SIG Sauer P320 self discharges

[Hohn]

Like someone on another forum said, “Are there any other firearm manufacturers out there blaming UD’s on holsters?”

Glock was for a time. But it ended up being the particularly bad retention mechanism of the Serpa that all but assured you could put your finger on the trigger in a fast draw.

 

[jkasch]

Glock was for a time. But it ended up being the particularly bad retention mechanism of the Serpa that all but assured you could put your finger on the trigger in a fast draw.

I’ve also heard Glock foot was attributed to prior training with double action revolvers where officers were taught to put their fingers on the trigger as it came out of the holster during a fast draw. Muscle memory worked against them when switching to Glocks.

 

[Hohn]

The question that has yet to be answered by all these videos:

Will it fire if you keep your finger off the trigger?

Sticking a peg, screw, nail, or whatever into the action is not the same as pressing the trigger - or just taking up slack - I am not defending SiG, here, and I don’t own a P320, but don’t go sticking stuff into the action and expect me to believe that is “equivalent” to a finger on the trigger.

Will the gun fire (via slide manipulation or whatever) if there is nothing pressing the trigger?

I think the conventional wisdom is that a full trigger pull should always fire the gun and anything other than that should never fire the gun.

I don't think the gun will fire unless the trigger has been partially pulled because there's a secondary safety that is immediately disengaged with the first little bit of pull.

I think it's the case that this is both a serious issue and that it's being overblown. I mean, it does take two concurrent manipulations to induce the AD.

My car is capable of driving into a telephone pole, that doesn't make it a design flaw per se. Four laws and strict observance of them and a P320 owner will never have anything worse than an interesting story.


If your holster partially pulls the trigger when the gun is fully seated within it and you point the gun at yourself (or allow it to be), things can go sideways sometimes.

One aspect of this that sort of infuriates me (as a former military leader) is how the senior leadership of the Air Force is pearl clutching in outrage at SIG when clearly they did no significant testing of their own when they fielded the firearm.

If the airman gets hurt using the gun YOU GAVE HIM AND REQUIRED HIM TO CARRY, how is that 100% on SIG and not at least hugely on the military leadership charged with organizing, training, and equipping the troops?

Where is the "buck stops here"? Where's the congressional hearings on the M17/M18 adoption process and the likely backroom deals that led to it?

 

[2heeldrive]

All of these guys are manipulating the trigger and the slide to make the gun fire.

It seems to me, that is an unlikely scenario in normal use.

 

[Pablo]

All of these guys are manipulating the trigger and the slide to make the gun fire.

It seems to me, that is an unlikely scenario in normal use.

I am still in this camp.

A clean gun, chambered, full mag. Dropped 6 feet to cured concrete, 100 times.

Will it fire?

No one answered my earlier question. Trying this one.

I do not own and have no interest any more 9mm hand guns, including a Sig P320 (I have plenty of others FTR)

 

[Astro14]

I’ve also heard Glock foot was attributed to prior training with double action revolvers where officers were taught to put their fingers on the trigger as it came out of the holster during a fast draw. Muscle memory worked against them when switching to Glocks.

Yep - lighter trigger had consequences for muscle memory developed on DA triggers.

In my neighbor’s case - if you didn’t read the story - the Glock came loose in the holster while operating a vehicle, and he pressed the Glock back into the holster with the heel of his hand. The sloppy fit of the holster allowed the leather to contact the trigger, which was depressed, and the gun went off.

He was found not at fault - and his agency owned this mistake.

 

[Hohn]

Yep - lighter trigger had consequences for muscle memory developed on DA triggers.

In my neighbor’s case - if you didn’t read the story - the Glock came loose in the holster while operating a vehicle, and he pressed the Glock back into the holster with the heel of his hand. The sloppy fit of the holster allowed the leather to contact the trigger, which was depressed, and the gun went off.

He was found not at fault - and his agency owned this mistake.

Heard variation of this story many times. That's why I don't consider leather to be a proper holster material for anything striker fired. And TBQH, I'm only considering leather for like backwoods carry hand cannon type arms. And I suppose a little ankle j-frame or similar super heavy trigger on a hammer gun.

 

[ripcord]

Draw fast, re-holster slow and careful.

 

[UncleDave]

I am still in this camp.

A clean gun, chambered, full mag. Dropped 6 feet to cured concrete, 100 times.

Will it fire?

No one answered my earlier question. Trying this one.

