Sig Sauer citing national security to keep documents from public
practicalshootinginsights.com
practicalshootinginsights.com
There's a decent chance that the handgun our men and women are issued is a danger. When the M16 had problems early in Vietnam there was an investigation and they found out it was a powder issue in the cartridges. No (good) reason that there's not something similar for this issue here.
And Sig can dig their heels in all they want, but when you've got ranges banning P320s and they're in the bargain bin at the local gun shop, well, the market has spoken. You can't unring that bell. Stop production of the P320, fire the executives, and do what it takes to repair this issue.
Cynically, there's a very good reason they haven't. Embarrassment, money, entitlement... lots of reasons, actually.
Personally my money's on corruption but I have no proof.
Sig also won contracts for suppressors, optics, and probably more I'm unaware of or can't remember. Unit cost of the M7 is several times higher than the M4, it's heavier, has more recoil, carries less ammo, and the cartridge it fires is still stopped by commonly available body armor that's manufactured today.
Corruption is obvious in my mind, it's shocking Congress seems either oblivious or so complacent.
The requirements may be goofy, but that's a requirements problem and not a Sig problem.
I can sort of see why they went with a completely new cartridge with the XM7; they want a common cartridge between the service rifle and machine-gun, and they want ballistic performance that can defeat certain types of body armor out of a barrel that's short enough to be maneuverable with a suppressor affixed to it. Would 7.62 NATO do that? I don't know. Maybe not.
The one that gets me, though, is the "modular grips" requirement for the competition the P320 ended up winning, with part of the rationale being a better fit for more hand sizes. C'mon. That seems like an interesting idea, but the idea of fitting soldiers for custom grips and keeping them in inventory, just seems far-fetched. Maybe I'm wrong. More importantly, it made the P320 the apparent shoo-in for the competition. It's like someone involved in the process knew someone at Sig and the two devised a requirement that only Sig could reasonably hope to fulfill. Then they undercut Glock on the price, and suddenly a well-regarded service pistol that is proven the world over just isn't good enough for the price, but this completely new design somehow is.
It just stinks of collusion between the military and someone putting in a tender for a contract.
Hammer fired guns are capable of doing this safely because they have a sear geometry that requires moving the hammer back against spring pressure with trigger input a very short distance before the hammer drops. Along with a functioning sear block in case the hammer slips off the sear without trigger input, this makes them very safe.
Basically every other striker fired gun on the market uses a semi-cocked striker with a trigger widget and sear block, which is a copy of Glock's design, and it's quite safe.
Sig deviated from this design without fully proving it out. Their guns don't have trigger widgets, which allows the trigger to move under momentum when dropped, causing repeatable firings. The fully cocked striker design leads to a shorter, crisper pull, but a sear slip leads to uncommanded firings, unlike a semi-cocked design, which doesn't have enough energy to fire a primer.
Combine this with poor control of manufacturing, intermingling of parts designed and intended for different calibers, as well as factories in the US and India with varying levels of quality control and poor spec for parts to begin with (metal injection molding for fire control parts), and safety critical systems like the sear block have been shown to not be 100% reliable. It's a system of cascading failures resulting in a firearm that's unsafe to carry loaded.
I’ve owned rifles that had safeties that made it impossible to pull the trigger. Don’t these?
Fully cocked strikers are ready to ignite a primer if the striker drops. I don't know of another design like Sig's that has a fully cocked striker, which is not to say there isn't one, or that they're all unsafe.
The P320 in particular suffers from compromises shoehorning a fire control unit designed for one gun into another.
Combined with poor manufacturing techniques, tolerance stacking, part mixing, and poor QA, the striker block, which is the last safety intended to block the striker without an explicit trigger pull, can become ineffective.
To answer your question, there's no mechanical reason a handgun cannot be designed an manufactured to not fire without explicit mechanical input from the user. Indeed almost every commercially produced handgun on the market fits this requirement. A combination of failures on Sig's part has allowed this to happen.
But some of the types of safeties increase the change you won’t have it on (because time to disengage the safety is too long/complicated) or that they will introduce additional failure modes.
For some missions, “unsafe” is better than “too safe” - think one step from gun drawn, finger on the trigger.
This is one of the reasons Glocks are so popular, as the trigger safety is really “easy” to disengage as it’s the same as the mechanism you use to fire.
But it doesn’t protect YOU from being a dumbass. Safeties that do that are dangerous in another way.
FWIW this isn't even a new take. Many popular DA/SA guns cannot be put on safe at all when they're not cocked, even though they can be fired through double action - logic here being the same, between heavy trigger pull and hammer block it just cannot fire without a trigger pull.
That said I personally don't agree with this analysis. Or, more accurately, I believe that the increased risk from not being able to use the gun when it's needed is not properly balanced against the increased risk from making the gun easier to fire, especially in applications where handgun is not the primary weapon (which is almost always the case for the military).
