I had no clue. So I see the issue with savage putting the gun together on a Friday and not using proper torque or loctite. That's the quality issue I'm having here.
I didn’t know the details either until I started reading the reddit post, so I can’t hold that against you.
I don’t think this is necessarily confined to a lazy assembler, but I’m certainly not ruling it out.
When he deflects the scope rail back and forth in the .gif it never actually aligns/touches the rear ring of the action. Here is what I’m putting together from the limited data set and inferences based on knowledge and experience:
Rail is aluminum and was mounted at factory, left untouched by shooter by his account.
The right rear clamp is clearly not engaged very deeply on the rail, not as much as the left side.
The rings used are not precision items, and have plastic spacers to “adjust” the alignment of the scope about the rings and rail.
The scope is unknown, but we can assume it to be standard aluminum construction.
OP Says this is his first non-AR platform rifle, so I feel safe to assume the rings/scope were not from a previous mounting job.
Action is a rather stiff piece of steel.
I’d be willing to bet the rings are not properly aligned about the rail and scope tube. Either by mounting rings to scope before the rail, torquing individual times down before perfect alignment has been achieved, and not torquing in a stepped pattern.
Come to think about it. If he tried to add cant to the scope using the features of his rings, I could easily see this as the primary cause of his issues.
www.burrisoptics.com
There is a lot of room to fuck up a mounting job there.