Court records reveal Sig Sauer knew of pistol risks for years
smokinggun.org
smokinggun.org
"The Smoking Gun" is part of the Everytown Support Fund [0], which has been lobbying for gun abolitionism. It was created in opposition of the NRA by Michael Bloomberg [1]
Just like how the NRA would skew stats against any form of gun control, an organization like Everytown would skew facts the other way around.
Firearm abolitionism and unrestricted firearm access are both equally dumb.
There is a middle ground that can be found, but the extremes on both sides make it impossible to compromise. Gun ownership is a 2nd amendment right and often needed in areas with limited population density and access to police or animal control services (try dealing with packs of feral hog like most rural communities in the American West - can't be done without .223 calibre ammo), but that doesn't mean we can't add safety and training requirements given that there is a real issue with gun smuggling that is exacerbating crime across the Americas as well as the inability to prevent and flag high risk individuals from purchasing weapons (especially via private sales).
IMO, an Israeli style model would be best - Israelis are allowed to own a private weapon, but are required to get tested and recertified every year AND need to show that they have a gun locker. All weapons are also registered and cataloged, and all gun sales need to be notified and allowed by the Ministry of Public Safety.
If Israel can do it, the US absolutely can as well.
This is not just a matter of technical ability.
In practice, you cannot simply bypass current reading of the 2nd Amendment by SCOTUS, unless you have enough support to amend the Constitution again. Which, on this controversial topic, no one has.
The reading of Buren allows control on concealed carry and gun ownership via objective criteria - which is what Israeli gun permitting rests on as well.
Yet, I have never seen a single organization fight for an Israeli style compromise for gun control in the US - almost all lawfare is either for abolitionism or unrestricted ownership.
https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-database...
Even without Israeli style gun cataloging, the rest of the Israeli gun control requirements should be able to pass the "objective criteria" test from Buren while also reducing the risk of misuse by tying license ownership with criterias such as mental health, training, and access to safe storage.
When you're dealing with that mindset, no wonder gun control measures as unremarkable as mandatory safes and training are anathema.
There is a silent majority that feels the 2nd amendment and gun control can co-exist, but they are not represented by any type of organized lobbying group so that voice is not heard.
It's also become a culture war signifier, so if you are a D who is fine with controlled gun ownership instead of abolition, you will face severe lobbying from Everytown, and if you are a R who is fine with controlled permitting instead of maximalist shall-issue licensing, you will face severe lobbying from the NRA.
It's shocking how effective the opposition to it has been.
A firing pin is designed to slam metal into metal. Do you really think a detailed pattern on the end of the pin will not soon become too blurred to be useful? Even if somebody doesn't take an abrasive to it.
And it's not like a firing pin is somehow unique to the gun. They are wear items, in time they get replaced. And you have to be able to take the moving parts of a gun apart for cleaning, there's no way to ensure a given pin doesn't get swapped to another gun.
And this once again comes back to at best only being useful in the cases where the gun was legally purchased, which is a very small part of gun crime.
Moreover, even if it wasn't, who cares? It would still be an improvement over what currently exists (unintentional microstamping) given a fair number of guns that are used in crimes have barely been fired.
Nor does it matter if someone switches the firing pin since criminals aren't likely to do that. They don't even file down serial numbers most of the time.
The fact that it isn't absolutely 100% perfect doesn't mean it isn't better.
According to the BJS, of those in prison in 2016 who had a firearm during the offense they were in for, 7.5% purchased it legally under their own name and 25.3% obtained it from family or friends. An older 2004 Survey of Inmates of State Correctional Facilities showed 12% obtaining them from retail and 41% from family/friends.
Criminals don't file down serial numbers not because there's no reason, but criminals don't think they'll be caught. Most simply don't think very far ahead.
Micro-stamping isn't perfect, but again, it is better. If it can lead to arrests in even a small percentage of the thousands of unsolved murders ever year, it would be a huge win with little downside.