See: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/07/05/glock-says-be...
- Sig has known about it for years[1]
- A company recently filed a patent for a fix[2] and they offered Sig the rights to it before filing, but Sig refused.
- The Air Force has cleared the 320 for use[3]. In my pessimistic opinion, they probably determined the cost to procure new weapons would exceed the cost to replace lost airmen.
[1] https://smokinggun.org/court-records-reveal-sig-sauer-knew-o...
[2] https://www.wearethemighty.com/military-news/patent-says-the...
[3] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/08/25/m18s-cleared-...
In a Friday statement, a Department of the Air Force spokesperson said that the unidentified arrested person is accused of making a false official statement, obstruction of justice and involuntary manslaughter.
In this case, the whole "it want off by itself" claim was a lie.
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2025/08/08...
Maybe the issue is that the 320 is too close to a competition trigger, and it isn't appropriate for a duty gun. But the gun has been under a microscope for years now, and no one has shown a design defect that causes the gun to fire by itself.
If the gun was able to fire by itself, without the trigger being actuated, then someone should make it happen on video. Shake the crap out of it, bang on it. Take it in and out of a clear plastic holster 1000 times until the supposed defect happens.
Here, the police officer isn't even touching his holster.
Regardless, if there is a defect in that particular gun, they should just demonstrate it. If it isn't the holster, or something in the holster pulling the trigger, make it happen outside the holster.
A hair trigger is unsuitable for combat use because of the "errybody be muzzle sweeping errybody up in here" nature of combat.
Those two uses are 99.99% of what the air force needs its pistols to do.
They could give it better tolerances so it has a "good trigger" without "hair trigger" but that will cost a lot of money. Or they could give it an absurd trigger pull like duty guns had in the "good old days" but that will cost just as much money for equivalent results because you'll need to train the force more to get the same accuracy of fire.
Additionally, with the fairly sloppy nature of these guns and the fundamental nature of how handguns work, it's not unforeseeable that they do get clapped out to the point of just going off if you bump the slide right as they age since they're so close to that as is.
Considering how many people need to be trained/equipped and how often the air force fires sidearms in "real" situations both of these solutions are way, way, way more expensive than a few bodies.
2: The trigger is what it is, the military and police departments chose it for what was.
I agree, the police in particular, should use a gun that takes more effort to fire. But don't blame Sig for this, it isn't a design flaw.
There are also manufacturing issues with intermingling parts with different geometries intended for different calibers and building guns with the wrong parts, such as installing a 10mm Auto/.45 ACP takedown safety level in a 9mm gun, or installing a metal injection molded firing pin safety that's out of spec, worn, or contributes to tolerance stacking in such a way that the gun becomes unsafe.
For example, Sig offered a "voluntary upgrade" to fix the well documented drop safety flaw with the P320, and there's video proof of the same guns going off still in holsters.
Sig is going to be playing whackamole fixing these issues if they ever admit to it, so they won't.
As you point out, the drop issue was well documented, and then fixed. So far, no one has identified a cause for the possible uncommanded discharge.
A gun in a holster can fire when it is moved and the holster is poorly fit, incorrectly configured, or there anything caught in it like tail of a shirt, drawstring. Also, many police have a flashlight on their pistol, which opens up space quite a bit making it easier for things to get caught inside.
The range video where they are standing on the line was allegedly a modified gun with non-Sig upper and trigger.
Officer standing and moves slightly and it goes off, with their hands in front of them? (Eyewitness)
And at least 3 others. There are some good compilation videos out there.
The argument is that there exists a combination of states and tolerances when a P320 is loaded and cocked that could, theoretically, allow the striker to impact the primer forcefully without a complete and full trigger pull, one where you don't feel the break. This could either be while the finger is on the trigger (maybe a police officer pointing it at someone who has a weapon while commanding them to drop the weapon, for example) or not (in a holster).
Inserting that screw is meant to simulate a tolerance stacking issue wherein the pistol's components don't line up together in such a way as to prevent the striker from slipping past the sear.
Is it wonky? Of course. Could you probably do it with other pistols? Probably. Are there police officers and servicemen/women who need a convenient excuse for their negligent discharges? Yes. Should a real investigation occur? Also yes.
That's the Air Force's accusation.
I think we need to await the facts of the case and the judgement. The only public information I've seen strikes me as unusual.
The accused airman is being charged with involuntary manslaughter, which coupled with the extensive issues with the P320 brings up more questions than it answers.
I could come up with my own conjecture based on that information, but there's enough people doing that already.
The fact remains that the P320 malfunctions. There's been countless documented cases, and numerous recorded demonstrations of the issue on YouTube and elsewhere.
It can be both Sig and this Airman’s fault at the same time.
