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Comment by jibe | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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