There are really two separate claims being made about the P320 and unintentional discharges.
One claim is that the gun can fire when dropped at a certain angle from a certain height. The voluntary "recall" lets you send it back to Sig and they replace some parts. I think the cause was because the trigger itself was bulky enough for a drop to give it enough inertia to fire, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
The other claim is that the P320 can fire without being dropped, and while holstered, seemingly on it's own. That's all I really know about it.
I own a P320, and I consider it an unsafe weapon at this point. I have not had the self-recall fix done and I'll never chamber a round in it again, so I guess it's a paperweight now.
A week or so ago the FBI report investigating an incident of unintentional discharge back in 2024 was released via FOIA. This particular case was a police officer who had the firearm in the holster, and by just normal movement it went off. Multiple layers of the striker fire system safety’s failed, and fired the chambered round.
What was particularly beneficial/unique is the P320 was kept in the holster when given to the FBI to investigate, and only removed after their forensic team X-rayed it, giving us pretty solid case study of how it happens
It’s crazy if you have good morals and care about your fellow man.
If you want to make boatloads of cash and don’t care about lives, you follow the rules and the same playbook as Remington did when their rifles suffered a similar self-firing phenomenon that killed customers.
Delay, deny, defend yourself and take in as much cash as possible until you are legally boxed in. Hope at that point your profits are greater than your penalties, such that they are just another cost of doing business.
What amazes me are the Sig Sauer fanatics I see online in the gun communities defending them endlessly as if they can do no harm.
Are you seriously suggesting their customers would commit murder over this? And how would admitting their faults make such an unstable, revenge-bent person not want to kill them?
Normal people don't get bent toward murder until all other options are exhausted. I mean this whole thing seems very rare so probably not, but jesus take some fucking ownership. Bald faced lying is pretty fucking enraging and despicable. I'm not sure what you are so worked up about.
I don't think that is crazy at all, our whole system incentivizes corporate behavior exactly like this.
From your tone I assume that you would expect Sig to come forward, analyze, discuss and hopefully solve these problems as soon as possible.
But that would be utterly stupid from their point of view. Public opinion cares very little about the details-- anytime you get associated with issues like this is simply bad for your brand/stockpric: downplaying, denying and gaslighting is absolutely the way to go here for the company.
IMO to fix this you would need to strongly increase personal liability specifically for misinformation and delays in cases like this, and we would need to reward good behavior (proactive fixes, honest communication).
But just look at the whole tetraethyl lead debacle: This cost at least a million years of human lifes (!!), after the lead industry denied known problems and purposefully obstructed/discredited critical researchers (e.g. R. Buyers and H. Needleman) for decades. I strongly believe that a number of decisionmakers should have ended up with a dead penalty or lifelone imprisonment, but there were ZERO consequences for anyone involved, and current rethoric around "deregulation" makes it obvious to me that zero lessons were learned.
I'm a recently licensed firearms owner from Canada and as part of the safety training part of the licensing process, I became aware of how unsafe the P320 seemed to be. It really feels like that model needs to be taken off-market, undergo significant redesign, and for Sig's marketing sake, probably re-emerge as some new model like the SP321 where the S stands for "safety" :-)
What I'm not as familiar with is why hasn't Sig done this? It really feels like they've been doing ad-hoc patch design adjustments to a fundamentally unsafe design at this point. But I'm also not very knowledgeable about firearms yet.
It's really sad because, straightforwardly, there's no penalty for just saying PEBKAC. Gun industry has tons of US legislative-granted legal immunity lest they ever accidentally become victim of a legal process that holds them accountable for, say, a mass shooting.
They've been saying it was a political witchunt and avoiding dealing with it. This, hopefully, breaks the dam.
I've spent my career working with great marketers and I don't think any single one of them would advocate for the approach that Sig Sauer took with that stupid "It Ends Today" campaign. In fact, I'm sure all of them would have recommended the exact opposite.
They should very quickly pivot to a "It [100% Safety] Starts Today" remedial campaign admitting there's a problem, following-up with full transparency about how they plan to reorient their organization to make the situation better, then providing frequent proof of progress towards the safety goal. There's a critical window for them to turn this from a crisis that might sink the US division of the company to one that serves as the basis for why they were compelled to adopt safety-first design processes for their guns.
The issue here is a question of whether the product is defective. The various legislation passed to protect firearm manufacturers against nuisance “defective product” lawsuits in the specific case where the product functioned as intended and was used illegally by a violent criminal, do not apply.
This is not a political issue. This is a discussion about whether a product is defective.
Well, except specifically for Sig Sauer on the topic of an external safety in New Hampshire[0]. Which, given that's the thing people have been filing lawsuits in New Hampshire about, is a bit of a political issue, no?
The lack of an external safety is not a defect. Many guns, probably a majority of new sales don’t. Anyone buying P320 knows there is no external safety. Sig should be liable for defects, and potentially negligent design, but seems reasonable not to be able to sue them for not including an external safety.
And most US law enforcement uses Glock pistols, which are also famous for having no external safety. There's a lever integrated into the trigger such that the trigger must be pulled before it can travel backward, and there's a safety internal to the slide that ensures the firing pin cannot travel forward until the trigger has been pulled, but there is no external safety anywhere. Pull the trigger (by any means, finger or otherwise -- tangled up in string, caught on a pointy object like a pen, whatever) and it will fire.
I think the new law preventing the suing of manufacturers for not including external safeties is a good thing.
I also think Sig Sauer are intentionally gas-lighting the public on the safety of the P320/M17/M18 and should withdraw it from the market.
Edit: I have nothing against Sig Sauer in general. I've shot a P228; it's a beautiful weapon, and I would buy one in a heartbeat. You couldn't pay me enough to have a P320.
I do not think that allowing people to sue gun companies for not having an external safety is a good way to accomplish the goal, if the goal is actual safety.
If the consumer protection bureau of a state wants to make an external safety a requirement for pistols sold in the state, I think that is a legitimate use of government authority and is used all the time with other kinds of products. Personally I think such a proposal evinces a complete lack of understanding of modern handguns and I would be opposed to it, but it is a legitimate use of government powers, and is not just a back door way to sue a disfavored company out of existence.
For this particular case I think that discussing external safeties is a distraction. In my opinion a handgun should not discharge under any circumstance where no one and nothing pulled the trigger. As a firearm owner I have that expectation of every firearm I own. I deliberately chose not to buy an Sig 320 because of the large number of reports of accidental drop related discharges; it makes me think that there might be a design defect.
And it still does not help, because the safety only blocks the trigger but not the striker from firing, thus the Air Force incident that started, this topic, became possible.
To be fair, they're just straight up Wrong, capital-W. Trying to apply a general idea of legislation to a very specific scenario with lots of details and specific legislation. See sibling comment, Zimpenfish.
It's a shame, because it is a super nice gun to actually shoot.
But at this point, given how Sig has responded (the article has a nice summary), the cover-up is bigger than the crime, almost. The trust is broken at an organizational level.
I don't feel like all manufacturers would respond like this, and it isn't the response I expect from somebody reputable.
Yeah, too bad. It’s actually quite an innovative and cool design. Shoots pretty good for a striker (still a far cry from CZs and 2011s). The ecosystem also started to develop around it (eg 1911 angle grips, high quality holsters, etc.) Sig optics and accessories also got quite good, too.
Consider the Canik TP9SF Elite rather than the ubiquitous Glock. My EDC is an TP9 Elite SC. Thousands of rounds through it and support is outstanding. Several advantages and features over big G. Nothing wrong with the Glock 17 G5 or 19 G5.
I don’t know if the Sig P320 has a similar firing pin safety design to the P365, but I optioned to go with Springfield Hellcat vs P365 specifically because the Hellcat has two separate safety catch points on the firing pin assembly, thereby eliminating a single point of failure, while the P365 essentially has one (see photos here https://www.reddit.com/r/gunsmithing/comments/f7dgnl/how_saf...). Glock has also has a redundant “two-catch” internal safety design, and has a well established safety record (hellcat just worked better for my needs; glock was an equally good choice from a safety standpoint). It’s common in the US to carry in “ready” configuration (barrel loaded); IMO if you choose to do this, a single point of failure is unacceptable. It’s why hammer fire (with hammer disengaged requiring initial DA trigger pull to push hammer back) can be safer; you can also cover the hammer with thumb while drawing and feel if the trigger is accidentally engaging, helping to prevent a negligent discharge.
Video comparing P320 to Glock internal safeties: (https://youtu.be/dLm23zJGSL0)
Note: it does appear that P320 has a more robust internal safety design than the P365.
I think the first claim is cover for the 2nd. if they admit there are uncommanded discharges, their reputation is decimated and they will lose an entire batch of lawsuits. If they dont do anything, guns will keep uncommanded-discharging until there is overwhelming evidence (I think we're at that point already)
Use to really enjoy shooting SIG, they felt well made, reliable, hell the military was adopting them over the 1911... Nothing led me to get rid of it, but I just found Glock to make a better handgun all around. Either way, much prefer single action revolves for their safety, accuracy, and reloading.
Why? Also, isn't that only an issue in early P320s? (at least according to Sig)
> and I'll never chamber a round in it again
Isn't this good enough for most uses? Heck, a long time ago I was trained to only chamber after unholstering AND entering a situation requiring quick response. The extra round not being worth the risk. 17 instead of 17+1 for the 9mm P320, right?
Honestly, this all smells like an overblown hysteria campaign to pump American brands. I would like to see the accidental discharge rate per units in use. This is one of the most popular handguns.
From that angle, we can also argue that losing a door or a plane or two during flights is not a big issue for Boeing and people in general, because it's the only problem known with these planes, and it happens pretty rarely, no?
Heck, even if we believe Boeing, it's the pilots' problem who are not retrained for the new plane which doesn't need training.
Honestly, also this Boeing thing smells like an overblown hysteria campaign to pump American planes.
The German company and American company are clearly related, given the German company is alleged to have manufactured and shipped firearms to the American company with falsified end-user certificates, which the American company then resold to Colombia in violation of German law: https://www.nhpr.org/post/ceo-nh-gun-maker-facing-five-years...
Sig is an American company, owned by a German holding corp, but still significantly more American than any other pistol mfg being considered, Glock or Beretta.
Too many examples of the discharge happening in YouTube and Sig gaslighting the public about it and blaming liberals made it even worse. The gun had a recall after fighting the public and then there were still problems. I hear the issue may be tolerance differences between part versions that can lead to the safety failures when mixed together.
The brand damage has been significant, but for the most part isolated to this pistol. Now, if another Sig model has a similar issue in the future and a similar response comes from Sig, the loss in trust will be immense and potentially unrecoverable.