Carrying a handgun relies on that rule not being followed and instead the holster preventing anyone from pulling the trigger, but if the gun can go off without a trigger pull all bets are off.
I feel that the safety versus response time trade off is worth it for me. It could be from my military background, but for me a negligent discharge is one of the worst things I could possibly do with a firearm. I was also raised to never trust a safety and unload my gun when crossing fence lines while hunting.
1) The safety mechanisms on say a glock are different than on a lot of military rifles soldiers are trained on. An Ar-15/M16 can go off without pulling the trigger if the firing pin gets stuck in the channel. That won't happen with a glock because the safety physically blocks the primer from being struck. Also in theory a free-floating firing pin could maybe somehow get slammed hard enough or slam an abused primer enough to set off some military rifles.
2) Some hunting shotguns or military rifles aren't drop safe. Modern handguns are.
3) A military rifle or hunting rifle generally has the trigger exposed at all times you are carrying it. A CCW handgun, you are not exposing the gun and trigger unless you are about to shoot someone.
Now I've never served in the military, other than a rag-tag Kurdish militia. What I would imagine the boot sergeant or whatever they are called do, is tells the soldier they will keep the manual safety on or the weapon unchambered and leave it at that, because explaining the intricacies of a striker-fired pistol vs an M16 to a bunch of barely out of highschoolers from Guam who are already exhausted from sleep deprivation and jarring work-outs would not be terribly productive.
This is precisely one of the issues with Gen1 Glocks that was remediated. The firing pin safety prevents the firing pin from moving forward unless the gun is in battery and the trigger is partially depressed. It doesn't force the pin to move backwards if it is jammed forward (due to dirt). A pin that's jammed will slam fire the gun when racked.
Always rack in a safe direction.
Source: many years of carrying a weapon in a professional capacity.
I certainly don't expect I'll be able to address this from someone confidently bragging about years of "professional" experience carrying an unchambered weapon as the only right way to do it on the street, so hopefully you can find a class with someone with a background you respect so it will go through your brain.
Walking around on base for example isn’t even remotely close to one. This isn’t uniquely an American thing but it’s extremely common in the US in a way that absolutely isn’t in any kind of comparable country.
I don’t know what it is exactly, other than maybe the very weird and extremely pervasive “operator mentality” that seems to make everyone extremely horny for pretending situations are much more dangerous than they really are.
If you’re going to carry a weapon it’s really a very basic requirement that you can do some reasonable level of threat analysis and respond to the situation around you as it develops.
Again, I’m not saying those situations don’t exist where it makes sense but they are absolutely the exception and are a very weird thing to pretend are the default. I think it’s a culture problem and people are just scared.
On the flipside, when I got a flat on my bicycle in the city a guy walked up to me with a gun, pointed a gun at me to take my shit, and I would not have had time to rack a weapon (and god forbid it jammed). I knocked the guy's arm and punched the guy which stunned him enough that I was able to run off without him getting a good shot off; I would have had enough time to get off a shot with a chambered weapon (didn't carry at the time) but I never would have stood a chance if I pulled out an unchambered gun.
The only scenario where things start to get ACTUALLY dangerous is you pulling out a weapon and suddenly you’ve gone from a 5/10 situation to a 10/10 situation where everyone is liable to panic and do something stupid. You’re about to go from a bad day to maybe your last day here and for what? There is just no point in that story where adding another weapon to the picture improved things at all.
On a side note, I think there is a LOT to be said for having a strong sense of situation awareness and how to do risk management on the street. I spent a good amount of time years ago living in Nairobi and I was one of the few people in my circle of friends who didn’t have a gun in their face at any point. I’m not trying to say I’m somehow special, I think that can happen to anyone but I wish people didn’t have their entire personal security model centered around having a weapon because it’s actually a really shit plan in real life.
Edit: I don’t know if you’re familiar with Robert Young Pelton but he is a war correspondent wrote a book called the worlds most dangerous places which is part adventure travel guide and part how to stay safe in actually honest to god dangerous places and situations. He just started a podcast based on that book and I think you might get something out of this: https://youtu.be/3dhh5_oJsqQ?feature=shared
And yeah I've been in the third world, including Syria. I think the penalty for me having one in Syria was probably the death penalty (LOL!), I didn't give a shit. Some people did shoot at me, I survived.
But that is just being scared and has nothing to do with actually assessing and managing risk.
I understand that’s become a very normalised thing to do there but is something that would get you laughed out of the bar in pretty much the rest of the English speaking world.
Again, I don’t know what to tell you other than I think there is a paranoid culture problem here where everyone is just terrified of everything all the time and nobody seems to know how to step back from the edge and deescalate or again like I keep saying learning how to ACTUALLY judge and manage risk. It’s an actual skillset that will serve you much much better than a weapon ever will.
