Documents detail U.S. soldiers shot by their own Sig Sauer guns (2024) | Hacker News Reader

Documents detail U.S. soldiers shot by their own Sig Sauer guns (2024)

nhpr.org

39 pointsummonk41 comments

Recent and related:

Air Force unit suspends use of Sig Sauer pistol after shooting death of airman - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44674123 - July 2025 (406 comments)

also:

Sig Sauer guns hanging on soldiers' hips may be firing without trigger pull - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41087518 - July 2024 (37 comments)

Related? 'Air Force unit suspends use of Sig Sauer pistol after shooting death of airman' https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-07-23/sig-sauer-pistol-air...

Yeah, that was a recent turning point. This has been a huge scandal for Sig since at least 2023, with little accountability:

https://www.thetrace.org/2023/04/sig-sauer-p320-upgrade-safe...

Sig Sauer USA is in serious trouble here. Guns shouldn't be going off without the trigger being pulled, period.

They've probably got 90 days to do a recall with a real fix or US soldiers will be carrying Glocks.

I don’t buy it. Sig’s don’t just go off on their own. They just don’t. This is just idiot gun handlers or a cover up.

*edit* I found this: https://youtu.be/NapE4CkWpHk which properly explains that in the line of duty (police for example) the safety mechanism can wear or be flipped while in the holster. It think that’s more a flaw of the holster than the gun. That’s why there’s a safety. So improper cleaning and attention to one’s weapon can lead to “accidental” discharge if you use one of those crappy police style holsters, rub against it a bunch to wear out the mechanics of your safety (which means Russian roulette every time you get in the car), is just stupidity. Just use a normal holster, so it takes you 0.2s longer to draw.

*EDIT OF THE EDIT* So this guy needs some credit. He was able to reproduce it, scientifically, on camera. https://youtu.be/jOMQOtOQoPk&t=1705 So, I stand corrected. This shouldn't ever happen.

Forgotten weapons has done a couple videos on this over the years, this is the most recent one.. https://youtu.be/3iWVs2uD1XY?feature=shared His opinion atm, is that it's nuanced.

Yeah, I think I remember his first video on it. The issue I have is, without video evidence of a m18 pistol going off on its own, it’s hard to say whether it was the gun - or the current mental state of its user. I don’t know, but I do know the one I have is rock solid. The others I have used have been as well. The only gun that tops it to me is a solid 1911.

There is tons of video evidence.

kindy share because all I've seen is aftermath

I like the 1911s also. I've got two Colt Series 80 MK IV .45s and I prefer them to the three other guns I have. My daily carry is a S&W M&P Bodyguard .32, because it's significantly lighter and smaller than the Colts.

If the facts stated in the article are all true, then there's something else going on that has not yet been discovered or revealed. Perhaps it's related to a static electric discharge into the primer, or some defect in the 9mm ammunition.

> nuanced

That is not good enough for a gun

The SIG P320 does go off on its own. The sheer number of incidents with that model in particular, many of which occurred on camera and around multiple witnesses, is telling. SIG may have once been a reliable and trustworthy manufacturer but that’s no longer the case.

https://youtu.be/b33AXiuytn0

https://youtu.be/z789IuTQLs8

Can you share actual timestamps of video of it happening?

The first one appeared to be news reports and retellings. The second one is a highly edited music dubbed video (!?)

If you don’t have the attention span for nine minutes of video I found a YouTube short for you: https://youtube.com/shorts/cOUfurKIjnI

This same footage was in at least one of the compilations, as is footage of other discharges, and I shared the compilations largely to underscore the sheer number of incidents. If it’s not worth your time to watch it’s not worth my time to handhold you through it.

Edit: I should have predicted this. If I share a compilation of videos, I get complaints about the format, and if I share a single short, I get nit-picked. This isn't a good faith disagreement, this is a couple of people playing a shitty game of "winning arguments on the internet" at best. ummonk shared a clearer example in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44697503

In that video, I see a gun that has it's safety off, being holstered without regard to the weapon. User Error. Now show me one of it going off by itself.

Ah, the “you are holding it wrong” argument returns

These are trigger-safeties, yeah? The ones that are marketed as safe unless you pull the trigger?

Or is it

# until you pull the trigger

# or don’t clean it right

# or don’t use the right holster

# or don’t bump it against your buddy

Anything else we should add to the list? Seems like it keeps getting longer.

