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Comment by zxcvbn4038 | Hacker News Reader

I recently bought a SIG P320, and a week later, I started reading articles about it self discharging. =P It’s not like it happens all the time, but it seems that if the safety lever spring’s thickness is off by a thousandth of an inch, and the height of the post it fits on is also off by a thousandth of an inch, and you drop the pistol at just the right angle with enough force, the FBI reportedly got it to discharge once during testing—though officially, the results are inconclusive. Now, some law enforcement agencies are quietly replacing the P320 with the Glock 19. Personally, I’m keeping mine because it’s a great gun, and I love that 21-round magazine. However, I sent in my warranty card in case there’s a recall or something similar.

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Odds are, you'll never experience the self-discharging issue. Having said that, I don't find a mostly-reliable firearm acceptable from a safety perspective. If I don't pull the trigger, it cannot go bang, ever, for any reason.

I’m not taking odds on an edc item which takes a lot of banging around. Glock 18 is a simple choice.

Off by one errors strike again, unless you EDC a machine pistol?

I'm still very curious why the P320 beat out the venerable Glock 17 & 19 combo in the Army's recent selection. It would seem being able to change from duty to compact is more of a gimmick than practical. I'd wager most P320's will spend their service life in exactly one configuration.

Sig does have a way of making every pistol feel like it was custom molded to your hand - but Glocks "Just Work".

Here is an entire video talking about it, by an attorney who works in the firearms industry:

https://youtu.be/7NXDuKQF9kU?si=uRXnYvhMMKIN8BKa

I'd take this with a grain of salt. I generally like James' content, but he has always been a huge Sig supporter and throughout the p320 debacle, he's been more supportive of Sig than I think he should be.

"I just want them to make one with a damn thumb safety and if this competition won't make them do it, nothing will." - some US Army ordinance guy about Glock, probably.

COLT 1911 45 ACP condition 1.

Charged and locked, hard to screw that up.

"Cocked & Locked" is usually how people refer to this - and it is easy to screw up. Under stress, people's fine motor skills vanish, sometimes resulting in the safety not being disengaged as you draw from the holster. Additionally, it can be accidentally flipped off during handling.

Modern firearms have multiple internal safeties to prevent accidental discharges (unless you're Sig apparently).

This comment should just be pinned to the top for folks curious about why manual safeties are undesirable.

It depends.

If for some reason you're open carrying in a holster (like perhaps a police officer or soldier would be), and someone tries to get your weapon off of you and succeeds, a manual safety could save your life. They probably won't realize that the safety is on, and when they point the weapon at you and pull the trigger, nothing will happen, giving you a chance to escape or fight back.

Without that manual safety, the weapon just goes off and you now have an aftermarket hole installed in your body.

There's less of an argument manual safties in concealed carry, though. The opponent shouldn't know you have the weapon until it's drawn, so there's less chance of them getting it out of a holster.

I assume, based on your writing, that you have very little or perhaps no firearms training, particularly with duty carry and concealed carry.

> and someone tries to get your weapon off of you and succeeds, a manual safety could save your life.

This is something straight out of a movie...

Your assumption would be wrong. Not a pro but not a n00b either.

I don't want to look up the sources here and now (work policies) but it does, on occasion, happen.

> Not a pro but not a n00b either.

Unfortunately the 2A community is filled with fud and hollywood-esque beliefs. Those who have little training or practical experience often fall victim to believing these fantastical "what-if" scenarios.

The amount of times a firearm has been taken out of someone's duty holster and used against them is a statistical rounding error. Most LEO departments require Level 3 Retention holsters, making this scenario nearly an impossibility. Additionally, a safety isn't going to save someone's life if the "bad guy" has wrestled control of the firearm away from the owner.

This entire scenario is fiction. Manual safeties often do more harm than good - which is why just about all modern handguns have no manual safety (outside of the few States which, out of ignorance, require them by law).

Wasn't Sigs offer significantly cheaper than Glock?

A Glock 18, huh? I’d fucking love to edc a Glock 18.

Their report outlined here and the police officer’s account of the unintentional discharge occurred without dropping and while securely in the holster without any items intruding in the holster (i say that because it was a prior excuse Sig made for the unintentional discharge reports)

https://youtu.be/LfnhTYeVHHE

A thousandth of an inch would do it? They couldn't give more margin-of-safety to a critical part like that?

A thousand of an inch isn't such a theoretical number. It's about 25 microns, and I've shimmed one of my back-focusing photography lenses for less than that much (about 10 microns, to be specific). This is something that they ought to be able to machine for, but depending on the context, it might not leave much room for error.

> A thousandth of an inch would do it? They couldn't give more margin-of-safety to a critical part like that?

If it's true, that's truly terrible design.

Its likely a misunderstanding and/or mischaracterization of "tolerance stacking."

A safe example is bike chain. If each one is 1 inch +- 0.01", if every single one is +0.01" then ten links will be long by a tenth of an inch. And might pass QC on the bike when pedaled by hand- but it'll fall off when somebodies full bodyweight and 100hrs of wear is out into it.

That's not how errors add up, it's nonlinear. You have to take the sum of squares. So in your case, it wouldn't be 10 * 0.01 = 0.1, but sqrt(10 * 0.01^2) = 0.032, which is less than one third of a tenth.

I provided a "worst case", not statistical, example.

For those who want an example, calculator, and demo see: https://www.smlease.com/entries/tolerance/tolerance-stackup-...

NB: using disks like the site does provides a clearer example.

At least one of those critical components (P/N 1300739-R) is manufactured in India. Is that a contributing factor?

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