And how many of those "purchased it legally" were in private party transactions that didn't require a background check?
Overall, 6.7% of prisoners reported gone through a background check when obtaining a firearm at a retail source (that's not 6.7% of the 7.5%, but rather 6.7% of all prisoners).
A "retail source" includes the 7.5% number above which is just licensed firearm dealers, but there were other retail sources I didn't include (pawn shops: 1.6, flea markets: 0.4%, gun shows: 0.8%).
Of course, the background checks doesn't really matter given that those 7.5% reported giving their actual name to a licensed firearm dealer which is what one would need to track them down.
> It's shocking how effective the opposition to it has been.
It's becuase the patent for microstamping is owned by a single and very litigious company [0].
There needs to be a non-patented OSS alternative, because the margins for manufacturing are extremely low.
This is why there is pushback to microstamping from companies.
Edit: did not realize the patent expired. Good callout.
And the reality is that legally purchased guns account for a tiny fraction of gun crime. Stopping every gun purchase by even a would-be criminal is going to do very little except to the suicide rate.
And the "unremarkable" measures often have nasty hidden details. Mandatory safes? Just exactly what do you count as a safe? Doesn't take much of a requirement on a safe before it becomes something that can only rest upon a proper foundation--thus completely prohibiting many apartment and condo dwellers. Put a bolt-down requirement on it and you have disallowed all renters.
Training is looking at it backwards. We have a perfect model of how it should be handled: just look at driving. You pass a test of knowledge and a test of proficiency.
Statistically, the problem isn't keeping scary guns away from everyone, because the vast majority of people will never shoot anyone. The whole "you're more likely to shoot a household member than an intruder" is a red herring, because the vast majority will do neither of these things. What matters is disarming the suicidally depressed, as well as a subset of people who are disproportionately likely to commit violent crime. 60-85 percent of gun deaths in the US are suicides, jurisdiction dependent. The prototypical gun homicide in the US is a young minority man with a criminal record being killed by another young minority man with a criminal record using an illegally-possessed handgun, usually involving street gang disputes and/or the illegal drug trade.
So what matters is being able to disarm people who exhibit violent tendencies and/or suicidal depression "left of bang."
I agree
> The Swiss model would be a much more reasonable approach. Shall-issue purchase permit on passing a background check, and the requirement to keep the firearm locked up when not used. But if you live alone, your locked front door counts as "locked up."
I disagree simply because unlike CH, our neighboring states like Mexico, Haiti, and Jamaica are all facing severe public security issues due to US originated gun trafficking, and this blows back into the US.
Adding some additional securitization to our rules more in line with those in Israel allow us to help defend ourselves from contagion.
If the party that support the 2nd amendment also views organized crime in Mexico and Haiti as a national security risk, then using the securitization framing is an easier sell.
This describes how it works in Seattle, WA.
The Swiss will sell you your service rifle converted to semi-auto when you leave the military, yet somehow these "assault weapons" don't cause them problems.
HIV transmission is way higher among men who have sex with men.
In any event:
1) Guns don't kill people. They don't even make the people-killing appreciably more likely.
2) Washington has about 1,000 gun murders per year
3) About 2/3 of U.S. gun deaths are suicides, so we might expect about 333 gun murders in WA in a year.
I'm really glad U.S. HIV deaths have fallen off a cliff!
WA state has about 300 murders a year, up significantly from 200-ish pre covid.
Nothing is gained by conflating unrelated topics like suicide, gang violence, domestic violence, and the occasional deranged lunatic spree killer just because they all abused the same tool to commit murder.
Unfortunately, most people are more interested in the simple answer than in recognizing there is no simple answer. And people are remarkably poor at recognizing that those who are muddying the waters are almost certainly arguing a false position.
I expect that the 18 week bootcamp affords an opportunity to closely observe all such conscripts and screen them for mental health disorders and behavioral problems, and that the (minimum) of 7 years of reserve service allows ongoing monitoring.