As far as not keeping a round in the chamber, yeah, some people still do that, though that method has fallen into disfavor amongst the CCW types. But even when not ready to fire, there is a lot of time when that pistol could be loaded and go off, I.E. holding the pistol at low ready. Pistol on the bench facing down range as you check something or take a pause, unloading and reloading etc.
Pistols are already incredibly easy to accidentally hurt oneself and others that adding in this variable is just intolerable for most I think.
The gun community wants that gun to work reliably, that means it must fire when intended to fire, and only then.
I've had one since before the military adopted it. I've been carrying it for years daily. It has never once went off on its own. I run with it, jump with it, have carried it in a small cross body bag. It has never just fired by itself. I have over 5k rounds through it.
The only time my gun has went off was when I pulled the trigger. Has your gun ever went off without pulling the trigger?
Most of the videos I see on YouTube are people who were fiddling with the gun, in some kind of physical altercation, or carry some sort of back on the side they carry. I didn't get the fix from Sig either.
No, mine has never discharged without intention. I have had it for years and have put thousands of rounds through it. I keep it clean and maintained properly, and the only issue I've ever had with it is some jamming when using crappy FMJ range ammo.
All that being said, I'm not trying to say there is definitely an issue with the P320, but there is enough out there to give me some doubt. Perhaps there will be a fix at some point, but until then it's just not worth it to me.
This also isn't happening with other guns. If you google any other gun brand and the words unintentional discharge, you will still only get results for the P320.
> I've had one since before the military adopted it. I've been carrying it for years daily. It has never once went off on its own. I run with it, jump with it, have carried it in a small cross body bag. It has never just fired by itself.
Ah, Sig. On the one hand, gold (P365). On the other hand, painful, agonizing failure (P320).
If you make new-design firearms in any significant volume, you will have safety recalls. I don't know how many times I've gone to another gunmaker's website to see a banner announcing a safety recall. The important thing is that you stand behind your product 100%, and Sig's not doing that, even with arguably the most prestigious military contract in the world that one can hope to get for their pistol.
I wouldn't purchase any new Sigs after seeing how they've doubled-down on denial here. This is a life-taking/life-saving tool. It cannot be wrong; it cannot fail.
Although, a short grip is a feature for conceal carry, in my opinion. Even with nicer "winged" appendix holsters, the grip can still print fairly easily on fuller-sized handguns.
The P365 has a design flaw where there is a pinch point on your palm when changing magazines.
The first time my partner used it, she gave herself a blood blister on the palm of her hand.
Additionally, the trigger is super mushy, with like 4 different sticky break points, where only the last one is actually for firing. I hated everything about it; we bought it only because it fit her hand.
It was my first and last Sig. I have no idea why people buy pistols that aren’t Glocks.
There is a lot of accidental discharge happening when people holster their pistol improperly and the trigger snags on something or they inadvertently press the trigger while grabbing it. However, I’ve seen at least one footage of a Sig 320 discharging while properly holstered (Sig tried to claim the retention hood wasn’t properly closed but it clearly was): https://youtube.com/watch?v=OSAI_HUZDI0
Firstly, there's "How many things are between my finger on the trigger and shooting the gun". The furthest you get is not having a round in the chamber, where you have to pull back and release the slide to chamber a round. In that state, basically nothing you do to the trigger or any other part of the gun will result in a discharge. You could use the gun to hammer a nail into a board and it would be really inefficient but also not result in you shooting anybody. From there, you can have a round in the chamber but the safety on. Some guns have no safety. Some guns have more than one (a common combination is a toggle safety and then a bar built into the trigger that must be pulled first before the trigger can be pulled). The safety's job is to stop the gun from slamming the firing pin into the back of the round. All of this matters a lot for the kind of issues that were common with Serpa holsters, where users tended to slide their finger along near the trigger and were accidentally pulling it as part of their draw from the holster.
Secondly, there's "is there anything stopping the firing pin from just smacking the round and firing it w/o the trigger or anything else being involved". In some guns, the firing pin is physically blocked from striking the round until the trigger is pulled back: there's a piece of metal or other impediment that's in the way, and when you pull the trigger it slides out of the way and then the mechanism pushes the firing pin forward. But in other guns, that isn't the case: the firing pin is held away from the round by some style of tension, but isn't physically blocked. On those guns, if you have a round in the chamber and you whack the gun in the wrong direction, the firing pin can push into the round and fire it. Sig's prior claims were that this was not possible on the P320. Evidence suggests that they are incorrect.
This is a hard question to answer, but I'll try to boil it down to this specific firearm. Many handguns, like all Glocks and many Sigs, these days are "striker fired," meaning there's an internal hammer that strikes the hammer versus an external hammer. Internal hammers are more complicated than external hammers, and that includes, in the case of Glocks, two built-in safeties internally that would prevent misfires. The only way they would fire is if the trigger is pulled. Period.
There are no external safeties for the operator to engage with these handguns. They will only go off the trigger is pulled - so drops should not set it off, nor the actions in the video. You have to intentionally pull the trigger for the gun to go off, which is the ultimate last word in safeties.
There are still semiautos with external safeties hammers, the most famous being the 1911. These are what's called single actions. The trigger weight (amount of pull on the trigger) is relatively light, so they have an external safety for the operator to engage/disengage.
I personally prefer single actions, hammer cocked, safety engaged, but this is always a very, very personal preference by people that carry. I own Glocks, but I would not carry one because of the lack of external safety, however, I would never criticize anyone that does. This is 100% strictly boils down to what the person is comfortable doing.
> Glocks, two built-in safeties internally that would prevent misfires. The only way they would fire is if the trigger is pulled. Period.
Two built in safeties, plus a half-cocked striker instead of fully cocked like Sig. Another big difference is that one of the safeties is a physical thing sitting in between the striker and the primer. The equivalent on a sig 320 is a physical thing sitting in front of a lug attached to the striker, not actually in between the striker and the primer. That makes it a single point of failure, because if the lug shears off of the striker, the gun immediately discharges.
The big failure case for a Glock is something (drawstring, etc) getting into the holster and pulling the trigger. If you commit to never holstering without going really slow and shining a light down in there to verify nothing is getting at the trigger, it's safe. Which works if you just never take it out of the holster except at the range. Remove the holster and gun as a unit, stick holster and gun together in a safe, etc.
The absence of external manually activated safeties is really orthogonal to whether it’s striker fired or external hammer fired. There are countless guns that have external hammers with traditional double action or single action modes, but still lack an external safety. This is true of many many SIG and HK models.
Many modern guns for personal protection do not have manually actuated safeties and instead rely on other mechanisms to prevent accidental discharge. For example, glocks have a "trigger safety." Without getting into minutia, these sort of features do a fine job of ensuring the gun does not fire unless the trigger is intentionally actuated.
The reason manual safeties are going away is that for side arms, time matters A LOT. Gun fights are typically over within just a few seconds and the person who fires first has a huge advantage. A long time ago there were quite a few major incidents involving police and manual safeties which resulted in most departments changing their policies such that they carry with the safety off or, typically these days, glocks which have no manual safety.
Regarding the p320. For one, the 320 does not have a trigger safety. In fact, there are numerous "innovations" on this firearm which were made to cut costs, improve trigger feel, and various other things. This rose a lot of suspicion when the gun first came out actually - especially the lack of a trigger safety which many consider essential for striker fire guns intended for carrying on your person. On top of that, sig did end up making a p320 with a safety as this was a military requirement. The thing is, it is possible that the "innovative" sear mechanism within the p320 may allow the gun to fire even when the safety is engaged. In fact, there have been reports of just that happening.
The gun that was being carried in Air Force incident is the military version of the p320 which does in fact have a manual safety. Also, the leaked reports state the incident happened whenever the gun was in the holster and the holster was removed and placed on a desk facing the victim. This is when the gun misfired striking the victim in the chest. There is speculation that the gun may have in fact had the safety engaged whenever this happened. If so, this would explain the prompt response by the AirForce.
Regardless, the purpose of manual safeties are not to prevent guns from discharging on their own (aka. "uncommanded"). Manual safeties are intended to protect against "accidental" discharges where the trigger gets pulled "accidentally." That's not what happened in the above video or the AirForce incident.
One more thing to note. The officer in this video was using a Sig Sauer holster so there should be no risk of the holster itself being the problem.
> The reason manual safeties are going away is that for side arms, time matters A LOT. Gun fights are typically over within just a few seconds and the person who fires first has a huge advantage.
I know there are a lot of people who share this opinion, but speaking as ex-military, I think it's quite disingenuous and dangerous. Real life isn't some old-fashioned Western film where draw speed matters. If an adversary is malicious, carrying a round in the chamber, and decides to pull on you, he has the element of surprise. There is no real-world situation where you are really just that much better at drawing and firing accurately that you will out-draw an adversary who drew on you first, with the possible exception of Special Forces / Navy SEAL types who drill it ad-nauseum and had 99th-percentile reaction speed to begin with. But thinking that ordinary people can do it is sheer hubris. Thinking you can do it from concealed carry is utterly laughable.
In a real world firefight you're either close enough where martial arts is relevant or you're not. If martial arts are relevant, then the guns are irrelevant. If you're further away, what matters is whether you can get behind cover, which will give you time to unholster your weapon, disengage the safety, and chamber a round.
You don't decide to carry a gun in public because you think it will save you if someone walks up to you from behind and decides to shoot you in the back. You do it for the times when gunfights are not resolved with the first shot. Responsible citizens carry their guns in such a way that prioritizes the safety of those around them before their own personal safety.
It's rather debatable whether it should be legal for store owners to shoot robbers and call it self-defense; not all states protect shop owners in such circumstances, and state law may differentiate between when robbers pull lethal weaponry and when robbers pull toy guns that were not actual lethal threats. In the US you take further risk if there end up being racial differences between the shop owner and robber. Consider https://www.quora.com/When-is-it-legal-for-a-shop-owner-to-s... as a quickly Googled example.
A shop owner's actual best strategy, in states without firm stand-your-ground or castle doctrine laws that also apply to businesses, is probably an under-the-counter button that calls for police as a silent alarm while responding slowly to stall for time (and consider closing up shop and moving if local police are not quick and reliable to respond). Even in states with more friendly legal environments, risking your life by drawing to defend your inventory or cash register is practically the definition of penny-wise, pound-foolish. You are risking your life over, what, several hundred or a few thousand dollars? And even if you do walk away from the gunfight, how much would it cost to repair all the damage from the gunfight; if you get injured, how much are the hospital bills and subsequent increase in your medical insurance premiums?
No, while the Second Amendment may still be alive on paper, I think its protections don't do much for shop owners these days. A more effective defense would be if that police-alarm button also released a quick-acting sleeping gas, but those aren't really available in real-world contexts and carry lots of unintentional risks.