The same thing goes for just learning how to not panic if you find yourself in a sketchy situation. The ability to remain calm is hands down the most impressive and helpful thing I’ve ever seen from the actually dangerous people I know and have spent time with in some capacity or another.
I had to take one to get my Texas License To Carry (at the time a concealed carry license). I don't know what they teach in other states, but Texas has strict regulations on when and how to use deadly force. Including when to point a gun at someone.
Basically, not having a round chambered means you're too late to do anything with that gun other than use it an expensive blunt instrument -- or -- be possibly charged for brandishing/intimidation. Either you are being approached/charged at and are in immediate danger of bodily harm or you are not. If you are, you better have a loaded round ready to discharge.
Ofc, there is also the use of deadly force to protect the immediate and active threat to personal property. No real immediate need to have one loaded here. However, I don't think people carry because they are waiting to shoot someone trying to steal their car or other property under the Castle Doctrine. Which if someone is willing to kill another who is stealing their parked empty car, there are bigger talks to have other than if they are carrying with a load round or not. I don't usually keep a round chambered at home, my siblings have offspring that come around and even though it's a bit of a family tradition to learn to learn gun safety and shooting before age 10 -- I still don't care for the thought of a fully loaded gun not in my immediate possession.
Regardless, depending on the situation and specifically in the USAF, you are ordered to either carry with a round in the chamber or not, and you'd damned well follow those orders.
It's beside the point, but I imagine, based on my own first hand experience, that USAF Security Forces typically carry without a round in the chamber, in most situations. I did Weapons Courier duty and I was ordered to carry a round in the chamber and be "locked and loaded" at all times.
Marine Corps order for MP and armed guard standard is round in chamber, weapon on safe, slide forward, hammer down. It stands to reason that is the standard case for all military LEO.
All that to say, anyone who says you shouldn't have a round in chamber is living in a fantasy world.
That was historically a very common military rule, and AFAIK it's still common worldwide, just not in US.
IDF is particularly famous for having empty chamber as the standard protocol, which is why this is often colloquially known as "Israeli carry". And you can say a lot of things about IDF, but one thing for sure: they have operational experience.
Disclaimer: I was not SF. I was merely surrounded by them in a very high security environment. :-)
But does it seem a little weird that the two events coincided?
It's not occasional. If you carry AIWB (appendix inside the waistband, a common position), it's routinely pointing at your own leg (and other anatomy) as you move around.
It does strike me as a bit odd to hand a holstered gun to someone while pointing it at them -- as a matter of politeness, if nothing else. But there are other incidents where a P320 is said to have discharged into the leg of someone carrying it in a holster.
This is why I came around to appreciating the California Roster of Handguns regulation. Firearm manufacturers should be held to a higher safety standard.
Originally I thought it was ridiculous that my first conceal carry sub-compact Springfield XD-S came in a case with a large sticker across one side saying it was illegal in CA. At which point I learned about the stringent drop, firing and performance test that was required and how manufacturers will make a separate and specific quality and safety upgrades to the model variant legal in CA. After a fair amount of use I understood why the XD-S was not and is still not legal in CA. Mine had a higher-than-I-am-comfortable-with rate of jamming. I'll be buying CA approved firearms from now on.
Interesting info about the P320 M18:
The P320 M18 has 3 variants: 320CA-9-M18-MS, 320CA-9-M18-MS-10, 320CA-9-M18-MS-CA.
The 320CA-9-M18-MS-CA is the only one legal in CA [0]
According to Sig Sauer site wording, the CA tested version came after the version issued to the military -- thus I am taking a guess that t was not as rigorously tested as the CA version (and probably has fewer safety or other military specific features that make it less reliable)
[0] https://www.oag.ca.gov/firearms/certified-handguns/search?ma...
But IANAL, and to the extent I pay attention to the law, that kind of basic criminal law isn't it.
In case anyone else is interested:
UCMJ Article 119 (Manslaughter): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/919
UCML Article 118 (Murder): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/918
As is classifying all the documents about the pistol and its issues.
There is nothing even remotely credibly related to national security about the P320 or issues related to it.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the military has a very long history of covering up issues with corruptly procured weapons.
Just one particularly notorious example of many: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_turret_explosion
> The first investigation into the explosion, conducted by the U.S. Navy, concluded that one of the gun turret crew members, Clayton Hartwig, who died in the explosion, had deliberately caused it. During the investigation, numerous leaks to the media, later attributed to U.S. Navy officers and investigators, implied that Hartwig and another sailor, Kendall Truitt, had engaged in a romantic relationship and that Hartwig had caused the explosion after their relationship had soured. However, in its report, the U.S. Navy concluded that the evidence did not show that Hartwig was homosexual but that he was suicidal and had caused the explosion with either an electronic or chemical detonator.
Policies that people had objected to at the time, but had been pushed through regardless due to ‘stop being a worry wart’/no one wanting to spend the money.