Additionally, common sense tells me that Switzerland's equivalent of "dishonorable" or "other-than-honorable" discharge would result in that person not having the opportunity to buy their service rifle, and possibly putting up roadblocks to owning a gun at all.
Therefore the people in Switzerland most likely to cause gun crime do not have ready access to them. That is quite different to how we think about it in the US.
If you were to seriously propose such a system in the US, I think you would get far more opposition from the pro-gun groups than the anti-gun groups. In fact, anti-gun groups would welcome adopting the Swiss system, since it so closes matches the legislation they have tried to enact such as magazine size restrictions in California, "red flag" laws in other states, and mandatory trigger locks. All of those laws have been opposed by groups like the NRA.
I don't agree about this. I do not support the Everytown group (who I agree are skewing facts) but long before they came along, the pro gun lobby was absolutely intransigent on their own. Any reasonable proposal/discussion that had broad support could get derailed by second amendment absolutists. It's gotten considerably worse over the ~35 years I've been on the internet because online social communication rewards people for being assholes; so many online debates degenerate into the pro gun people just screeching that their opponents are hoplophobes or commies, and posting 'SHALL NOT ?BE INFRINGED' over and over.
I like guns and enjoy shooting, but I absolutely despise 'gun culture'and the firearms lobby. They have never been good-faith actors in my experience.
Well, yeah. And as it happened they postulated the failure mode that was actually (allegedly) seen in practice. And they were right. So the "no one could have known" side of Sig's defense seems out the window here. They could have known, and they did, and relevant experts told them.
I really don't get your point here. You seem to be saying that risk analysis, in the abstract, as a whole field of practice, has no value because of the lack of certainty? But... managing uncertainty is the whole point. Do you really live your life like this? "I mean, people say fentanyl is dangerous but you never really know, right?"
Whether that's a correct critique or not, I don't know, but your reply is certainly misunderstanding their comment.
Look folks, I know it offends your 2A inclinations, but this is a step in a legal action. One of the arguments made by any defendant in a case like this is "This was not a foreseeable risk". And that is directly and correctly refuted by the cited report. Period. And it's right that the media report on it.
Sig guns have a failure mode that is serious and impactful, and was aware of it when it sold the hardware.
The harm is always a property of the failure, independent from the likelihood. The combination of the two independent values is usually a lookup in a grid to some score. I’m not gonna look at an FMEA in my leasure time, but if there was something juicy it’d be in the article text and it didn’t convince me.
To put an analogy, I've participated in FMEA's for software systems and the underlying physical installation. The severity of losing your class A data center due to flooding or complete power loss for over 48 hours is critical. The likelihood is low depending on the data centers location.
Question is how likely were the unintentional discharge scenarios in this FMEA study?
Though millions of guns x .0001%...well...
https://smokinggun.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/gov.uscour...
The rest of the article seems to misunderstand FMEA style "write down every conceivable bad scenario in the universe, how bad it is, and then what you have done to stop it", and then spins this as "look at all these horrible known issues they knew about". I hope a jury doesn't view it the same way, because it would be an epic bad for safety everywhere if engineers writing down a list of bad things to avoid and mitigate was forbidden by company lawyers.
And just not having hot dog down a hallway tolerances at the slide to frame interface.
The trigger stuff lives in the bottom half of the gun and the bang stuff lives in the top half and only goes bang depending upon the relative position of the trigger stuff. So allowing the top half and the bottom half to move around a ton is generally unwise unless you make accommodations elsewhere in the design so that you still have proper relative position regardless of where in the hallway the hotdog is.
Really, any gun where the sear is in the grip and the part it connects to is in the frame could have the same issue.
It may be the case that variance is so wide that there are some P320's which are in that "depressed to the wall" state at rest, but that would require an x-ray or CAT scan of the offending guns, and I don't know if anyone other than Sig has one. There is also a safety on P320's that should be stopping this from happening, but again, it is a part with very wide variation, and on some guns it seems it doesn't work (Sig issued a recall over this already).