What does any of that have to do with your stance that carrying with a safety on is just as effective? When root causing problems, it's important to compartmentalize. Whether or not someone should carry a firearm is completely orthogonal. Especially in this instance where clearly it makes sense for military security forces protecting nuclear facilities to carry.
Data has shown that if you have a need to carry a firearm on your person, it is prudent to carry with one in the chamber and the safety off. For this reason, firearm manufacturers have been using this as a design criteria. It's not impossible to design safe firearms which meet this criteria. See Gaston Glock.
Back on topic, the Sig P320 was designed to not have a safety. The military version has one, but that's only because military requirements hardly ever change. The P320 and it's military counterpart, the M17, are designed to be carried loaded with no safety. The fact that they randomly go off when doing this is not a failure of the operator or some systemic societal problem. It's a failure of Sig to meet design requirements.
>A more effective defense would be if that police-alarm button also released a quick-acting sleeping gas, but those aren't really available in real-world contexts and carry lots of unintentional risks.
Rapid fog generators seem ridiculous at first glance, but they're remarkably effective in many circumstances.
I suppose the robberies where the shop owner gets shot instead aren't getting the same amount of clicks like the "justice being served" ones, so maybe that's the explanation.
There are in fact civilian situations - many of them captured on camera - where the difference between carrying in condition 1/2 vs condition 3 is critical to the outcome. Active Self Protection on YouTube has thousands of examples of defensive incidents involving firearms, and the cost of the extra time and mechanical complexity to rack a round is a common theme.
Unfortunately, public perceptions are mostly driven by:
(1) Mass media portrayals - which are carefully scripted to maximize market share, clicks, and sales
(2) Rule of Cool - or whatever "feels right", to emotionally-driven humans living in a society where guns are a major point of contention in a bitter culture war
Why is every opinion qualified as "ex-military" always tend to be hyperbolic, technically incorrect and full of appeals to authority rather than actual factual information?
> There is no real-world situation where you are really just that much better at drawing and firing accurately that you will out-draw an adversary who drew on you first
There is, and it is called training. Get a timer, hit the range, and get your shots on target from concealment in under a second - while getting off the "x" - this is a standard I have trained many people to meet first-hand. And it doesn't take a specialist to get this level of training, either; it takes a few years, several thousands rounds of ammunition, and periodic maintenance, just like any craft.
> In a real world firefight you're either close enough where martial arts is relevant or you're not. If martial arts are relevant, then the guns are irrelevant.
Disparity of force - another well known concept you ought to familiarize yourself, especially as it is one of the most critical elements of legal defense in a shooting.
> Responsible citizens carry their guns in such a way that prioritizes the safety of those around them before their own personal safety.
Smart people legally carry a firearm to defend themselves and their family only from unexpected deadly threats. They would never intervene, get involved with, or otherwise "rescue" anyone else with lethal force. The "sheepdog" mentality you've put on display is honestly offensive and gives a bad name to firearms owners.
Even if I take you at your word for the sake of argument, what percentage, do you think, roughly, of gun owners are going to take "a few years, several thousand rounds of ammunition, and periodic maintenance" to get to that level? Because guns without manual safeties are sold to people regardless of such skill level, and no such demonstration of skill is required for licensing in order to purchase such a manual-safety-less weapon. Especially in legal environments where the Second Amendment is used to justify weapons purchases without or with minimal licensing or other restrictions, it is all the more incumbent for people to understand what their real limitations are, for their own safety.
> Disparity of force
Perhaps, instead of "a few years" at the range, you might want to take a couple of self-defense classes? In the range where martial arts matter, skill is a far greater determinant than sheer physical size. I'll grant you that martial arts is not a universal strategy (e.g. people in wheelchairs), but I would also argue that, of the people for whom martial arts is not a strategy, in a significant plurality if not a majority of cases where such incompatibility is due to frailty, such frailty will also usually preclude the kind of "few years, several thousand rounds of ammo, and periodic maintenance", not to mention reaction speed, that it would take to actually succeed in a drawing contest.
> They would never intervene, get involved with, or otherwise "rescue" anyone else with lethal force.
Many, many Good Samaritans out there would disagree with this offensive take that shows more how society has disintegrated than anything else in this thread. The audience should note that I, someone who does carry, am apparently a "sheepdog" because I decide to employ a manual safety, am aware of my limitations, and encourage others to be honest with themselves instead of thinking that they're big people just because they went out and bought a firearm.
For what it's worth I'm also "ex-military" and the person you are replying to is in fact wrong. For many, a "manual safety" is a preference but for others confident in their training it's not necessary or desirable. I also own a P320 (but will be purchasing a Glock soon) and stopped shooting in shortly after these stories came out. Unfortunate, because all things considered I really did like that pistol. Anyway, depending on branch of service, deployment experience, time in service etc a lot of veterans' experience with handguns is minimal, amounting to firing enough rounds on the qual range once a year. No idea about OP's experience, but these things do tend to correlate if you get my meaning.
Great so us petite women are back to having a natural disadvantage to would be attackers. My gun is an equalizer. Doesn’t guarantee me safety but when I’m on that empty subway car late at night and a large aggressor enters the car, I’m at least on equal footing.
Those who wish to disarm us women are doing so from a position of luxury. Where you’re never felt what it’s like to be completely at the mercy of those drastically bigger and stronger than you. Or perhaps you come from the luxurious position where rapes don’t occur by large unarmed men.
I don’t “identify” as a petite comparatively weak individual, it’s just a physical fact. I’m not ashamed that I’m weaker than most men. I fail to see where “identify politics” entered into my post.
That isn't going to stop crime in the US or make dangerous areas in the US really any safer though. Nobody is concerned about someone legally carrying deciding to randomly shoot them.
Plenty of mass school (or other) shootings were done by legal firearms, using legally bought ammo.
I get what you say, but if folks are smart they should be concerned by any firearm, legal or not. Its trivial in US to obtain one if your record is still clean, you can be a proper psycho weirdo and still get it.
The people afraid of doing psychotests to get a gun which can kill tens of people easily in skilled hands... I'd say they are afraid for a good reason. Its like being afraid of driving test to get the license to drive.
Okay now you’re being hyperbolic in the other direction. There are plenty of incidents of minor arguments / road rage turning deadly because someone legally carrying decided to draw and use their firearm when there wasn’t any imminent danger.
It’s certainly not the norm for gun violence in public but it’s certainly not a nonexistent risk either.
Okay yeah sure, it can and does happen on occasion, but how often matters a lot. We can't just ban everything over every rare and unlikely scenario, and it will still do basically nothing to stop 99.9% of gun crime. Plus from when the CDC was allowed to research such things, they found between 500,000-3,000,000 cases of defensive firearm use per year in the US, 2-10x as high as violent crimes.
Maybe you live somewhere privileged enough that you can rely on the police to protect you, but most of the US doesn't. For many people in the US police response is 30+ minutes, and the police themselves pose as much of a threat to them as the criminals they are calling about if a potential danger.
I live in the Netherlands a country with a huge drug cartel problem and still civilians don't carry guns.
Criminals shoot eachother and occasionally they shoot law enforcement if they are really dumb.
Normal people when there is a shoot out just hide until the incident is over. You'd have to be stupid to get involved.
More guns do not equal more safety- especially not because your average wannabe Rambo can't shoot for shit.
And how is that different than the US? Do you think people when they hear gun shots all grab their guns and run outside in the US? The US has a crime problem, but that crime problem is neither caused by guns nor will be solved by gun prohibitions.
Even despite the prevalence of legal firearms the US busts illegal gun factories every week, there is no feasible way to disarm the US population except through them wanting to be disarmed and willingly destroying their guns. And until US police stop shooting people with impunity, courts stop imprisoning people for being poor, the government stops deploying armed US troops on US soil and running a gestapo squad, and until crime rates drop to something not resembling countries without functioning governments, I don't see why the US population should want to disarm themselves.
The short answer is that modern handgun design leans away from safeties that must be actively toggled by the user in favor of automatic safeties and interlocks that are transparent to the user, like the seat switch in a riding mower. Manual safeties still exist but they're considered an accessory feature.
I recently bought a SIG P320, and a week later, I started reading articles about it self discharging. =P It’s not like it happens all the time, but it seems that if the safety lever spring’s thickness is off by a thousandth of an inch, and the height of the post it fits on is also off by a thousandth of an inch, and you drop the pistol at just the right angle with enough force, the FBI reportedly got it to discharge once during testing—though officially, the results are inconclusive. Now, some law enforcement agencies are quietly replacing the P320 with the Glock 19. Personally, I’m keeping mine because it’s a great gun, and I love that 21-round magazine. However, I sent in my warranty card in case there’s a recall or something similar.
Odds are, you'll never experience the self-discharging issue. Having said that, I don't find a mostly-reliable firearm acceptable from a safety perspective. If I don't pull the trigger, it cannot go bang, ever, for any reason.
I'm still very curious why the P320 beat out the venerable Glock 17 & 19 combo in the Army's recent selection. It would seem being able to change from duty to compact is more of a gimmick than practical. I'd wager most P320's will spend their service life in exactly one configuration.
Sig does have a way of making every pistol feel like it was custom molded to your hand - but Glocks "Just Work".
"I just want them to make one with a damn thumb safety and if this competition won't make them do it, nothing will." - some US Army ordinance guy about Glock, probably.
"Cocked & Locked" is usually how people refer to this - and it is easy to screw up. Under stress, people's fine motor skills vanish, sometimes resulting in the safety not being disengaged as you draw from the holster. Additionally, it can be accidentally flipped off during handling.
Modern firearms have multiple internal safeties to prevent accidental discharges (unless you're Sig apparently).
If for some reason you're open carrying in a holster (like perhaps a police officer or soldier would be), and someone tries to get your weapon off of you and succeeds, a manual safety could save your life. They probably won't realize that the safety is on, and when they point the weapon at you and pull the trigger, nothing will happen, giving you a chance to escape or fight back.
Without that manual safety, the weapon just goes off and you now have an aftermarket hole installed in your body.
There's less of an argument manual safties in concealed carry, though. The opponent shouldn't know you have the weapon until it's drawn, so there's less chance of them getting it out of a holster.
Unfortunately the 2A community is filled with fud and hollywood-esque beliefs. Those who have little training or practical experience often fall victim to believing these fantastical "what-if" scenarios.
The amount of times a firearm has been taken out of someone's duty holster and used against them is a statistical rounding error. Most LEO departments require Level 3 Retention holsters, making this scenario nearly an impossibility. Additionally, a safety isn't going to save someone's life if the "bad guy" has wrestled control of the firearm away from the owner.
This entire scenario is fiction. Manual safeties often do more harm than good - which is why just about all modern handguns have no manual safety (outside of the few States which, out of ignorance, require them by law).
