Not sure I can answer this with any authority since I've not found any 219s or 220s that were off-face and loose at the breech, which is usually the bad problem associated with having an opening lever far to the left.
Lever to the right or straight is usually considered OK, normal. The lever placement difference would be how tight the locking lugs fit the receiver, and there is considerable variation allowable in that. The key question is, does the barrel lock tight AT THE BREECH? If so, it's OK.
One way to check that is to remove the forend and see if the barrel, still locked to the receiver, will wiggle side to side or up and down under moderate hand pressure. If there is enough wiggle to show a gap at the breech, the gun is "off face" and needs an adjustment to lock up tighter. So far I haven't found one like that. Yet.
I'll have to try my various barrels on my 3 guns to see if any show this with any of the barrels, although if I'd noticed it previously I would have either refitted that barrel or got rid of it if it couldn't be fitted to that particular action tightly.
If this looseness were to show up on a 219 or 220, I would expect it to be on a gun that was shot a lot with heavy loads, since that seems to be the most common cause on other break-open actions. The logical suspect would a 220 "Trap Gun," that had been shot a lot with heavy trap loads. But the "Trap Gun" is pretty rare, so there aren't a lot of examples to check.
(The other cause would be a replacement barrel that was fitted to the action badly--too much elbow grease with the file or grinder or emery paper! Ya need to go real slow, and check the fit often! Power tools are NOT your friend in this job).
Most 219s just aren't shot enough to wear loose, in my opinion. The people who bought them weren't usually handloaders who would shoot lots in load development or target shoots. They shot meat and pests, and mostly didn't use them on prairie dog towns...how many shots does the average deer hunter or woodchuck hunter get in a lifetime of seasons? Not enough to wear out a 219, I think.
I knew a man in Idaho who had a 219 that was originally a .30-30 and had been rechambered to .30-40 Krag to clean up a burred chamber. He got a "meat elk" (cow or spike bull) every year for the 6 years I knew him, and still had 6 shells left from the original 20 he had bought, including the ones he'd used to sight in!
I suspect that even the most avid upland, or even duck or crow, hunters just didn't shoot a 220 enough to wear it loose in a lifetime of shooting, even with high base ammo. Single shots don't lend themselves to shooting up many cases of shells.
Does anybody know of a 219 or 220 that they know has been "shot loose"? Let us know.