They still have the accident down as ‘Unknown causes’.
This might be true, but nowhere in the article you posted does it say that.
So the fix is as good as commercially useless, although better than nothing, the market is basically the guy who wants to be able to take it to the range and then always have it downrange while the safety is off.
https://www.pewpewtactical.com/m16-vietnam-failure/
(I own an ar15 and an ak47 and it is like comparing Microsoft’s MFC to a shell script. The former is all bloat and high tolerances and the latter gets the job done with fewer moving parts.)
The biggest difference is about 20 years of industrial development (moving from stamped/milled steel to aluminum)
I don't blame them for playing it safe. I've personally had to help Bay Area HR types understand that looking at "weapons" sites by itself was probably okay when the company we worked for had thousands of employees across California and at least some percentage of them hunted, went target shooting, etc.
These HR types (and many in the general population) need to understand that there's nothing wrong with the third point. Aside from the obvious case of self defense, people can only protect their freedom as long as they have equally powerful tools a those trying to oppress them.
Democracy can only work with the ability to kill evenly distributed.
There's a reason all dictatorships have strict gun control laws.
Independent testing at the local, state and federal level acknowledge you can fire a P320 without pulling the trigger. Making sure the gun only fires when the trigger is pulled is requirement #1, #2 and #3 for any gun.
If this isn't satisfied you haven't made a gun, you've made a really shitty grenade.
We need laws to actually protect normal working people, not corporations and execs. Trying to silence people with lawsuits should be punished according to the severity of what they're trying to hide.
Since their shitty gun literally kills people randomly, this harassment campaign should be treated as cover up for murder and punished accordingly.
Having to fix all P320 fire control units they've sold so far will put them out of business. You don't even need any additional penalties on top of that. I just hope they can spin off Optics division before that happens.
Does anybody here have an example of this happening? "Nobody knows" is kind of an indication how often this happens.
My preferred alternative would be forced conversion to worker owned cooperative BTW.
The only real surprise here is that they managed to sell this broken gun to the US government, despite Glock of all things being in the running. And that it took so long for the issue to even register.
I could see the argument in the early 1900's, but today that's absolutely ridiculous on its face.
The only "national security issue" is that it's embarrassing.
I'm with you... the idea that anything to do with a common side arm is worthy of "military secrets" protection is, as I said, absurd.
This comment is the perfect example of how saying something obviously wrong (or nonsensical) on the internet is the best way to get people to respond (of which I am now guilty myself).
The (reasonable) GP comment has 1 reply and the (unreasonable) parent comment has 5 already.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOMQOtOQoPk
Handgun design doesn't really get any worse than that.
The P320 has had many reported issues but having it go off when you pull the trigger is actually intended behavior.
More information available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1KoSBcn2bY
> "The shear amount of movement in the trigger it takes on the Glock PLUS the fact the trigger safety has to depressed lends it self to make this scenario extremely extremely unlikely to happen from jostling. Which is the exact opposite for the 320. Tiny amount of movement needed, way more slop in the gun as a whole and no trigger safety all lends itself to be way more likely to happen from jostling. Thats the argument."
The above claim is most likely true: it is easy to pull the trigger accidentally on the Sig. But that isn't the argument. People are claiming it will fire uncommanded.
The video is misleading because he is partially pulling the trigger, which deactivates the internal safety mechanisms.
It is the clickbait equivalent of a video claiming Rust is not memory safe, that starts by showing a Rust program running and causing a BSOD. Then deep in the video, what they show is he wrote a bunch of explicit unsafe code.
While true that it is misleading, i still think it's fundamentally correct. You do not expect your firearm to discharge if someone bumps you while the trigger has the slack taken out.
This holds true on basically every modern handgun that has such a mechanism (striker or hammer-fired).
The Sig P320 probably has more issues than the originally discovered drop-safety deficiencies, and Sig US has been very quick to deny-deny-deny. But firing when you pull the trigger is not an issue.
This is not a fair and accurate phrasing of the problem. Triggers have a breakpoint in the pull at which you expect them to fire. Discharging by touching the slide, even while the trigger is depressed, is not expected or acceptable.
This is not unique to the P320, Sig, or even striker-fired handguns in general. This could just as easily apply to a CZ-75B. There is no magic that keeps the striker from dropping until the shooter has their heart set on discharging a round.
There is a reason that rule #3 of firearm safety is to not put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to shoot
But there's nuance here.
They showed that with <=1mm of trigger pull (far less than the distance of the firing sequence), the weapon can be put into a state where miniscule input on the slide (consistent with typical holster carry) causes a discharge.
I'm not a firearms expert, but I very much doubt that any hammer-fired (and indeed, even the vast majority of striker-fired) weapons can be put into such a state.
Are you aware of any demonstration that shows another modern handgun being put into a state where this same amount of input on the slide can cause an actual discharge, let alone with <=1mm input on the trigger?