I'd take this with a grain of salt. I generally like James' content, but he has always been a huge Sig supporter and throughout the p320 debacle, he's been more supportive of Sig than I think he should be.
Their report outlined here and the police officer’s account of the unintentional discharge occurred without dropping and while securely in the holster without any items intruding in the holster (i say that because it was a prior excuse Sig made for the unintentional discharge reports)
A thousandth of an inch would do it? They couldn't give more margin-of-safety to a critical part like that?
A thousand of an inch isn't such a theoretical number. It's about 25 microns, and I've shimmed one of my back-focusing photography lenses for less than that much (about 10 microns, to be specific). This is something that they ought to be able to machine for, but depending on the context, it might not leave much room for error.
Its likely a misunderstanding and/or mischaracterization of "tolerance stacking."
A safe example is bike chain. If each one is 1 inch +- 0.01", if every single one is +0.01" then ten links will be long by a tenth of an inch. And might pass QC on the bike when pedaled by hand- but it'll fall off when somebodies full bodyweight and 100hrs of wear is out into it.
That's not how errors add up, it's nonlinear. You have to take the sum of squares. So in your case, it wouldn't be 10 * 0.01 = 0.1, but sqrt(10 * 0.01^2) = 0.032, which is less than one third of a tenth.
This isn't really sufficient, especially not from Karl. I agree with Karl's politics but not with branding someone a Nazi or anti-LGBT for staying out of them.
Many pistols don't. It does lead to a higher risk of accidental discharges (that's how we got the term "glock leg"). That's also the argument that Sig made - that every unintended discharge was due to user error. The evidence is increasingly clear cut that this isn't the case, and the pistol can go off on its own when jostled while properly holstered, but Sig persists in trying to claim the pistol is safe and blame the users.
"that every unintended discharge was due to user error" -- Sig is doing a fantastic job of making it clear that that's false (as you say).
The real statement is "every unintended discharge on a known-safe gun is due to user error." I would believe that all unintended discharges on, say, a Glock 17 are user error. I no longer can believe that of Sigs.
And it's like brakes on a car. If it fails for even one person one time and causes one accident, that's too much. The stakes are way too high when you're dealing with something that can take lives if it malfunctions.
I’d wager that poorly maintained brakes fail and lead to a collision many hundreds of times per year. I think “unmodified and properly maintained”, neither firing mechanisms nor brakes should fail (and I think that’s what’s in question here).
modern consensus is that a manual safety is more of a liability than a feature - correct handling obviates it, and in the worst case a manual safety may prevent you from deliberately firing the weapon.
correct handling requires the use of a holster which completely covers the trigger. a properly-designed firearm is safe in a properly-designed holster.
the handgun that effectively established this concept (the glock) does not contain enough potential in the fire control at rest to discharge a round, but notably, the p320 does.
It may seem wild, but wilder still is having to manipulate small components under extreme duress in a sub-second period of time, while one or more lives suddenly depend on it. This is why almost all individuals who carry professionally or from experience do not use equipment with safety.
It's crazy how the P320 has such a bad reputation, while the P365, a 9mm micro-pistol by Sig Sauer, is a phenomenal piece of kit by comparison. I purchased mine in 2018 and it's seen thousands of rounds put through it with zero issues encountered.
Agreed. It seems that Sig really dropped the ball with the P320. My top 3 most used hand guns are the CZ P-10 F, the Sig P365, and the Sig P322.
I honestly never thought I'd ever buy a modern handgun unless it was made by Sig. Until I tried the CZ. The P-10 F is my favorite full sized striker fired pistol. And that's coming from a guy that owns 30+ Sig pistols.
Yeah, just from a reputational standpoint I'm not sure I ever want to buy a Sig unless it's used. Too many other good brands to financially support. I've been eyeing a Canik or Walther, I want a premium trigger. The CZs are reliable weapons, but their trigger feels "gritty" to me. My Sig SP2022 is my favorite trigger of the guns I own.
I had the opposite experience with the P-10 F. Granted it's the only CZ pistol I own. But it's also the only modern pistol I own that was ready to go right out of the box without any kind of needed improvements or modifications.
Yep target practice. There's different types. There's obviously your, slow, precise target practice focusing on tight groupings and hitting the target where you want to hit it however there are a bunch of other more specialised drills for training reaction speed and ability to actually perform at a moments notice.
While your initial drills start out using relatively few rounds at a time, more complex/difficult drills involve far more rounds, often requiring multiple magazines and multiple targets. These types of drills are generally aren't done at your basic indoor shooting galley ranges but even there there are plenty of ways to burn through a substantial amount of ammunition.
And while part of it is that in general shooting as a hobby is fun, another part is that some types of drills just require a lot of ammunition. ex: malfunction clearing drills where there are non-functional rounds mixed in to your magazines and you need to perform your drills with as little time loss compared to normal as possible. i.e. knowing how to react when things go wrong under pressure.
And so a single range day can easily put someone through tens of magazines which quickly gets into the hundreds of rounds. Then assuming you are going to the range weekly, biweekly, or monthly, that puts you into thousands or even tens of thousands of rounds per year.
As a recreational shooter, thousands of rounds is really not that much. I virtually never leave a range trip with fewer than a hundred rounds fired. And yes, for me, it's a combination of practice and fun ("plinking").
If ammunition didn't cost what it did, I'm sure I would shoot a lot more.
Practicing until it’s muscle memory. Progressing through increased distances, smaller targets, more challenging conditions. Particularly in long-range shooting, dialing in hand loaded round configurations for accuracy and consistency.
I think it’s possible for many shooters to achieve parts of a flow state when doing this. Imagine the satisfaction of throwing, catching, or hitting balls over and over in muscle memory, letting your mind and body work together to let your coordination and accuracy improve to solve the puzzle.
A thousand rounds is not that much. A standard box has 50 rounds, if you fire four boxes in a weekend, you can easily go through a thousand rounds over a month.
Now at $.25-.$30 / round, this does add up to an expensive hobby.
Imagine a driving range where a new ball was automatically teed up as soon as you hit the last one. It’d be really easy to keep hitting balls, trying to get the perfect most accurate shot, right? Then you’d want to hit three in a row, then five, then you realize you’ve been at the range for two hours and have spent way too much on ammo. That’s what recreational shooting is like.
It's fairly common advice that if you are carrying for self defense then you should be firing at least 100 to 200 rounds a month at the range to maintain your skill. That's not all that difficult to do; especially with a relatively high capacity handgun like most 9mm.
You're absolutely correct. Part of why I have not been conceal carrying lately, is because I haven't prioritized consistent practice at the range in recent times. I want to ensure I'm proficient if I'm going to carry.
I should have clocked tens of thousands of rounds by now, at least one order of magnitude larger. Especially since micro-pistols like the P365 need the user to be more consistent with training, given that it's more difficult to be accurate with than with a full size gun. But life happens and I need to readjust my priorities before I get back to consistently visiting the range again.
For additional perspective, you can easily blow through 200+ rounds in one sitting - often under an hour, depending on what kind of drills you are doing. Many of the courses I've taken require a minimum of 300 rounds.
This is part of why "gun people" roll their eyes when the news talks about someone "hoarding thousands of rounds" - it's no where near as much as you might think, and people like to buy ammo when it's on sale (ammo's expensive!).
Like anything you want to become proficient at, you need consistent practice. How many free throws do you think LeBron has practiced? Now imagine you die if you miss. Also it’s fun to blast stuff.
I am mostly a P365 carrier/shooter now, but for a couple years a P320 Compact was my primary handgun (with an X5 P226 SAO for competition); I put probably 15-20k rounds through the P320 (1k round classes, etc, back when ammo was $150-180/case) (and never got the drop-safe mod done), and no problems. So it's some combination of QC, specific units, and bad luck -- but even a 0.001% risk of something happening is a big deal.
The quick P250 -> P320 without really designing it properly does seem to have been a mistake, though.
All I know about this situation is what I've read in these comments just now. I don't have a dog in this hunt.
But I think the surprise is that a company who makes something considered highly reliable would make a similar item that the Air Force claims is killing their airmen. It'd be like Toyota making another pickup, the Bellevue, that likes to randomly explode. Sure, things happen, but Toyota? Huh, that would be unexpected.
With SIG USA specifically there's a long track record of making firearms that can only be described as problematic. For example, their attempt to adapt SG 55x to the American market - all versions had some issues, but especially so the ones chambered in 7.62x39.
The unusual thing here is that this is a problem in a product that managed to pass US DoD acceptance testing. But the drop safety issue was already known at the time, so one has to wonder just how much in soft bribes SIG had to spend to get it adopted regardless.
Not sure that's the best example, since Toyota did have the unintended acceleration issue, though I still don't get whether the consensus among smart people was that it was purely user error.
Is any mass produced car made by a quality first org? I'm sure we can dig in and find examples. Someone brought up Toyota and Japanese cars. How about the unintended acceleration issue and the frag airbags?
I don’t know where we’d draw the line for “quality first” but I’d argue Toyota at minimum qualifies
That doesn’t mean they’re perfect: cars are incredibly complex machines and mistakes are inevitable. But the airbag issue was a vendor (used by many companies) and IIRC the acceleration issue wasn’t that much bigger in Toyotas than other makes
True, I was considering the same timeframe as the Toyota issue. However, their reputation would likely be supportive of quality and be another example for my point.
What? Unintended acceleration happens _all the time_. It’s usually driver error or a stuck floor mat. The vast majority are drivers who hit the accelerator thinking it’s the brakes then panic when the car speeds up. Toyota had some design issues that seemed to make it more likely (though the software was found to be fine) and got attention due to a viral 911 call and a poor response.
They were absolutely not the only make with unintentional accretion reports/issues at that time; nor presumably today, but I haven’t seen recent numbers
Fine, let me be more specific - unintended acceleration due to mechanical design issues (sticking pedal, even without floor mats). The point is, Toyota was raised as an example of quality, yet here we have a design issue. This also shouldn't be a surprise since the floor mat issue can be solved by design changes sound on other vehicles. So yes, manufacturers can make good and bad products. There are no manufactures who make only perfect products - it's not a surprise the P320 could have issues when the poster holds the P365 in such high esteem. The only thing that statement really displays is the suppression of cognitive dissonance being suddenly unachievable.
Ford, GM, and Tesla are all bottom barrel automakers. All three of them relying on the government to prop them up, too. Otherwise, the Japanese market would have obliterated the American automotive industry ages ago.
Usually, when a company makes something good, the things they make that are similar to that thing are also good.
