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Comment by pauljara | Hacker News Reader

I'm a recently licensed firearms owner from Canada and as part of the safety training part of the licensing process, I became aware of how unsafe the P320 seemed to be. It really feels like that model needs to be taken off-market, undergo significant redesign, and for Sig's marketing sake, probably re-emerge as some new model like the SP321 where the S stands for "safety" :-)

What I'm not as familiar with is why hasn't Sig done this? It really feels like they've been doing ad-hoc patch design adjustments to a fundamentally unsafe design at this point. But I'm also not very knowledgeable about firearms yet.

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It's really sad because, straightforwardly, there's no penalty for just saying PEBKAC. Gun industry has tons of US legislative-granted legal immunity lest they ever accidentally become victim of a legal process that holds them accountable for, say, a mass shooting.

They've been saying it was a political witchunt and avoiding dealing with it. This, hopefully, breaks the dam.

The issue here is a question of whether the product is defective. The various legislation passed to protect firearm manufacturers against nuisance “defective product” lawsuits in the specific case where the product functioned as intended and was used illegally by a violent criminal, do not apply.

This is not a political issue. This is a discussion about whether a product is defective.

> The various legislation [...] do not apply.

Well, except specifically for Sig Sauer on the topic of an external safety in New Hampshire[0]. Which, given that's the thing people have been filing lawsuits in New Hampshire about, is a bit of a political issue, no?

[0] https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-05-28/sig-sauer-p320-pisto...

The lack of an external safety is not a defect. Many guns, probably a majority of new sales don’t. Anyone buying P320 knows there is no external safety. Sig should be liable for defects, and potentially negligent design, but seems reasonable not to be able to sue them for not including an external safety.

The US military uses the M17 and the M18, two versions of the P320 that have manual safeties.

And most US law enforcement uses Glock pistols, which are also famous for having no external safety. There's a lever integrated into the trigger such that the trigger must be pulled before it can travel backward, and there's a safety internal to the slide that ensures the firing pin cannot travel forward until the trigger has been pulled, but there is no external safety anywhere. Pull the trigger (by any means, finger or otherwise -- tangled up in string, caught on a pointy object like a pen, whatever) and it will fire.

I think the new law preventing the suing of manufacturers for not including external safeties is a good thing.

I also think Sig Sauer are intentionally gas-lighting the public on the safety of the P320/M17/M18 and should withdraw it from the market.

Edit: I have nothing against Sig Sauer in general. I've shot a P228; it's a beautiful weapon, and I would buy one in a heartbeat. You couldn't pay me enough to have a P320.

I do not think that allowing people to sue gun companies for not having an external safety is a good way to accomplish the goal, if the goal is actual safety.

If the consumer protection bureau of a state wants to make an external safety a requirement for pistols sold in the state, I think that is a legitimate use of government authority and is used all the time with other kinds of products. Personally I think such a proposal evinces a complete lack of understanding of modern handguns and I would be opposed to it, but it is a legitimate use of government powers, and is not just a back door way to sue a disfavored company out of existence.

For this particular case I think that discussing external safeties is a distraction. In my opinion a handgun should not discharge under any circumstance where no one and nothing pulled the trigger. As a firearm owner I have that expectation of every firearm I own. I deliberately chose not to buy an Sig 320 because of the large number of reports of accidental drop related discharges; it makes me think that there might be a design defect.

And it still does not help, because the safety only blocks the trigger but not the striker from firing, thus the Air Force incident that started, this topic, became possible.

This is about lots of money, which always is a political issue, especially in the US. The fact-finding discussion is only relevant in court.

To be fair, they're just straight up Wrong, capital-W. Trying to apply a general idea of legislation to a very specific scenario with lots of details and specific legislation. See sibling comment, Zimpenfish.

I've spent my career working with great marketers and I don't think any single one of them would advocate for the approach that Sig Sauer took with that stupid "It Ends Today" campaign. In fact, I'm sure all of them would have recommended the exact opposite.

They should very quickly pivot to a "It [100% Safety] Starts Today" remedial campaign admitting there's a problem, following-up with full transparency about how they plan to reorient their organization to make the situation better, then providing frequent proof of progress towards the safety goal. There's a critical window for them to turn this from a crisis that might sink the US division of the company to one that serves as the basis for why they were compelled to adopt safety-first design processes for their guns.

This is their version of the [1982 Tylenol Crisis](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/tylenol-murders-1982) but they've really fumbled the ball so far.

There's no computers nor chairs involved, however.

You ever heard the phrase "chair force"?

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