I do not own and have no interest any more 9mm hand guns, including a Sig P320 (I have plenty of others FTR)

Is that the standardized test?
If so Id say the gun wont fire.

The gun passed both the fed and California standardized tests.

 

[Pablo]

Is that the standardized test?
If so Id say the gun wont fire.

The gun passed both the fed and California standardized tests.

No idea if anyone or group tests this, but if a gun doesn't fire with 100 drops, I wouldn't think we would need to go to 1000 drops to make it fire, or prove it is drop safe. Nothing is changing the state, gun just getting beat to heck.

 

[Robster]

I have knowledge of one case of unintended discharge by a 320. . . a uniformed police officer, wearing a duty belt including the 320 in a level 3 retention holster designed for that weapon, carrying boxes (both arms full) at a crime scene, walking across a lawn. Gun goes off and bullet strikes his leg. No hands near the gun or holster at the time of discharge. That was a few years ago and Sig is still denying fault, cop is still on light duty and has medical bills.

My old agency had Sigs in the early 2000s. . . within the first 5 years or so, multiple failures were observed on the range--failures that would take the gun completely out of any fight. According to my firearms instructor friends, about 20% of the all of the guns had the same failure, and required a part replacement to make the gun work again. Officers lost faith, Sig was sued, we ended up with Glocks, end of problems. The one (Sig) issued to me ran fine without any issues.

Sig has problems, and I won't carry one now because:

--they (Sig) act like they're in the witness protection program when confronted with issues.
--it has become a pattern of conduct for them to deny and defend obvious problems with their stuff, while letting the professionals that carry their products languish in the civil litigation system for years.
--Cops have enough to worry about these days without wondering if their gun is going to spontaneously discharge.

I'm retired, but I've been in the biz for awhile. . . .

 

[UncleDave]

No idea if anyone or group tests this, but if a gun doesn't fire with 100 drops, I wouldn't think we would need to go to 1000 drops to make it fire, or prove it is drop safe. Nothing is changing the state, gun just getting beat to heck.

One can insure a 100% chance of a no fire under any condition by simply carrying in condition 3.

 

[Pablo]

One can insure a 100% chance of a no fire under any condition by simply carrying in condition 3.

That probably is a whole different topic.

 

[Hohn]

One can insure a 100% chance of a no fire under any condition by simply carrying in condition 3.

Imagine how much safer it would be to not carry at all…

Yes, it’s another topic.

 

[UncleDave]

Imagine how much safer it would be to not carry at all…

Yes, it’s another topic.

That would be 100% safer for any bad guys.

 

[Astro14]

That probably is a whole different topic.

Yeah - while mechanically true - carrying without a round in the chamber is a whole separate topic. Lots of Agencies/departments would be against that kind of carry, even as they have level 3 holsters.

If you want to be perfectly safe - no chance of discharge - keep your finger off the trigger. That is - off the trigger. No slight pressure, no prep, no weird bits stuck into it.

It still hasn’t been shown that the gun will go off with the various slide manipulations if there nothing pressing on the trigger. If it can be shown that the gun will go off through slide manipulations/bumping alone, no trigger tricks, then, we have a defective firearm.

I carried an H&K USP compact for years. LEM trigger. No external safety. Hammer fired. 8 lb pull. No way that thing was going off no matter what you did to it. The trigger had to be pulled for the hammer to be moved to hit the firing pin, basically a DAO. Since then, Glock won the replacement contract when the H&Ks started to age out (still irritated with that decision, like trading in my Mercedes for a Camry, but, hey, not my call).

If you don’t like the Sig, P320, don’t buy one. I was intrigued by the chassis system that allowed different grip modules. I thought that was a great feature. A great concept. One gun, that with a few $$ in plastic parts can change from compact to full size. I ended up buying a gun with that same feature - the Springfield Armory Echelon. A truly impressive pistol. I reviewed it on BITOG last year when I got it. Back on Sig…

What’s going to be interesting is seeing what the US Military does - the P320 passed a battery of rigorous testing to win the contract, there are hundreds of thousands of pistols in that contract.

For the record, I have an Sig P365, in which I have perfect confidence. I don’t appendix carry, that’s another topic, as well, but that little gun is a great gun. Striker fired. No external safety.

I also have a Sig P227, a gun that they discontinued, sadly, because it is a DA/SA hammer fired with de-cocker and looks a lot like a P226. I got a great deal on it, and bought in on impulse when I saw the listed price in my LGS.