Conceptually, the P365 and the P320 are very similar. Semiautomatic, striker-fired, polymer-framed, tilting-barrel centerfire pistols with replaceable serialized fire control modules. One's just bigger than the other. The guts of it are what changed, and you wouldn't think it'd be too hard to implement the P365's striker system within a larger pistol.
The fact that it's smaller changes two important factors for trigger systems - mass and geometry. Geometric differences for things like sear engagement or even travel of the striker before encountering the block can change how it functions. Mass is another critical element when it comes to dropping it and how the parts could move to release the striker, etc. These are the types of changes they tried to implement in the FCU update for the P320. The P365 is a completely different design for the FCU anyways. For all we know the fatal difference could be that the stamped housing for the P320 FCU flexes in a certain way to trigger the disconnect while the P365 is machined and doesn't flex as much or in the same way. Whether or not something like that would scale without affecting the desired weight or dimensions, I dont know. It certainly would affect price for larger stainless billet and more machining.
This seems to suggest carrying with a chambered round. Is this prudent without an external threat? They can drop the thing, or some kind of impact can yield a “design problem”. Can’t they just chamber when there’s a need?
It depends on your job in the USAF. I was a security augmentee[0] and we did not chamber a round. But the Airman who died likely protected missile silos, which are "no-lone zones" and they would be carrying with a round in the chamber.
The P320 is known to have accidental discharges for civilian owners (honestly - don't buy one). But Sig Sauer has stated that the M18 military version did not have those problems. We will need to wait on the results of the investigation to find out.
[0] An extra duty typically assigned to junior enlisted - we only armed up during exercises. Which brings back a story - we were waiting on the trucks to take us to our posts, and the room was full of Airmen armed with M16s and M60 machine guns. And we were all watching Justin Wilson cooking up some delicious Cajun food on the TV.
"But Sig Sauer has stated that the M18 military version did not have those problems."
More lies and misdirection on Sig's part. The only mechanical difference is really the manual safety (which works on the trigger and not on the striker), and if we're being generous the second would be the spanner screw. They should have the upgraded FCU, but in the civilian world there are still reports of the issue even after the upgrade.
That may be personal preference, but IMHO there’s no reason to conceal carry if you’re going to do it without a round chambered.
I’m a huge Sig collector and I’ve been a fan of theirs since the 90s.
I’ve carried a Sig daily for 20+ years. I only carried a P320 for a few months until I finally downsized to the P365.
But I’ve got to admit that their PR and response to these incidents is not a good look.
But I am a bit confused as to what is causing these unintentional discharges. I know they had a problem that was addressed years ago so I’m not sure if the current problem guns are ones that were never sent back for modification or if there is some kind of unrelated problem.
Regardless, I’ll still carry a Sig until CZ makes something comparable to a P365. But it’s unlikely that I’ll ever buy a new Sig again.
Check out this video, the FBI report got released a few weeks ago. This was a FOIA’d report from 2024 of a police officer who had the P320 holstered, doing normal movements (didnt drop the holstered firearm)
Unique case in that the FBI got the firearm still in the holster (it hadn’t been removed or the round cleared after the discharge)
This is what has led to the recent uptick in Sig scrutiny, then unfortunately the OP incident happened and it’s rightfully so made Sig’s situation much worse
> IMHO there’s no reason to conceal carry if you’re going to do it without a round chambered.
Why is that your opinion? Surely there's a wide variety of plausible scenarios where carrying a concealed weapon without a round chambered is much better than not carrying a concealed weapon.
When you draw from concealment, an experienced shooter needs only get their grip and an eye picture -- point gun at target and fire. You only need to train muscle memory to get into a firing position, which is also what you are regularly training every time you live fire or dry fire.
If you don't have a round chambered, you need to draw, rack and release the slide, hope a round is properly chambered (in a panicked situation you might not rack the slide properly), then get into a firing position. This is a much more complex movement and evaluation of state. You are pulling the gun up, manipulating it with two hands, then moving it forward and finding your grip. In an emergency, that time loss and complexity of motion is considerably more difficult to train.
Even experienced shooters will draw from a holster and immediately present their gun and try to fire, and then realize they don't have a round chambered, have to bring the gun back to rack the slide, and then present the gun again.
You conceal carry because you want to be prepared at an emergency to deal with an imminent threat. Adding complex manipulations to that erodes your ability to do that, and any modern pistol should not fire unless you pull the trigger. They should be safe from drops, shakes, or manipulations.
If your threat isn't "I need to have a firearm ready asap", then you should consider not conceal carrying, in which case you may want your pistol unloaded or unchambered.
Well, at a range, sometimes can't properly rack the slide and still hit everything I wanted to hit. I got used to doing lock/release instead due to that skill issue.
First, in most states it is not legal to point a weapon at someone unless you are in a situation where you're legally allowed to pull the trigger. That is, you are legitimately in fear for your life. In that situation you will likely have very little time to act in self defense.
Second, racking a slide is an action that requires fine motor control. Under the pressure and adrenaline dump that accompanies a life-or-death situation, fine motor control goes to crap. If you are fumbling with your pistol, it's useless.
Third, if you don't feel comfortable with your ability to safely handle a loaded gun, you probably shouldn't be carrying at all.
Because if you're going to carry, you should choose something that's safe to carry with a round chambered (i.e. not a Sig P320). There are countless videos showing real-world examples of defensive handgun use. One common thread is that there's virtually no time between when you realize you're going to need your sidearm and when you need it. The extra second it takes to rack the slide and chamber a round can be the difference between surviving the encounter and not.
> One common thread is that there's virtually no time between when you realize you're going to need your sidearm and when you need it.
I would be surprised if this is true for the majority of situations. I'm sure there are situations where you have very little time, but also many situations where the additional time it would take to chamber a round is negligible.
In addition to the lost time, you'll have a hard time racking the slide from the adrenaline dump. Also, the bad guys always have first-movers advantage and you're always playing catch up.
After watching thousands of violent encounters on John Correia's "Active Self Protection" channel, I agree that round-in-the-chamber is absolutely necessary if you're carrying for self protection.
Most states prevent you from drawing without firing, because it is considered brandishing / threatening.
So you either draw and fire and call the police and tell them what happened, or you don't and just... deal with the consequences of whatever happened instead.
>Most states prevent you from drawing without firing, because it is considered brandishing / threatening.
I'm not sure how many other states work this way, but in Florida, brandishing is considered non-deadly force as a matter of law[0]. So the standard for self-defense is different between brandishing and firing: deadly force like firing requires a higher degree of threat to be considered justified self-defense[1].
2. Could you have reasonably de-escalated (or were you the one who escalated to get here)?
3. Can you convince a jury (and the cops) that your life was in danger? If there are no witnesses, this is tough. Typically you're allowed to use deadly force only if you fear loss of life/limb. Yes, yes, plenty of cases where juries ruled in favor of the shooter when there was clearly no risk of loss of life/limb.
4. Do you have the relevant insurance to cover your legal defense costs? If not, you'll likely make a plea deal with the prosecutor even if you were clearly in the right.
I would say if the guy lunged at you with a knife and you drew your gun and he ran away, you'll be fine if there are witnesses.
I'm familiar with the idea of "brandishing" being illegal, but I looked it up anyway. I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menacing which says "Self-defense is often explicitly given as an exception."
It seems like then it would be legal to draw a gun without firing if it was in self defense? I have a hard time believing that there are any cases where shooting someone in self defense would be legal, but scaring them away wouldn't.
This is not exactly what you’re referencing but I bring it up to show just how complicated things can be: Minnesota recently ruled that you do not have the right to use deadly force if you have the opportunity to escape.
And this is the crucial bit, quoting the article: “The court decided the principle also applies to people who merely use the threat of force — meaning one cannot pull a weapon in self-defense if there are other means to escape, even if the person is threatening them with death or bodily harm.”
"There are various situations in which brandishing a firearm may occur. For instance, pulling out a gun during an argument or altercation with another person could be considered brandishing. Additionally, waving or gesturing with a firearm in a manner that suggests aggression or hostility towards others may also constitute brandishing. It is crucial to understand that even if no shots are fired, and no physical harm is inflicted, the mere act of displaying a weapon in such circumstances can lead to serious legal consequences."
Which states don't have self-defense exceptions to brandishing laws? Note that shooting someone is also assault, but self-defense is an exception to assault.
I’m fine with a brandishing charge if it defuses the situation and ends the threat and I don’t have to kill anyone.
I would take almost any criminal charge over being forced to kill somebody.
If I hadn’t been willing to brandish at least once, I would have had to shoot to kill, and that sucks bad. Being in a gunfight is the last thing that I want besides being dead or severely injured.
I don’t conceal carry but it’s commonly known that you don’t draw your weapon unless you’re shooting to kill. In those situations, if there was time to chamber a round then there was time to escape. If you draw your weapon as a warning or, worse, fire warning shots you’ll be arrested for brandishing at least.
well, again, let me preface this with I don't conceal carry nor do I feel in my day to day life unsafe to the point I want to conceal carry. However, I got interested in IDPA, as a hobby, which is a shooting competition that does time trials through a practical scenario. For example, move to a station, fire at 4 targets from behind cover, move to another station, reload, move to another station and fire at 3 targets. Your score is determined by speed through the scenarios and the accuracy of your shots. i'm no stranger at all to shooting firearms having spent a large portion of my childhood hunting and years of going to the range. During my intro to IDPA class I was shocked at how hard it is to keep everything straight in your head and operate a handgun safely and effectively under the very minor stress of a time trial and a group of people watching.
Now, in my 49 years i've been in only one situation where i was attacked, beat up, robbed and would have been justified to use lethal force in my defense. Had i been armed I would not have had it together enough in the amount of time i had to chamber a round, aim, and fire. Unless your brain is trained to respond there just isn't time to think through anything, it's like your mental capacity just grinds to a halt in those moments. If you have it together enough to chamber a round, aim, and fire you have it together enough to use run-fu and escape the situation.
finally, once again, i don't conceal carry and thank my lucky stars my job doesn't involve making decisions like draw and fire or don't. Maybe someone with more training and experience will weigh in in this conversation, i'm just giving my two cents.
If an attacker doesn't have a firearm you probably have time to chamber a round, if the attacker misses a shot at you you have time to chamber a round, if you have time to take cover you may have time to chamber a round and then be in an approximately 50-50 situation, etc.
This might be the impression one gets from watching movies or television shows, but its not reality. Anyone who has either trained with a handgun, or even just viewed videos of real-world confrontations will know that this isn't the case. In many encounters you have almost no time. Racking the slide and acquiring the target adds a massive amount of time (its even worse when you are under pressure).
Most defensive uses of a firearms occur at a short distance, less than five yards. It takes very little time to cover the distance. For those who are interested, here is a video covering what it looks like when someone with a knife runs straight at someone at 21 feet, you will see why the idea that people have time to rack the slide is absurd (https://youtu.be/_2zfw_4DYdQ?t=79).