Yes actually. see the video I linked above: https://youtu.be/r1KoSBcn2bY?feature=shared
I wonder: do you know if there's a hammer-fired pistol which can be put into a similar state?
The glock that I used to compete regularly with basically felt like a double action revolver.
That is fairly average across the market for other handguns.
Unless you were shooting a Glock with one of the infamous NYPD 12lb triggers…
The trigger needs to be pulled a certain (very large) distance before disengaging the safety.
Pull weight might be comparable to peer weapons, but the amount of work required to disengage the safety cannot compare.
Modern military doctrine says that you shouldn't even pull the weapon from the holster if you don't have the intent to fire. Even if you're not quite willing to implement that (eg for LE), you shouldn't be touching/pulling the trigger without an extremely firm intent to fire.
What do you want to bet this is a variant of some sort of light pressure against the trigger at some point in the past (including even just heavy movement!) causing a stuck trigger, plus these other issues, resulting in an uncommanded discharge ‘randomly’?
The FBI analysis showed truly terrible wear characteristics and quality control for the fire control parts which can’t be helping.
If you put a few thousand rounds through either it will generate slide and frame rail wear. After this, either would have slightly more "slop" between the frame and the slide.
The glock trigger-dingus can make unintended discharges less likely because it requires an object to go into the trigger guard. But the WyomingGunProject video shows someone putting something in the trigger guard, pulling the trigger past the wall with sympathetic movement, then firing the gun. Not the result of "jostling".
This isn't to say there aren't P320's that couldn't fire uncommanded but the WyomingGunProject video is not the proverbial "smoking gun". The exact cause is, at this time, not publicly known.
But in the case of the demonstration in the Wyoming Gun Project video, it is literally the case that an object is being jammed into the trigger until all internal safeties are disabled, then flex and sympathetic movement is applied until the gun goes off.
There may exist a more damning explanation of what has caused the reported uncommanded discharges but that video isn’t it
SIG Switzerland, the original who mainly services the Swiss government and domestic market. They created the original P210, SG 550 series, etc
SIG Sauer Germany, the now-defunct company SIG Switzerland created when it bought German firearms company JP Sauer and Sons in order to develop, market, and sell firearms in a legally easier jurisdiction. They are most famous for the P220 series of handguns.
SIG Sauer USA, the New Hampshire based company that was initially created to make importing easier that is now by far the largest and most well known SIG. They created the P250, P320, P365, SG556, MCX series, etc. They are very well
Overall, SIG Switzerland and Germany have very good reputations for making high quality products (Sig Sauer Germany almost won the competition with the P226 to become the M9, they lost because they were more expensive than the Beretta 92, very similar to what happened between Glock and Sig Sauer USA for the M17...), SIG USA on the other hand does not.
I do agree with your assessment of quality between the companies, though.
The consumer market in the US no longer trends off government models though. Thin and mini models seem to be more popular, and since most consumers rarely fire their weapon, maintainability and reliability are secondary. The P365 is the most popular in the US at the moment, but it probably has a low duty cycle.
As for the P365 having maintenance/reliability/duty cycle issues, beyond the typical SIG beta testing on consumers shit I really haven't seen people having issues with it.
Col. David Hackworth was involved in picking the next Army handgun, back in the Beretta era. He remarked that over the history of the M1911A, it had been responsible for more friendly casualties than enemy casualties. They hoped to do better with the Beretta. The main criteria was that it should reliably fire when wanted, and reliably not fire when not wanted. Even with poor maintenance. Accuracy is secondary. Most handgun engagements are in the 3-7 meter range.
If anything, what the military needs is a hammer-fired DA handgun with a manual safety. Just so that discharging it would take considerable and intentional effort. If I remember correctly, FN FNX was in the running in that competition, and would probably be just the perfect gun for this (it has a combination safety/decocker, and unlike many other similar arrangements you can put it on safe after decocking).
On the other hand, the units that issue something other than the M17 (special operations groups use Glock 19s, can use suppressed HKs, or presumably even some of the old P226s or 1911s that are still in the inventory) expect to fight with them.
> They hoped to do better with the Beretta. The main criteria was that it should reliably fire when wanted, and reliably not fire when not wanted.
That design was rather a failure in that regard. Great pistols in a lot of ways, it's not difficult to be accurate with them, but there's a slide-mounted safety on it that is easy to accidentally actuate in the heat of the moment when racking the slide. (it's less user friendly than the much older 1911's safety, and weirdly, Beretta will sell you one today with a 1911-style frame mounted safety. I'm not sure when they created that.) When that happens the gun does not fire when the trigger is pulled. Perhaps someone somewhere has estimated how many people died that way over the gun's lifetime.
A modern, striker-fired pistol like a Glock or the M17 is undeniably more reliable when it's dirty, so there's also that.
