injured (as there are many stupid things possible), but I would not agree that it was due to faulty unsafe construction.
Here's a pic of one of mine:
Here's the piece from Belton's book that got me to investigating for myself. There is no proof that: "injuries (including death!), litigation and a recall attempt took place".