Six metres is half a tennis court. That's a distance that I can easily run to get in position to hit a volley. Of course you can run that distance and stab someone as he takes his gun out, and if you are to counter that you must move too.
If you're rooted as a tree, of course you'll be killed. You must make use of your own movement to create time, just as Nadal does when he step diagonally back from the ball 'sal y entra'.
people have such insane opinions on this despite the knowledge out there. there are so many videos of self defense shootings out there now, including videos with analysis etc.
people posting talking about combat rolling and chambering after their assailant misses a shot. what the fuck lmao
> people posting talking about combat rolling and chambering after their assailant misses a shot. what the fuck lmao
I generally try to show them a little bit of grace. For many people their sole exposure to firearms is through video games, movies, and television shows. They have a strong "knowledge" of how things work and genuinely have no idea that their ideas are at odds with reality. Its similar to how non-tech people think "hacking" works.
I appendix carry; I’m not carrying chambered, period. My remaining options are to not carry, or carry in condition 3.
I think that’s a simple decision.
If I ever felt the legitimate need to daily carry in condition 0/1, I would move. Cities definitely, provinces generally, nations if necessary. Life’s too short. I’m not in the special forces.
I don’t have to be ready for every conceivable scenario; just most of them. And that’s more than enough.
If history is any guide, now’s the time when someone tells me that not wanting a loaded and cocked .45 pointed directly at my right testicle for 16 hours every single day means that I have a cheap holster or haven’t trained enough or don’t have the right pistol or something. (I’m fairly certain that none of these are true.)
PS: A much more likely scenario than a knife guy charging from 20 feet is a routine encounter with an LEO who wishes to temporarily disarm me during a traffic or Terry stop. I absolutely do not trust some dipshit cop to remove a condition 0/1 pistol from my waistband without fucking it up, which would likely happen right around the time it is pointed at my femoral artery, or worse. Fuck that noise.
Not OP, but having a round chambered can be advantageous in a self-defense scenario, where every second counts. Having to think to rack the slide before firing could be enough for your opponent to get to you first.
People take this "every second counts" idea as though it's axiomatic.
I've been in my fair share of sus situations in my life and they've been either telegraphed (people starting with yelling, then intimidation, then getting into personal space) or ambiguous. I was recently at a block party with a loud DJ, and some guys fired several rounds and it took minutes to figure out what was going on. Even the first responders were amazingly sluggish in their response.
Hell, I had a guy sneak up behind me while I was parked in my car, bang on my window and tried to start shit with me. I had enough time to shoot off a text to my wife to stay put while defusing him.
So I personally think people with good situational awareness have plenty of time to act appropriately in a variety of common dangerous situations.
> I've been in my fair share of sus situations in my life and they've been either telegraphed (people starting with yelling, then intimidation, then getting into personal space) or ambiguous.
The problem is that in a "sus situation" you would not be able to chamber a round without brandishing the firearm, which in many situation would be illegal in a merely "sus" situation where you don't have a clear threat (brandishing laws, intimidation, etc). This is why many self-defense advocates encourage people to carry with a round chambered while also carrying something like pepper spray for situations where lethal force is not necessary.
> So I personally think people with good situational awareness have plenty of time to act appropriately in a variety of common dangerous situations.
Most people I've encountered who carry concealed would agree that you should try to keep yourself from being in common dangerous situations. The reason they carry is not for the avoidable situations, since they'd obviously just avoid them, but for the unavoidable situation. The vast majority of people who carry concealed never need to use their firearms, the point is to be ready to defend oneself and others if the situation should arise.
When I carried regularly I was always *extremely conscious" of having a sidearm(s) at the ready. And, knowing the the civil laws of engagement (=> I read all of Massad Ayoob's stuff) the result—for me at least—it makes you the most meek, chill person ever (if you actually understand the power that you have on tap which I surely did).
Pretty much everyone I know in the gun community would say that all the situations you mentioned are ones where you better not draw your gun.
As another commenter pointed out, drawing your gun in those situations is usually a pretty serious crime (supposedly even showing that you're carrying a concealed gun to ward people off is a crime in some jurisdictions - I haven't verified).
So not sure what the point of your comment is. You're describing scenarios that are irrelevant to the thread.
Oh, and just BTW, lots and lots of cases of people acting like you ending up dead. Acting appropriately in dangerous situations doesn't mean you will come out on the better end.
I recommend everyone who has access to it go into training where you take a real handgun that's been modified to shoot laser and has CO2 recoil. The setup is that you have a screen (perhaps all around you), playing out a scenario. You're in a convenience store, and something may happen that requires you to defend yourself.
Even with a fair amount of training, the adrenalin surge is significant, and the time you have to respond is very limited. Doing this eliminated any illusions I had regarding guns and safety. There's little time to rack the gun to put a round in the chamber. And if you haven't done it, it's not easy to rack a gun (you need the right grip, angle, etc). And racking can fail. Even I, with very limited experience, have experienced multiple failures while racking.
People mentioned videos where people practice doing all this, and time themselves. I saw a video where someone 3 yards away draws a machete and runs at the other person. The time he has to draw and defend is just not enough at 3 yards. One needs to actively dodge the machete while drawing. Adding the complexity of racking is almost a guaranteed failure. The person drawing was very experienced (and a handgun trainer), knew the attack was going to come, and still had a low success rate.
Other things I've had to unlearn:
"Why didn't they just shoot at the legs?" At short notice, in an emergency scenario, aim is very poor. People train for these situations to get a reasonable likelihood of hitting a person without needing to spend time aiming. And the primary way to do it is to aim at the body - not arms/head/legs.
"Why did they have to shoot the person 3 times?" See above. Aim is hard, and there's a good chance of missing. When your life is on the line, you are not going to shoot once and check if it hit. You'll shoot 3 rounds quickly. When I did the simulator, I often shot 4-6 rounds without even realizing it (and was told by the instructor to keep it down).
This may be hard for some to believe/digest. As I said, I didn't believe it until I was put in those (simulated) situations.
Another thing I thought was crazy: People sleeping with a loaded gun by their bed. A guy did a video where an intruder was in the house and running towards their room. They timed different scenarios (unloaded with magazine on the side, different gun safes, etc). He succeeded only with one particular gun safe, and only with the gun fully loaded.
If I ever keep a gun at home, it will not be for "defend against an intruder in the middle of the night". It's just too risky to keep a loaded gun next to your bed. But if you have good reason to believe someone is after you, this is the only way to go.
Having said all that, if I carried a gun, I'd likely not have a round in the chamber. But that's really me saying I'm not going to carry a gun for safety purposes.
> saw a video where someone 3 yards away draws a machete and runs at the other person.
It's probably best to be realistic about what is possible. If somebody tried to whack you on the sidewalk with a machete, they would win 100% of the time, because you're not living 24/7 in a hyper-alert paranoid state keeping an incredibly close eye on everyone 360° around you. Unless you've drawn your weapon 100s of times in near-miss scenarios on people who look like they might be grabbing a weapon because their phone is in a coat pocket or something, it's just the truth. If you're going to live in a society you just kind of have to accept that you could hypothetically be killed in broad daylight by a very-motivated someone with no real opportunity to defend yourself. Happens to organized crime members all the time, and obviously they have way way more reason to be paranoid than regular people.
> If you're going to live in a society you just kind of have to accept that you could hypothetically be killed in broad daylight by a very-motivated someone with no real opportunity to defend yourself.
This is absolutely true, but security in depth, right? Just because it's easy for you to die in public, whether from a premeditated attack or an accident, doesn't mean it's pointless to add on a few layers to make that less likely. After all, everything happens in the margins.
including accidentally shooting yourself, accidentally shooting the wrong person, getting shot by someone else who misread who was the good guy with the gun and the bad guy with the gun, and turning it on yourself when the pressure of it all gets to be too much.
I don't think anyone in this thread disagrees with you on this.
Keep in mind that your point is orthogonal to the topic of whether you should have a round in the barrel or not. Everything you say here applies to both cases. (Well, OK, there's a tiny marginally higher chance of accidentally shooting yourself).
Indeed. I know someone who owns a gun and lives in a very sketchy area. The previous tenant in the apartment was a drug dealer, so sketchy people keep knocking on the door.
Making it very clear that he owns a gun effectively drives all of them away.
But that's where you make clear you have a gun. Concealed carry, by definition, is hiding that fact. There are pros and cons to open carry, but IMO, if you want the gun to act as a deterrent, open carry probably is a lot more effective than concealed carry.
But let's extend the distance to 5 yards. Or 8 yards. Or whatever. There is a distance threshold where racking vs not racking makes a difference. It's not a thin threshold. You probably gain a decent number of yards by not having to rack.
Lots of things can go wrong while carrying a handgun (with or without a round in the chamber). I don't recommend people do it unless they are aware of a specific threat. But once you are under a specific threat, then it doesn't really make sense to carry it without a round in the chamber.
> Another thing I thought was crazy: People sleeping with a loaded gun by their bed.
To me this sounds like not putting your seatbelt on in case you ever need to get out of your car underwater: you're improving your chances at a statistically-unlikely event (home invasion) by making your chances worse at a much likelier event (accidental discharge).
> But if you have good reason to believe someone is after you, this is the only way to go.
What pray tell is this hypothetical threat? Who is this attacker who comes in your bedroom in the middle of the night to use lethal force against you, but gives you time to rouse, grab your weapon, and acquire target? Or they wake you by running in with full knowledge committed to memory of the layout of your house and your sleeping arrangements so that they can beat you to your gun safe? They’ve cased the joint but they’re not going to wait until you come out to get in your car in the morning?
If you believe someone is after you, your resources would be better spent getting support from others, or physically securing your living space, or getting the hell out of dodge.
I said "if you have good reason to believe someone is after you". That precludes hypothetical threats.
People sometimes make enemies who threaten to kill them. Some of them actually try to kill them. Some of them are people who know them and their house/apartment intimately. Start looking around. Lots and lots of cases of people who get out on bail and kill the person in the next few days.
> They’ve cased the joint but they’re not going to wait until you come out to get in your car in the morning?
If you're going to kill someone, are you going to do it that openly, when it may be easier to do it in the home?
> If you believe someone is after you, your resources would be better spent getting support from others, or physically securing your living space, or getting the hell out of dodge.
I actually agree, with the caveat that only the last one works, and is not feasible for many.
A lot is feasible if your life is at stake. Living through a wild west fantasy of beating your murderous ex to the draw is probably the least feasible.
If forced to choose between rampaging through someone’s house in close quarters combat, or waiting outside for them to come to me, I’d pick the latter.