A lot of posts out there for accidental Glock discharges, too. I saw a video of a police officer walking to her car carrying an armful of stuff take one in the leg.

They aren’t as safe as you think. If your deadly weapon requires perfect maintenance or else it will randomly kill someone then you are fooling yourself

The safety mechanism prevents you from pulling the trigger. Speculation around how a P320 could go off on it's own is abound. Proper attention to your weapon is rule #1. So all of those things... ? I never heard the bumping up against your buddy one.

So too does the list of reasons why it could happen without video of it. I see some cops on the group after the fact but I don't see any of it happening and then they check the weapon to see that the safety is still engaged. Which you would think investigators would do.

That last guy video kinda explains this for me. If your holster somehow put pressure on the trigger (like he simulated with the screw), and somebody bumped the slide (like the incidence of the gun firing when they squeezed past each other and bumped holsters) you'd have a discharge.

The latest consensus take is the striker safety can fail due to tolerance stacking in certain production runs.

Due to the nature of the higher spring tension and stored momentum of the P320's striker, when the striker safety fails, it can cause the gun to spontaneously fire.

Other striker-fired pistols (e.g Glocks and S&W Shields) have lighter strikers and/or less tension so even if their striker safety failed, it wouldn't be enough to cause a primer detonation.

> Other striker-fired pistols (e.g Glocks and S&W Shields) have lighter strikers and/or less tension so even if their striker safety failed, it wouldn't be enough to cause a primer detonation.

This is true of the Glock and some others; the striker is not fully cocked when the gun is ready to fire but the trigger is not being pulled. The trigger must be pulled to fully compress the striker spring, giving it enough energy to fire the primer. It does not appear to be the case for the Shield; the striker is fully cocked before the trigger moves.

Many popular striker-fired handguns operate like the P320 and Shield, including the S&W M&P, Springfield XD series, Walther PPQ/PDP, H&K VP9, and the Sig P365. None of those have a reputation for firing without something pulling the trigger, which suggests that the P365 is uniquely flawed in its design or manufacturing process.

My mistake. You are absolutely correct on the Shield.

The P320 striker still has more stored energy to dissipate in a striker-safety failure.

Ironically, this was a deliberate feature of its design submission for the M9 replacement program. In theory, this allows for more flexibility in trigger pull design (the trigger has to do less work) for even greater modularity in the FCG and less occurrence of light-primer-strikes.

The M9A4 is an amazing weapon, both in handling and design. It's heavy, sure, but that makes subsequent shots more accurate, less recoil. Different firing mechanisms though and to be fair I haven't shot the P320. But I love my M9.

I've only ever shot one on the range, but concur with the lack of recoil and easier follow-up shots. I can do hammers (controlled pairs) far easier than with a Glock 19.

Ian just posted a follow-up video too: https://youtu.be/rjEhgXAALL8

I do think its dumb for the army to go with these striker fired sidearms. As opposed to a double action / single action like the Beretta they used to have. The benefit of striker fired is you can fire the first round a fraction of a second faster.. I wonder how many times in history has that actually mattered for a sidearm in the army.

And the cops are just copying what the army went with. They do not have enough firearms training to be carrying those.

I could search this up but I'd rather ask here in conversation: what's the difference between them? I'm not a totally n00b with guns: I've owned various small rifles since I was a kid and I also made it through US Navy boot camp where we shot handguns at targets. I understand the basic ideas involved. What I don't know is what single/double/striker action means here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beretta_M9 So for single action double action, when you first pull the trigger you are also pulling back the hammer, so the 1st trigger pull is long and hard, and then when you fire that pushes the hammer back so subsequent trigger pulls just release the hammer so they are short and easy.

Striker fired pistols dont have a hammer, and basically the 1st trigger pull is just as easy as subsequent ones in a da/sa gun.. So the benefit is you can fire the 1st shot a tiny bit faster.

I have no experience with guns btw, ive just watched loads of "forgotten weapons" lol

I have considerable experience with guns, and I disagree that the benefit has much to do with speed.

Instead, it's easier to shoot accurately with a short, light trigger pull than a long, heavy one. It's also easier to shoot subsequent shots accurately if the trigger pull is the same between every shot. Furthermore, it's easier to teach people to operate a gun if there are fewer states it can be in where it operates differently.