I agree with Jared that this problem is a lot trickier and weirder than people give it credit for. The sort of core of the issue is that everything about the gun was done cheaply and they flew a little too close to the sun, but I believe they have no idea what in particular they cheaped out on too much.
Sig's "recall" was a drop-safety issue, where in certain orientations the weight of the trigger could generate enough momentum to allow an unintentional discharge.
That this giant mess of bad tolerances, sloppy change management, iffy manufacturing outsourcing, and a design which is sensitive to these issues it seems inevitable these kinds of random and hard to reproduce problems would occur. And the more they sold, the worse it would get.
Do that in something which literally can cause death and serious injury if it fails, in an environment where all your competitors designs don’t have these issues and hence users tend towards ‘round in the chamber’ and carrying them in all sorts of messy real world situations? Guaranteed disaster eventually.
Bad sig.
The brand was dead to me many years ago (extractor snapped in the middle of a course - seemed like bad metallurgy, or a bad design), but this is entirely another level of crazy.
> The Army position would be to oppose the distribution to the public of the > FMECA document as it potentially reveals critical information about the > handgun (design, reliability, performance, etc.).
I should really know to expect less, but they yet again managed to slide under even my low expectations of sense.
Pistols are the least important weapon in a war. Their capabilities are essential identical, and you can replace every sig with a Glock and the only thing that’ll change is whose pockets the money fills.
The idea of an enemy trying to plan a battle based on the flaws of a particular pistol is exceedingly silly. Even Blackadder has gags more grounded in reality.
And even by Sig themselves in other models. It seems to be a problem specific to the P320 / M17.
No. They are mitigated by a firing pin block that must be lifted by the full travel of the trigger, so that the block is lifted out of the way, for the firing pin to access the primer.
https://www.shootingillustrated.com/media/5nsj1a3l/firpins.j...
Very, very few serious people would argue that anyone carrying a firearm should carry it without a round in the chamber. Yes, "Israeli carry" is a thing, but is almost entirely endorsed simply as a training carry-over from a time when people carried different weapons of widely varying mechanical safety features in a very unique high-threat environment.
If you're carrying a firearm professionally, or in the US "recreationally" for personal protection, carrying without a round in the chamber will be seen by most people as a pretty stupid decision.
It is like saying, if you tape the trigger safety down on the Glock and drop it can go off, therefore it is a design defect.
I'm used to the kind of engineering where the goal is not to kill people I guess...
A trigger safety is meant to ensure that the trigger must be intentionally pulled (as opposed to moving during an impact) for the firing pin to be able to release and hit cartridge primer.
The 1911 famously has a grip safety, which needs to be depressed for the trigger to move. This is to try to ensure someone has to be gripping it with intent to fire, for it to be able to do so. While much safer than other pistols at the time, 100+ years later the design is relatively flawed, and isn’t truly drop safe, as the firing pin can still move.
Sig has good engineering videos where they walk through many of the mechanisms on the M17/18/320.
0: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/m16-rifle-viet...
The issue was that the Army Bureau of Ordinance insisted on making 5.56mm ammunition with a propellant composition different from the one that Stoner had specified when designing the weapon, one that was entirely unsuitable and led to jamming.
Far more rounds were put through the M16 by soldiers than prior weapons like the M14. Despite the chrome lining, M16 barrels still wear out over time and have to be replaced.
And the same applies to number of rounds: the entire point of a 5.56mm cartridge was to give soldiers more ammo so they could sustain volume of fire in the field: it was a design goal.
If design changes fixed a serious flaw with a weapon, then it was a flawed design.
The Army never changed the ammunition back. Instead, the weapon was modified (M16A1) to be compatible with the formerly out-of-spec ammunition and the issues went away.