> If forced to choose between rampaging through someone’s house in close quarters combat, or waiting outside for them to come to me, I’d pick the latter.
And many wouldn't.
> A lot is feasible if your life is at stake.
I won't argue the point - people have different opinions on this, and it's not a topic you're going to get a "clear correct" answer for. The point still stands: Some people choose not to leave, and then their options become limited. They often have to live the rest of their life in fear, and not everyone can get a new identity.[0]
Also, as I and others have pointed out - just the mere fact that you have a gun, are trained to use it well, and keep it on/near you at all times will deter a significant percentage of problematic people.
The other thing to point out - this thread is filled with the extremes (including my examples). It's not always the case that someone has planned to kill someone. There is a continuum of threats.
BTW, try living in the rural[1] parts of my state, where everyone has a gun, and the police funding is low, and often the 911 operator will tell people "Sorry, we're out of resources and it'll take at least 30-60 minutes to get to you. Do what you can to defend yourself"[2] People routinely take advantage of the fact that the police will not get there in time, and not having a gun is inviting such folks.
[0] A coworker's father recently passed away. When it happened, he revealed to me that he had lived much of his life in fear that his father would show up at the door with a gun and shoot him. Even when he lived in a different state. Not exaggerating to say he was relieved when he died. Weirdly enough, he got a gun only after his father died.
[1] And by rural, I still mean a proper city where you have neighbors next to you, etc.
Yeah, many people are stupid and/or crazy or just hotheads making rash decisions in the heat of the moment which kind of blows apart your rational calculus of armed deterrence.
I don’t know what your state is. I live in a rural part of my state, and the open warfare you’re describing doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard about. I think it might be time to move, friend. Whatever’s holding you there can’t be worth your life.
im curious where you live where home invasions dont happen. i live in one of the safest states in the US and home invasions happen here.
people actually do commit random violence in home invasions by the way. your having chosen not to look into it at all or read the news ever doesnt negate this. its to say that random violence in home invasions is common, but the point is that it does happen. and i think people should have a very effective means to defend themselves.
theres even been a serial killer that committed home invasions by claiming to be police upon breaking in. this also happened recently with those politicians that got assassinated.
if you dont want to have a firearm thats your choice. dont see why you think this is necessary for other people though.
of course home invasions happen, but they’re rare. and the number involving guns is much smaller. look up the statistics instead of getting scared watching the news.
so a police officer shows up at your door. you’re going to greet them with a gun drawn? that will get you killed.
i do own a firearm, but i don’t walk around with it like a cowboy. and i discourage others because of all the risks mentioned.
As of 2010, about a million home invasions per year in the US, 250k of which end up with the occupier (owner, renter) being a victim of some violent crime.
Not a lot ending in death though.
Also I think the numbers went down a bit from 2010.
lol. a threat of violence can exist without the gun. im glad you are confident in your ability to beat any random, unknown stranger (especially tweakers) in a tussle. as someone with bjj and boxing experience i would say this is unbelievably arrogant though.
>look up the statistics instead of getting scared watching the news.
ive seen the same ones that the other guy replied to you with. this is almost not worth replying to because you are just being snide and dismissive. to reciprocate, do you realize that the statistics (which you havent actually read) aren't the governing force of what happens to you in your life? statistics are a model of reality.
for example, what do you think the odds would say that between when i replied to your post yesterday and now, that i experienced a break in where someone was trying to climb into my son's room at 3 in the morning? do you think my first thought was about the statistical likelihood of it? for the record i live in one of the safest states in the US. life isn't a spreadsheet with numbers on it, genius. if you are comforted by those numbers, good for you. telling others to not be scared of bad things happening to them is peak dork arrogance.
A big part of the fantasy/thought process is you’re trained and vigilant, ready to respond in a split second to some threat in the Home Depot parking lot.
The reality he mentions is very much a reality. Lots of concealed carry folks obsessed with always being vigilant. Good idea not to hang around them, because hypervigilant people are prone to see threats that aren't there.
2.8% of an already rare event is technically non-imaginary, but also definitely rounds down to imaginary.
[edit] on top of that, is it even a one-digit percentage of that 2.8% of a rare event in which having a round chambered made any difference? Yet there are people confidently posting as if it’d be absurd to carry without a round chambered. That’s plainly nuts.
Only an anecdote here: a guy I know claimed to have "defensively" used his gun. When I pressed him, it turned out that he drew his gun on a guy "that looked like a dirtbag" when he was staying at a motel.
From his point of view his life would have been threatened (he might not be alive today!) had he not presented his firearm.
Estimate, if you can, the fraction of the "good guy" episodes that critically hinged on the 1s it takes to rack the slide.
Personally I believe it's a good feature if a guy has to give it a think for 1-2 seconds before blowing away the guy in front of him in the line at Whataburger.
there are hundreds upon hundreds of videos online of self defense shootings, including some where the victim draws second and successfully defends against a shooter. a lot of them happen in brazil too. coming to a thread about guns to state a ridiculous opinion about conceal carry strikes me as something someone mentally ill would do.
Plenty of people spend time and money preparing for low-probability but highly catastrophic events. Purchasing insurance that covers your home for fire damage is one such example.
The fact that the chance of a well-maintained home burning down is vanishingly small doesn’t make this an imaginary risk.
Thinking about how to protect yourself from violent crime and deciding to purchase and carry a gun doesn’t seem fundamentally different.
> The gun has been at the center of dozens of civil lawsuits claiming it has a design flaw, though judges and juries have delivered mixed verdicts over the company’s liability in these shootings.
It does sound like there is a specific design issue to be discussed.
Carry a double-action revolver, with an empty cylinder under the hammer. No chance that dropping it or anything other than a trigger pull will fire it.
If you need more than five rounds, you've already lost.
Military personnel generally can’t carry at all on post/base without a specific need. Nor keep private firearms at home, if on base/post housing.
This policy should tell you something about the actual cost/benefit of private arms as far as overall safety goes. Cuts through the noise and hypotheticals rather nicely.
"This policy should tell you something about the actual cost/benefit of private arms as far as overall safety goes. Cuts through the noise and hypotheticals rather nicely."
Yes, most people will feel quite safe in a secured facility with controlled access, simialar to court houses. Imagine living in a place where everyone has been vetted and the perimeter is secured with armed guards.
Believe it or not, the general public can live in military housing. When the number of vacant homes on any base rises above a certain level, the housing contractor can rent them to anyone it likes. This isn’t common, but it’s possible.
There are tons of incidents with intruders on military bases where I am from. They are atrractive targets for criminals like thieves, too. Guards aren't a very effective deterrent.
Also, everyone I talked to who found suspicious activity while on guard duty confessed to me that they were terrified in the moment even though they were trying to project authority on the outside.
Depends on the base. Most bases have controlled entrances and patrolled perimeters. I do know of some that are more or less open or only require a photo ID for entry, but those don't seem as common. Or maybe times are changing.
Are you in the US? All of the US military bases I have ever been on either have far tighter perimeter security than anywhere bar maybe a high security prison, or have generally pretty good perimeter security and are so far out in the boonies that geography itself limits access.
That mostly tells you about the cost/benefit at a military base. Which is a place where you have to go through a checkpoint with armed people to even get in there in the first place.
These are Security Forces personnel guarding strategic nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. To illustrate the priority of their mission, Global Strike Command ordered that the troops normally carrying pistols be issued assault rifles in their stead.
Sure. Please understand my comment in context replying to that above it - that 'of course there was a round in the chamber because that's how you do concealed carry'.
I should have been more clear: if you're going to carry a firearm on your person, regardless of concealed or open, it should always have a round in the chamber.
That may be your rule, for all I know it's the USAF's rule, but it's not the British Army's, and it doesn't seem logical to me in a military context.
(I probably agree with you in the context of 'out in public and have decided you need a firearm', just not 'on a friendly military base and carrying a firearm as a matter of course rather than any acute reason'.)
The Royal Marines of 43 Commando guarding the nukes at Faslane have loaded weapons.
The Security Forces at the base in question guard strategic nuclear weapons. The other USAF command most concerned is USAFE, where the threat of terrorism against a USAF facility is greater than in the mainland US.
Sure, there are scenarios. Article describes a classroom or briefing type situation though, it's holstered but on the desk. This is not someone on duty guarding anything.
The Israelis famously don't do this except for some special forces. Various videos put out by the IDF demonstrate racking the slide as they draw their weapon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swveA-_1dus
If a vehicle fails to stop at a base entrance, the gate guard hits the button that raises a barrier some distance past the entrance. Then they go for a weapon, if necessary. Post 9/11, that will be something with more power than a pistol.[1]
The barrier solves an old problem - what action to take when a vehicle fails to stop at a checkpoint. Most of the time, it's drunks or minor crazies. Lethal force is excessive and car chases on base are dangerous. Barriers became standard for DoD installations around 2005.
Tactical encounters often progress quickly enough that there's insufficient time to chamber a cartridge before the weapon may need to be fired.
The context of who is carrying these pistols in this command may also help: they're issued to the Security Forces guarding strategic nuclear weapons (and their delivery systems). It is the highest priority security mission in the military.
It makes no difference if there is a round in the chamber unless there is a fundamental design flaw. The P320 is apparently a rare case of this.
This is extremely mature technology. People have been churning out defect-free designs for many decades. It is surprising that a company with the engineering experience and pedigree of SIG Sauer would design something with this issue. It would be like if Airbus designed a plane where the wing sometimes fell off mid-flight.
Not that rare. Gen 1 and 2 Glocks had slam fires (that's right, "Safe Action" Glocks... the irony). The XDS had doubles or slam fires. I'm sure there were others, and now the P320.
Then gen2 glock is old enough to be considered one the original striker fired pistols. The parent is right. There's no reason to be making these kinds of mistakes these days. They industry has been churning out millions of safe striker fire personal carry firearms for decades now.
There shouldn't be a reason for these mistakes, but they keep happening. Do a little digging and you'll see. I've already mentioned the XDS and we all know the P320. The FNS had a similar issue too. I'm sure there are more if we dig. So while there are millions of safe striker fired guns, it appears there are also millions of unsafe ones in the past decade or so.
Firearms should never discharge unless the trigger has been pulled. It's an absolute bare minimum requirement. But you should always assume it will go off in the direction it's being pointed, even if you haven't pulled the trigger.
In most cases with CCW if you were to actually need to use the weapon you would not have time to chamber a round. Even if you did have time (maybe you should run away?), doing so would draw attention to yourself (and might be fatal). The standard advice is to have one chambered or work to getting yourself comfortable with that over time.
This is table stakes for a carry pistol. The goal is to deliver a pistol that can be safely carried while chambered. You do not want to have to chamber if you need the gun.