It holds ten rounds of .45 ACP. Better than the P220 on which it was based, and better than a 1911, but with a smaller, more ergonomic grip. Excellent reliability and accuracy and improved capacity for that round. It’s a great gun. I have perfect confidence in that one as well. For a while, it was my “nightstand” gun, and still has a streamlight laser/light on the rail. Again, no external safety.

So, back to the topic at hand, the P320 - I am not yet convinced that the Sig P320 has a mechanical problem. It may, but I haven’t seen any other gun “tested” by sticking screws into the action and then wiggling the slide. That’s not a test that any agency uses. I am not convinced that is a reasonable test.

But I am convinced, as others have said, that the Sig P320 has a public perception problem.

A huge public perception problem.

It reminds me a great deal of Toyota’s public perception problem - Toyotas are death traps that accelerate out of control. Nobody can stop them. They are unsafe killer cars. Remember that? All the clickbait? All the news stories? Every one of those crashes could have been avoided, by shifting to neutral and stepping on the brake, but instead of pointing that out, every story, every. Report talked about how the machine was at fault.

The problem that Toyota faced with those incidents, was that there were millions of them on the road, so the “one in a million” chance happened to Toyota several times, but to smaller sample sizes of cars, not at all - which made it seem like a Toyota problem, not a floor mat getting stuck in the pedal and driver error problem.

That is part of what’s going on here - there are millions of P320s out there - so, the “one in a million” malfunction, statistically, is going to happen to a P320 a lot more often than, say, an H&K VP9, or an Echelon.

So, it remains to be seen - is the gun design itself defective? Or is this simply a public perception problem?

 

[Albin]

The dead body in the autopsy room pretty much says it's a real problem.

 

[Pablo]

The dead body in the autopsy room pretty much says it's a real problem.

How's that? Not saying it's not tragic, but root cause is?

 

[Hohn]

There's an an aspect of this that I often think about that it seems nobody else does: the P320 was not only the golden child firearm for SIG, Sig gave it that crown by abandoning what might have been their best pistol design of the last 30 years: The P250.

IMO, the P250 in .357 Sig is the ultimate "what should have been and never was" in handguns. The P250 had that innovative modularity (FCG + grip), but it was DAO hammer-fired. Unlike many DAO guns, though, the trigger was butter-smooth and light at 6#-7#.

DAO has a LOT to like for LEO use and indeed for CCW/PD use. It gives always the same trigger pull. Gun is always only ever hammer-down with essentially zero risk of AD as there's simply no way you're going to smack it hard enough to lift that hammer on accident. The trigger being a longer pull provides a lot of margin against common ND things like a floppy leather piece getting into the trigger guard, or a draw string on a hoodie. And with an actual hammer on the gun, you can put your thumb on the back as its reholstered and be CERTAIN that nothing is pulling the trigger as you reholster. If the gun is ever discharged in the line of duty, the officer need not ever remember to decock the gun to have it be safe. It's easy to forget to decock when adrenaline is pounding.

The P250 was everything you love about a striker gun and nothing you disliked about it, except one thing: the trigger was a longer stroke. Which means that it got zero credit for having an incredibly butter smooth rolling break or being impossibly light for a DAO gun. Nope. The American obsession with short little SAO (1911-like) trigger pulls meant that this incredible engineering achievement of a sidearm barely ever got the time of day. It was a commercial flop.

Think about what the P250 represented when chambered in 357 Sig: it was the classic lawman's 357 magnum duty revolver. Only now it had a 15 round capacity and could be reloaded in a flash from a box magazine. It could achieve that 125g@1450fps target an a DA handgun, just like a classic Model 19. To this day, no duty caliber has eclipsed the manstopping reliability of the 357 magnum (at least if you believe Marshall and Sanow).

If the market was populated by rational consumers instead of American gun buyers, the P250 in .357 Sig should have dominated the LEO market. The muzzle blast of 357 Sig was notable, but certainly no worse than comparable .357 mag. And the slide cracking issues reported by some 357 sig users would have been addressed just like Beretta did when M9s were cracking slides.

But we will never know. Sig never tried to push the P250 hard. They put it out there and almost immediately started apologizing for it as if to say to people "Well we're working on the striker version which will fix the long trigger pull." Forget DAK triggers and LEM triggers-- the basic DAO P250 was the perfect duty gun.

And so now here we are. Sig has abandoned both the P250 and its own 357 Sig. Ironically, Glock still chambers the 357 Sig but Sig does not.


Alas P250, we never knew ye. More's the pity. IMHO, it's the best kept secret in sidearms of my lifetime.