You can't blame the M16 for the US Army using ammunition that wasn't fit for purpose.
https://practicalshootinginsights.com/the-document-sig-sauer...
https://practicalshootinginsights.com/sig-sauer-vp-consumer-...
https://practicalshootinginsights.com/new-unsealed-sig-sauer...
https://practicalshootinginsights.com/a-year-before-the-army...
It also makes me wonder if the reason it can't fix some of these issues is because it is working around patent issues.
Pure speculation.
If the Board is smart, they’ll fire the person before it gets to that point - but if they were smart, they probably wouldn’t have hired the type of person to get them into this mess in the first place.
My guess is it was a perfect storm where the defect rate was low enough to escape their quality control but high enough (or perhaps delayed long enough, meaning it takes years for the defect to appear) to lead to a clear signal after the horse got out of the barn. Enough suits were filed that they perhaps risk bankruptcy if they lose all of them.
That's just my speculation, and seems to be more plausible than some side effect from mental illness.
That was less than a year ago, and well after these issues have been escalating for years.
The co-ordinated gaslighting, projection, denial, etc. are also a clear pattern going back years as well.
The employees clearly being aware there are issues and being afraid to speak up due to internal retaliation, the lawsuits against entities merely trying to protect themselves from preventing people from carrying P320’s into their facilities until this gets figured out, etc. as well.
No one goes to this amount of effort to deny they have a problem (and control others to prevent them from acknowledging there is a problem) without an impetus like that.
I’m not saying the underlying engineering problem is a result of a mental health problem with someone in leadership. Though it likely doesn’t help!
I’m saying the market problem SIG is having (and the serious consequences of it) are due to the mishandled response to a real issue in engineering/manufacturing in a way which stinks clearly to me of NPD.
It’s the doubling down, attacking anyone who notices a real issue, gaslighting everyone, etc.
Hell, when even Brandon Herrera is telling them to fuck off due to the gaslighting?
It’s epic in this case. And NPD folks have a nasty habit of ‘taking down the ship’ as they escalate. It’s damn near the defining consequence that makes it a personality disorder.
Which SIG is definitely heading in that direction.
But hey, it looks like Gun Jesus has an opinion on it too [https://youtu.be/rjEhgXAALL8].
A few months ago I read a story about a woman who worked at sig and was sexually harassed by her boss and was demoted and fired. I can't remember if she was involved (as a witness) in an injury lawsuit about the P320 or what, but reading her story made me remove any possible sympathy I could have for her. Makes me sad I bought my P365 even though it's a great weapon.
*awkward silence*
What a wild, unjustified claim. Not every arrogant fool has NPD. If you want to throw that claim around you best be ready to cite the clinical definition.
Have you seen the press releases and lawsuits? It’s quite literally crazy what they’re doing.
I’ve seen it play out quite clearly before in person.
Why work so hard to continue to avoid the actual issue and clearly present behaviors and facts?
Or do you think such persistent and blatant pathological behavior just happens naturally from otherwise well adjusted executives acting in good faith?
No lawyer or PR person in their right mind would EVER okay that type of response. And with the facts as we know them coming out, those responses were deeply pathological.
You can debate whether they're still "in their right mind" by your preferred definition, but it's increasingly preposterous to say their behavior is evidence of an executive with NPD. This is just not that special, dude. People are just like this.
How many gun companies have had this level of scandal again? The only one I can think of is Taurus in the 80’s.
Doesn’t sound normal at all, actually.
What really amuses me about these kinds of conversations is how invested people are in insisting that when it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, is at the pond with the ducks, and looks like a duck - it totally isn’t a duck, because… I don’t know. They don’t like ducks? Or ducks are boring?
And not the vibes-only version you tried in your first reply. Notably, said clinical definition is not applicable to a company as a whole.
Presumably buried in the woods along with whatever shenanigans went down to award XM17 to Sig over Glock without going through the full predescribed testing in the first place
That's a deadly twist to "move fast and break things" motto.
Seriously, Sig Sauer. You are making weapons, not disposable pens, and the world leading disposable pen company literally uses "standards x 1.5" as their baseline.
https://practicalshootinginsights.com/a-year-before-the-army...