That Beretta safety was always a bit of a misfeature and the civilian versions of the pistol are available with a simple de-cocker in its place. The safety feature of the Beretta (and of the P226, the pistol the military should have chosen for its standard over the Beretta if we're being honest) which is useful for avoiding accidental discharges is the heavy double-action trigger pull on the first shot.
The reality is there may be no real mechanical flaw that leads to an uncommanded discharge. So far, no one has been able to produce evidence of anything specific.
However, if they had addressed the drop safety and added a trigger safety from the get-go, chances are even if there IS something, it would be so rare it would fade into the background.
But now the P320 is going to be remembered forever as "that gun that goes off on its own" and it'll be hard to even give them away. And Sig's response to this whole debacle has been terrible. Making the drop safety fix a 'voluntary upgrade' instead of a recall, and now crap like this just makes everyone view Sig in a bad light.
Reputation can be everything for some industries - and for safety especially. (See: Boeing)
Guns, and pistols in particular is a wiiiiiide market with a lot of players. If one reputation goes down the toilet, people will just buy from someone else. They have 0 reason to stick with Sig in particular.
IMO these companies do the bog standard math of (chance of accident * legal cost) vs (cost to recall and repair guns). They don't consider a critical aspect - reputation. Once lost it is very hard to regain and hurts future sales of ALL products, not just this one.
Edit: apparently not full auto, man we should have just let Glock take the contract when they started manufacturing in the US instead of Sig, their track record is much more sound.
None of this is a sear block, or has anything to do directly with the sear. It will prevent the gun from firing if the sear were to fail.
You can see the lever in green in this animation:
https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/dd_dev/origina...
They couldn’t get it to fire uncommanded however, unless they bypassed the trigger.
However, they got the gun because it had gone off uncommanded in the holster - with witnesses - and no hands or anything else near it.
To disable the striker block, they removed the rear plate, applied pressure to lift the slide up and away from the grip, then stuck a punch into the back of the gun to manually release the sear. Maybe this is the beginning of discovering an issue with the striker block, but this isn't simulating a failure that could happen under normal circumstances (specifically jamming a punch in the back and releasing the sear).
How else do you want them to demonstrate an internal safety that was supposed to work was non-functional?
Consumers can buy a civilian version of the M17 that's really difficult to distinguish from the Army's version (the safety's a different color, black instead of brown, or something like that).
There are many that have adopted machine pistols for various uses, particularly special forces, VIP protection, and for the roles currently filled by PDWs, which means that common troops sometimes were issued them.
What is NOT a meme, and is useful, but counts as fully automatic, is three or five round burst mode.
Chainguns are a type of autocannon. Heavy, light and general purpose machine guns, like the M2 Browning, M249 SAW, Maxim, Been Gun, MG3, etc... none of these are chain guns. They aren't even all belt fed, which I guess is what you meant to say because I think that's the videogame midwit lingo. They are nonetheless universally accepted as being very valuable in combat.
AIUI, chainguns are any externally electrically-actuated automatic weapons, including both single-barrelled and rotary designs, some of which are autocannons, and some of which are lighter (machine guns).
But, yeah, it makes more sense if GP intended to refer to belt-fed weapons, not actual chainguns.
Most recently, it was Russia dropping 2-round burst on AK-12 after experience with it in Ukraine. M4 is another famous historical example.
someguydave is correct. Compact automatic weapons make sense for highly trained body guards protecting VIPs when discretion is considered important.
Compact automatic weapons still usually have either a stock (even the smallest Uzis do), or some other way to stabilize the gun while firing - e.g. the sling is used for this purpose with some MP5K variants.
As int_19h points out, there are special-purpose weapons made for this (see "personal defense weapons") and they are likely what pros carry.
Additionally, the very long history of machine pistols would indicate the form-factor is a poor fit for the application of any full-auto fire.
This is the primary reason that personal defense weapons (PDWs) were developed in the first place.
The Glock 18 is a selective-fire variant of the Glock 17, developed at the request of the Austrian counter-terrorist unit EKO Cobra, and as a way to internally test Glock components under high strain conditions.
The Swiss Sig's have a sterling reputation. The P226 that entered the XM9 trials (against the Beretta 92) was imported from Switzerland by SAKO.
The US company didn't really start manufacturing until the 90s with the P229 and the Sig Pro series (where they were only tasked with making the plastic frames, not the more intricate lock work).
One of the stated requirements for the updated pistol was a thumb-operated external safety. Glock's never been willing to manufacture a pistol with that feature, so they effectively excluded themselves from the competition.
https://www.youtube.com/@Thinkingman615
He's ostensibly defending Sig here, but it's obvious that the P10 in particular has a dramatically more robust construction and stands up to this scenario much better.