I haven't seen data suggesting that striker-fired pistols that aren't defective have a higher rate of inadvertent discharge than hammer-fired pistols. People had that concern when the Glock became popular, but that was 1982 and it is not a common concern now.

Yes, it's more difficult to maintain aim on the target while pulling the trigger of a double-action handgun. I prefer single-action, but my daily carry is double-action. It's less likely to go off by accident.

Most striker fired trigger pulls are long and heavy for service weapons. It's more like a DA pull vs a SA pull. The newer ones and civilian market are lighter and shorter though.

Over 90% of people hate DA/SA, and for good reason with the 2 different trigger pulls you have to train for. Cops have been carrying striker fired glocks for decades. Doesn't matter if it's striker fired or otherwise for the ones lacking training - fire type won't fix the training issues. The original case for striker fired was that it was drop safe, hence Glock Safe Action (even though they had discharge issues).

Yeah good point. Pulling the trigger in a glock does pull back the striker a decent bit, whereas in the 320 it barely does it at all.

My main point is that in the army, how many instances has there been of someone using their sidearm in combat, ever?.. I think safety should be the priority for them.

"My main point is that in the army, how many instances has there been of someone using their sidearm in combat, ever?"

Often enough that they carry the extra weight. If it wasn't useful, they wouldn't carry the weight. We can also look at history, such as why the 1911 was selected.

And to your point, one would also expect law enforcement to be more concerned than the military about the quality of their pistols. A police pistol is the primary weapon but a military pistol is more of a last resort.

Justin Taylor's take is Military Pistols Don't Actually Matter [0]. My argument would be: "If they don't actually matter except as one step before charging with bayonets, then why not use the safest and most reliable polymer plinker purlionable?" My devil's advocate retort to... myself... "But then the vendor who bribed their Congressperson and gave jobs to retired generals would get mad."

0. https://youtu.be/eRlzblOE1-c

PS: Both of my grandpas were USAAC/USAF WW2 vets who happened to be competitive pistol marksmen. It was more of a sport for them than anything essential to their MOSes. I OOTH, have Parkinson-like hand tremors and don't trust my aim beyond 5m.

what are the stats for other nations?

These reports are always so hard to interpret. There is a very strong incentive for involved parties to come up with alternate explanations when accidents occur in all accidents, not just gun accidents. In certain types of vehicle accidents it’s common for people to claim the vehicle accelerated by itself or that they were pressing the brake when they were actually pressing the accelerator.

The claimed incident with security footage would be interesting to see, or at least read a detailed report about. I’m curious how they confirmed the safety was on from security camera footage.

Unless I’m missing something, it looks like people who have tried to replicate the problem with repeated tests so far cannot do it. This seems like a goldmine for YouTubers looking to get headlines if they can make it happen.

That's all true, but you could also compare rates of similar events with other handguns per number in use. There's nothing to my untrained eye obviously radically different from this gun than other common designs, so I'd expect they'd have approximately the same number of incidents per X0,000 soldier-years of use.

There's one difference between the P320 and most of its direct competitors: most handguns with a short to medium trigger stroke and available configurations without a manual safety have a pivot or lever in the trigger designed to prevent unintentional trigger pulls.

The M18, the military version of the P320 does have a manual safety though, and there are reports of it firing with the safety engaged. This suggests that the high rate of unintentional discharges of this firearm are not only due to its trigger being easier to pull than its competitors.

The safety issue with the SIG P320 is real. I’ve seen footage of multiple instances of a P320 discharging in the holster without the trigger being touched; in fact you can find much of that footage on YouTube. There’s a growing list of law enforcement agencies, shooting ranges, training facilities, and now even the US Air Force either banning the P320 or withdrawing it from service. Yes, it’s true that a lot of people (even cops and Alec Baldwin) will negligently discharge a firearm and lie about not pulling the trigger, but the sheer number of reported incidents with the P320 in particular, as well as the massive amount of footage of these incidents (a happy side effect of ubiquitous police body cameras) provides very conclusive evidence.

> The safety issue with the SIG P320 is real. I’ve seen footage of multiple instances of a P320 discharging in the holster without the trigger being touched; in fact you can find much of that footage on YouTube.

Can you share them?

This is the second time I’ve heard the same claim that the videos exist, but then nobody ever has links.

The article refers to one attempt to replicate the issue where the person was unable to make it happen.

Here is one where the gun was clearly holstered and went off when jostled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSAI_HUZDI0

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