One thing this article fails to mention about the Air Force incident is that the Air Force has made an arrest for "making a false official statement, obstruction of justice and involuntary manslaughter."
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2025/08/08...
Nevertheless, is anyone actually claiming that the upgraded P320 is not drop safe? The issue people are talking about these days is holstered P320s apparently discharging uncommanded, apart from any drops.
Curious, what's this referring to?
They make pens, lighters and razor blades, at least.
For their lighters, they use engineering resins instead of simple plastics. They have their internal standards stricter than EU ones for temperature and drop resistance.
They make their own inks for their pens according to their own standards instead of getting from someone. Their razor blades last at least 25% longer than their competitors, and they sell for much cheaper.
They are a company of contradictions. Their items are disposable, yet put many "higher tier" items to shame by being better, longer lasting and cheaper at the same time.
"Sig Sauer also stated that the manual safeties on M17 and M18 pistols would resolve some of the issues,"
This would only be the training dependent ones. Mechanically, the safety only blocks the trigger and does nothing to block the striker or sear.
The article links a document[0] which lists them. My reading of this is that it's not listing issues that were found in the P320, but issues that can occur in handguns in general. One of the items is "unsafe hammer decock", which has never been possible with the P320 because it does not have a hammer. It is listed as eliminated.
The remaining medium risks are:
- The user might accidentally pull the trigger by resting their finger on it when they do not intend to fire the gun
- Mishandling the gun might cause a foreign object to pull the trigger
- A drop or vibration might cause the gun to fire
- The user might accidentally pull the trigger a second time due to motion during recoil
- The user may accidentally pull the trigger while clearing a jam
- A broken firing pin could lodge in the firing position, causing the gun to fire when the slide closes
- The user might accidentally pull the trigger during holstering or unholstering
- The sear might fail to retain the striker, causing an uncommanded discharge when chambering a round, or a second uncommanded shot after an intentional shot
- Defective ammunition could rupture and injure the shooter or bystanders
- Recoil can lead to repetitive motion injuries
- Incorrect disassembly and reassembly can lead to a firearm which does not function correctly
Two of these (drop/vibration, failure to retain striker) describe the current uncommanded discharge problem. Five of the issues are different ways someone with insufficient training might mishandle a gun and pull the trigger unintentionally.
[0] https://smokinggun.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/gov.uscour...
And the way they are presented is in a way that they stack. But they don't.
Let's say the striker safety has failed and you drop the gun. It goes off. Even if you have a trigger safety. Or a disconnector safety.
Consider a computer program (with a UI mated to underlying mechanics) that talks to a database.
In this case, just because the frontend (the trigger) has a "safety" on it such that it guards against initiating a chain of events that results in something being written to the database, the backend generally remains capable of it anyway.
So, if you have some other logic or condition that can start that API call (let's assume the program fires off a bunch of random inputs to various APIs if you physically drop the computer it's running on, and then you drop it), the DB write may still happen even though it was never triggered from the frontend.
Now, you can do various things to guard against that known behavior- from ensuring the activity chain started on the frontend to physically disconnecting the computer from the database until you're ready to write- but at the end of the day the machine has to be capable of performing the write immediately when commanded, and the sacrifices you're going to make to enable that will be controlled by your engineering and testing.
In this case, the trigger (and other associated safeties) are the "frontend", the mechanical workings are the "backend", and "the gun fires" is "a DB operation".
That doesn't sound ideal.
It’s one thing for a gun to go off and potentially hit someone but it’s another when the first round fired triggers 4 cops to empty a mag each.
One of the first rules of gun safety is never point the weapon at something you aren't intending to shoot. So by the time they are pointing their guns at a suspect, actually firing probably happens a lot? Or are cops actually trained to hold a person at gunpoint (I don't believe the TV dramas and movies where this happens constantly are realistic in this regard).
If so, it seems very risky, considering potential manufacturing or design defects such as discovered with the Sig.