Obviously all of this comes in the context of nonzero input on the trigger, which is already a violation of basic gun safety. But it's interesting nonetheless.
Assuming that Sig Sauer management is reasonable, we can assume that one or more of these are true:
* The known rate of failure B is determined to be low. Consider that not every discharge would be from a design flaw. Many cases can be assumed or proven to be user negligence.
* They assume that they can keep the court settlement costs, C, to a low value by never admitting fault and hoping that no one else can convincingly demonstrate a poor design. Many cases result in no injury or non-lethal injury, which naturally reduces C.
* The number of guns produced, A, is quite large, so the cost of the recall is also quite large.
* The unit cost of the recall (X/A) is much higher than known externally. This is my preferred theory (outside of corporate incompetence & malice). It could be the case that the design has an issue with tolerance stacking AND there is no single dimension of replacement part that resolves the issue. You could imagine that the replacement part needs to take up negative tolerance by being slightly larger, and positive tolerance by being slightly smaller. Without carefully measuring each unit (which is expensive), you can't determine which part to use. Or it could be that the part that would need to be replaced is a substantial part of the weapon's cost, e.g. the slide or the frame.
Maybe a decade from now this becomes a semi-obscure bit of gun lore and SIG US more or less recovers.
But right now?
If you’re in the market for a handgun, or any gun for that matter, are you going to touch SIG US’s stuff? Maybe, but there are customers who might just say that they don’t want to take that chance and go with Glock or whoever else. Do those customers come back? Why doesn’t this get brought up at every single bid for a contract SIG US makes from now on?
It’s possible that they’re still making the right EV call of course, but the medium-term hit they’re taking from a flaw like this that you don’t make right has to be massive.
I wouldn't be surprised if gun companies get a constant stream of fake complaints.
I didn't have access to guns when I was a 17-year-old, but if I had I'd certainly have tried twirling them like a movie cowboy. And if I accidentally shot myself while doing that, I certainly wouldn't tell my parents what I was doing at the time, that would make me look like a total dumbass, completely irresponsible. I'd say it went off while I was putting it into my holster, or something.
Then my parents would have complained to the gunmaker, repeating my cover story, and the gunmaker would find it impossible to reproduce or fix.
Perhaps gunmakers don't always realise when they're getting legitimate complaints, because they get so many 'creative' complaints?
Ruger had one for the SR22 not too long ago. It's a .22 handgun that is more-or-less a range toy. A cool range toy, but a range toy. There was some sort of dead trigger problem that could pose a safety issue. Did Ruger deny it at every turn? No, they put out a notice and offered to fix the firearm free of charge.
Now compare that with how Sig's handled the P320, which is a service pistol and used daily in life-or-death situations.
If you make new-design firearms in any real volume, you will find yourself issuing recalls. Batches of parts get out of spec, things wear out, and you get reports that it can become dangerous. The good gunmakers stand behind their product.
There was a recent huge thread on HN around the Air Force incident, we now know the guy was playing with the gun, shot and killed someone, then lied about it going off sitting on the table.
If there was some defect that Sig could fix via recall, they would be stupid not to recall. Maybe there is just nothing to fix, and they aren’t stupid.
https://www.sigsauer.com/blog/safety-recall-notice-sig-sauer...
They would have been in a better spot today to defend the P320 if they had made it a mandatory recall, so they probably should have done it.
It depends. This is something the program office would consider as part of its acquisition strategy, and then this would be part of the competitive bid process and contract negotiations.
There is such a thing as Government Purpose Rights (GPR) that might, for example, allow the government to subcontract with third parties for replacement parts which would enable competition to keep costs down. This is really important because most of the costs in an acquisition come from the long tail of sustainment, not the initial purchase.
For something like the M17/M18, the Army wouldn’t necessarily want or need to buy the complete intellectual property behind the weapon. What they care about is having enough rights to ensure lifecycle support, competition for parts or sustainment contracts, etc. Your example of a company going out of business is a perfect example of where GPR would be relevant.
Trying to equipment-ify your way out of a training problem resulted in NYPD equipping its pistols with a trigger so heavy that their already-easy qualification course became a problem for many recruits. Their hit percentage in actual shootings is awful, and that ~12 pound NYPD-spec trigger didn't help it any. They finally saw the error of their ways after making their officers suffer needlessly for years.
https://www.police1.com/patrol-issues/articles/nypd-should-i...
Revoke contracts, investigate the leadership who accepted the contract, and hold Sig criminally liable given they have internal documents from years ago acknowledging the fact.
If we had to choose a world with guns or a world without, then a world without is the obvious choice. Its the SUV problem. SUVs are safe! From what? ... other SUVs.
Of course we can't have a world without guns, so it's all theoretical.
The recent week long pause in the Air Force seems like some brass made a decision that Sig or DoD forced them to walk back.
though they should if we weren’t living in a simulation. They’re all culpable.