I'm sure every defense attorney in the country is checking what firearms the officers were issued for their clients where it might make a difference.
I wouldn't believe American cops are trained with "safety first" rule in mind. The evidence doesn't seem to support it.
https://hub.wsu.edu/law-justice-realtime/2015/11/18/the-incr...
My local store will still take them but it's $100 store credit only.
It reminds me of the spate of reports of people dying while cleaning a gun. If you know anything about firearms you know this is not possible. People I know in law enforcement said it was a way of not saying someone committed suicide.
This is exactly how I sound when I get a bug that is hard to repro. Just like these guns, there's evidence that the bug happened, but it's really hard to figure out how. Still a bug. People are still dead.
At the very least that I'm aware of, there was initial work by Youtuber "3 P320s In A Trenchcoat" showing a series of ways to get the striker to drop w/o touching the trigger. More recently, a Youtuber with Wyoming in their channel name showed that they could reproduce them with just the slightest trigger movement in conjunction with wiggling the slide.
It's very easy to see how a police officer jostling around with a suspect or getting in and out of their car can cause the trigger and the slide to move at the right time to cause this issue.
Am I reading it correctly: if you provide us with a detailed bug report we will make sure to properly justify why we think it is not a bug and "works as intended"? :)
What a shit way to phrase this. What makes these corporate monkeys lose the ability to speak normally?
I don't believe people on Sauer's payroll for a second. They earn their money shilling these faulty guns.
I just bought something else and that's that.
----
[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/DG6RkWCpkdw/#
[2] https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/gunmaker-sues-washingtons-p...
they have internal safety mechanisms to prevent discharge, and these are important if you carry with a round chambered - in a striker-fired pistol, the firing pin is under tension and is only being restrained by the trigger and internal safeties
this is why I do not carry with a round chambered, if you appendix carry and something goes wrong, you will be missing an important appendage
It may not block the trigger from moving enough to disengage an internal, automatic safety that prevents the firing pin from traveling all the way forward if it is released due to a malfunction. It is also possible that the firing pin block safety does not always work even if the trigger is fully forward.
The P320 was popular as it was designed as a modular system, allowing a single FCU (firing control unit, basically a trigger and striker assembly) to be independent and swappable with other parts of the handgun: grip, slide, barrel, etc. This allows for a single platform to serve multiple needs: concealed carry, compact, full-size, or even competition models, as well as be transferrable across calibers. The magazine design also allowed for more rounds to be carried in compact configurations.
The P320 was selected by the US Army [0] as the official replacement for the Beretta M9 as a service-issued sidearm, officially designated the M17 or M18 (in 9mm).
In 2020 SIG SAUER initiated a "voluntary upgrade program" [1] that swapped various components of the trigger to prevent unintended discharge (UD) events that could occur when the pistol dropped in certain orientations. These changes became standard for the M17 and all P320 manufactured after.
Recently, there have been very high-profile cases and investigations around UD events, the most recent being by an event in the Air Force that led to the death of an airman. In that case the Air Force put a suspension on the firearm during the investigation but eventually arrested the airman responsible, as they determined he had lied about the events [2].
Regardless of the specific failure modes of the weapon, there is a stigma around it, resulting in various law enforcement agencies switching from it or ranges banning the firearm. This has been popularized by incidents caught on video and somewhat viral videos of testing the firearm in a variety of scenarios.
All in all, the P320 is one of the most mass-produced firearms in the world, and I would not be surprised to see Sig Sauer continue to fight in the court of public opinion to defend the reputation of the firearm, in what I would deem a losing strategy.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIG_Sauer_M17
[1] - https://www.sigsauer.com/p320-voluntary-upgrade-program
[2] - https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2025/08/08...
Of course the NRA pitched these laws to their members as protecting against gun violence victims suing the manufacturer, but they also slipped in that gun manufacturers have no legal responsibility to provide guns to buyers that do not fire unless the trigger is pulled.
100% the families of those affected by Sigs goof ups should sue.
Remington settled a class action lawsuit[1] concerning rifles that could fire without a trigger pull filed after the passage of that law.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/remington-rifle-settlement-i...
All that I can find are laws limiting liability for use of a properly functioning weapon, not against defects.
Where does this idea come from? If this is the case, the document being discussed in the OP would not even exist, because there would be no need to document situations causing unintentional discharge.
It seems to be acquired through social osmosis, i.e. hearing people talk about it and then repeating their assertions as if it were a fact - usually with subtle changes colored by the speakers own world view - until some version of "truth" permeates society. I guess you could consider it like a game of telephone at a societal level. The Citizens United case is another great example where what people think it held is very different from what it actually held. It's also frustrating given the fact that we live in a time where the barrier to verify these claims is incredibly low or even non-existent because of the internet.
People who just dislike guns (or dislike the people who like guns) then repeat it forever, even after proven wrong.
I think your examples make a good point though. There are absolutely times and places where someone's right to gun ownership can and should be suspended or even outright denied - the same as we do with freedom of speech, voting, or any other right. But it's already illegal in every state for recently released felon to own a gun - only 12 states have some sort of automatic renewal of gun rights and most of them are 10 years after release for non-violent offenses only.
It depends on your definition of "mentally unstable" but there are several mental health questions on the form you have to fill out for the ATF if you buy a firearm. Paradoxically in the 50s-70s there was a huge push to deinstitutionalize mental health treatment, close the vast majority of mental asylums, and make it much harder to involuntarily commit someone, but that's also the primary mechanism by which you prevent someone from acquiring a firearm on mental health grounds.
It's been a while since I've done a deep dive on background check requirements as they tend to vary by type of firearm but you cannot buy any firearm from a dealer without a background check. Honestly I think this is the one gun control advocates could make the most ground on, and the one that people can most reasonably disagree on. Quick AI math tells me that 32 states allow the purchase of a rifle from a private individual without a background check, which covers about 48% of the US population.
[0] https://x.com/GIFFORDS_org/status/1953570096443510896 claims nearly 1,000 people die from gun violence in Colorado in a year when the average is less than 300 and it's never been more than the low 400's - in fact numbers have only drastically increased as Colorado has passed more and more restrictive gun laws
Anti-gun propaganda.
Anti-gunners first started practicing lawfare against companies involved in the gun industry by suing them for crimes committed using products the companies were involved with, even though this is a ridiculous idea never applied to any other type of product. They do it because, even when the lawsuits are thrown out eventually, they are still very expensive to defend and most companies in the industry don't have particularly deep pockets.
Gun-rights advocates got laws passed in a number of jurisdictions clarifying that gun manufacturers are only liable for genuine flaws in their products. This has largely squelched these types of nuisance lawsuits.
Anti-gun activists don't like that, so they frequently spread false information that such laws prevent manufacturers from being liable for genuine flaws in their products. Despite such false claims, no law ever passed or proposed actually does this, and no law in this area has ever been repealed due to actually blocking liability for genuine flaws.
Furthermore, look at what caused it: the gun grabbers were planning to bury the gun makers in a flood of lawsuits that would overwhelm them regardless of whether they were actually wrong.
As awful as this Sig Sauer fiasco is, it doesn’t seem to be a result of a pivot to indirect monetization.
Enshittification is about obtaining, then abusing platform semi-monopoly power to extract more money from your users and your customers by making your product worse.
Yeah, this is how I meant it.
In the case of Sig, it was probably cost-cutting, product management by committee, corner-cutting due to tight business reqs, or some combo of the above.
As a self-described gun nut, thought I'd make it a little more accurate :)
I enjoy shooting myself (don't really do it frequently but I have a number of times at ranges) but I feel like there are a lot of people who do not take gun ownership seriously.
I also think there are a lot of people who dont take driving a car seriously enough so it isn't exclusive to guns...