This is not military, but it's widely advocated in the concealed carry community that you should carry with one in the chamber. The argument is that with modern pistol designs and the right precautions, it's generally safe; and that many scenarios where you might need to defend yourself need all the possible speed you can get. Having to stroke your firearm to load it can easily add 2 seconds to your draw.
That said, given all the stories I've read, I can't imagine carrying a P320 with one in the chamber.
It’s a personal taste kind of thing, where there’s decent arguments either way.
Proponents of having a loaded chamber value having the firearm immediately ready, because a situation where they actually need to draw on someone/something may not have time or space to use both hands to rack their pistol before someone/something is on them.
Those who want an empty chamber consider the increased safety vs potential malfunctions/accidents to outweigh the risks of being less able to respond to a small subset of threats.
There are policies that vary by branch. The USAF, for example, carries the Beretta M9 pistol (Not sure when they switched to Sig? Must be recent) with the safety off, and in double-action mode. So, round chambered, and a single (hard) trigger pull (Or a manual cock + light pull) will fire the round. Dropping it should not fire it.
I had to carry one in my vest in case of emergencies, and I never felt comfortable being one trigger pull from bang, while it's pointed at my waist for extended periods. Also, the double-action pull sucks, and it's harder to aim straight when putting so much muscle into the pull IMO. Had to have the finger on it in a certain way to get leverage. (The single-action pull after doesn't have this issue)
So, I would accept the weapon from the equipment guys, insert the mag, send the slide forward, put it on fire since that's what you're supposed to do... then put it back on safe.
a better alternative would be to not carry. if the stress is gonna mess with your fine motor control, youre probably gonna accidentally shoot a bystander anyways, because you happened to have been laid off earlier in the day.
the stree messes with your memory, so the barista looks like a threat. the stress messes with your fine motor skill, so you hit the guy waiting for his coffee. and of course, you gotta shoot the rest so theres no witnesses to have you charged for not actually doing self defence
a reasonably experienced competitive shooter can draw from a holster and put two shots on target in ~1.25-1.5sec. racking a round while drawing would probably put it around 2-2.5sec. that 0.5-1sec advantage could make a pretty big difference.
Can't pull when someone randomly has the drop on you chambered or not. Have to retreat/conceal first anyways. Far more likely to have a tragic accident than ever saving someone. Not long ago someone accidentally shot the neighbor's house right into the bathroom. Accidents happen way more frequently than random crime and should be the top concern for gun owners.
The police committing accidental/negligent discharges of their service weapons has been a nearly constant source of social unrest in the US... Great example of how people carrying loaded firearms is a public safety hazard.
Since all services have adopted it, idiot proofing should be the main feature of the gun because it will be carried with idiots all the time and casualties accumulate.
This wasn't a case of an idiot, except perhaps placing the muzzle in a direction that a human would be present.
The gun was in the holster, and the entire holster was removed from the belt and placed on a desk. There's nothing in that course of action that would allow a finger or anything to get into the trigger well. The gun should absolutely not have gone off.
I didn’t read nabla’s comment as accusing the deceased of being an idiot. Rather, it was a statement that the military is full of idiots (aka teenage boys) and therefore any standard issue weapon should be designed appropriately.
A gun that can go off on its own even when handled properly is the opposite of idiot-proof.
> the military is full of idiots (aka teenage boys)
The Air Force is not. (The average Air Force servicemember is older, better educated, better paid and subject to more demands than the average servicemember in the other branches.)
> I know some people who went into the air force out of high school. They are idiots
Every population has some idiots in it. My point is the Air Force is difficult to get into, has a high fraction of educated servicemembers [1], has lower turnover and higher pay than the other branches. (Back when we measured IQ, the Air Force had a higher average IQ than the other branches and population.)
I know idiots who work at Google. That doesn't it's safe to assume the average person at Google is an idiot.
Within the context, we’re talking about someone who can be trusted to be mature with a firearm. That’s more true for an average Air Force servicemember than the average American. I’d reflect OP’e scepticism if we were talking about the average Army, Marine or Navy servicemember, in large part because young men are stupid and the folks in those services skew younger than the Air Force.
If it was in the holster, most people don't teach that the muzzle direction rule applies (since in the holster it's supposed to be inert). A lot of carry methods have the muzzle pointing at things you would not want it pointing at when unholstered.
Yeah agreed. If people taught this than thigh holsters would be out (muzzle direction when sitting down), so would shoulder holsters. Pretty reasonable to expect a gun to not go off randomly, especially when reliable drop safety mechanisms have been around for a long time.
There's no holster in the world that would convince me to carry any gun in that position hah. I've seen some advertisement for concealed carry holsters that make me cringe. Only carry position that actively aims the gun at you when you sit down or bend over.
I've never used one, but I did see a police officer with one once. Maybe there's certain sitting positions or something where it's more comfortable to wear all day.
In general the safety rules I was taught were defense in depth -- multiple failures need to happen before someone can get hurt. So, even when you have a holstered firearm, pointing the muzzle away from people is preferable because then if it somehow does fail at least it's less likely to shoot someone.
Obviously that's not always practical, but if you are placing a chambered firearm down on a desk, you might as well try to point it in the direction of least harm, it basically costs zero to do.
"The gun was in the holster, and the entire holster was removed from the belt and placed on a desk."
If they can prove this in the investigation, this completely sinks Sig's defense that this can't happen with the upgraded FCU that they released to supposedly fix this issue since it's in all military variants.
There is a good chance there is security video coverage. Sig is cooked along with whoever their fanboys are in senior command. Hopefully that means the P226 Legion comes down in price :D
I have a 320C that I purchased in 2018 and have shot less than 100 rounds out of. I tried to sell it recently and was offered by two gun stores, less than $200. MSRP was around $500. Very annoyed with Sig over this. Their statements have been no help either, talk about Streisand effect.
That's a normal price drop for most modern plastic guns when trying to sell them to a store. They will offer $200 and sell it for $350 next to the brand new ones at $475.
They are in a peculiar logical pickle: admit the gun is defective and lose all their current lawsuits plus many more that will dogpile on. Plus take a devastating hit to future sales.
Or deny it, saving face and relying on FUD that the discharges (several were caught on video ) were random or somehow the fault of the owners. Sig were even using some anti-anti-gun arguments (the same retorts that 2A people use against no-gun advocates) against their own customers! Saying they weren't being responsible or something along that line. It's a terrible situation for everyone involved.
Interesting... I would have thought that maybe the military variant with the manual safety would be immune to this issue. It seems the manual safety is only a trigger block and not an additional or positive stiker block. It seems this offers no additional safety beyond keeping the trigger guard clear. So much for the military's insistence on a manual safety. Was there really any data showing the units using Glocks had issues related to a lack of manual safety? Sig added one, but clearly it was an afterthought.
One of my best friends runs a firearms instruction program and literally took a grinder to cut his in half... Mine is still in one piece, but I'm unlikely to ever fire it again. Kind of a shame that Sig Sauer chooses to deny/lie over simply addressing the problem head on. No respect and definitely lost a customer in me.
Everyone I know has been saying, for years, to not carry Sig 320s or their variants. Those things are dangerous. It's tragic it took the death of someone from what (at this point) was an entirely preventable outcome.
The Glock, on the other hand, doesn't have a safety lever. Instead, it uses a double trigger pull mechanism to help prevent accidental firing. I've often wondered if a safety lever gives people a false sense of security. With the Glock, you must always assume the gun is ready to fire, which requires careful handling.
I thought most law enforcement and military agencies use the Glock as standard issue. Isn't it?
The Sig P320 (M17/M18) is the successor to the Beretta 92 (M9) as the US military's standard service pistol.
Glocks are the most common among law enforcement in the US these days. The FBI's service pistol is a Glock 19M. Glock claims that the Glock 22 is, "by far the most popular police service pistol in the United States," which surprises me because the 17 and 19 are the service handguns at most big cities, AFAIK.
Yeah, i heard the P320 was originally a non-striker system that they modified to become a striker system to try and save research/development costs from creating a striker system from the ground up, which led to these wildly low tolerances in the FCU and ultimately a poorly designed firearm.
I’ve heard of no issues from the P365 models. A knowledgeable firearm instructor I talked to mentioned the P320 and P365 are entirely different designs internally, and the P365 holds up to Sigs (previously) positive reputation
Lots of informative comments in the thread about how carrying with a chambered round reduces the time and complexity to getting a shot off.
I have limited knowledge of guns. I understood that they had a physical safety switch that had to be manipulated before the firearm could be used. Is that the case? If so, is the safety left off when people are carrying with a round chambered? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of the safety?
The manual safety primarily stops the weapon from firing if the trigger is inadvertently pressed. In these cases, the trigger was allegedly not being pressed when the pistol discharged.
Aside from the manual safety (which is optional on this specific model of pistol), there are a number of passive safeties that normally must be overcome for the weapon to fire. Something appears to be failing in such a manner that the pistols are firing without being commanded to -- the trigger is not being inadvertently pressed, so the manual safety does not seem to be involved.
Most newer handguns don't have manual safeties. The ones that do should be carried with it on. If you carry with it off, you won't have the muscle memory to switch it off in the event it is accidentally engaged. Basically, if it has the safety, you should be doing the motion for disengaging it regardless of it's starting position. Some people still choose to carry with it off. You get into all sorts of odd stuff the more you look into it, such as MARSOC rubber-banding their 1911 grip safeties.
The Springfield XD line has this. At least one S&W Shield model as well. Both are excellent pistols. Not that you're wrong: grip safeties aren't common.
It's amazing to me this P320 problem exists. Making semi-autos safe, even without a grip safety, has been a solved problem for over 40 years. How anyone thought a fully cocked striker is a reasonable design, or that the US military would adopt such a thing, is a disturbing mystery.
After Sig gets financially destroyed, and the US military has to correct this monumental mistake, we can at least look forward to no further designs like this. Who knows, maybe the US will do something intelligent and just issue Glock 17's, like they should have done at least 20 years ago.
The modern philosophy for a defense gun is that the holster is the safety. The holsters make it impossible to pull the trigger, and hold the gun securely all day. They are all supposed to be "drop safe" although there are some exceptions. So if somehow your gun fell out of its holster, it shouldn't discharge if you just let it fall (vs try to grab it).
Technically, a "safety" describes designs and mechanisms by which a firearm discharges if and only if the trigger is pulled.
Colloquially, the word is often used to describe an external safety that must be manually disengaged (otherwise there is no bang even if the trigger is pulled). However, in modern firearms, even those with external safeties also have internal safeties that mean that even with the external safety disengaged, if you dropped the firearm or hit it with a hammer or something, it would not fire.
As others commenters have said, in the case of the P320, the claim is that it would fire without the trigger being pulled; and in the specific case of the airman, it is further claimed that there wasn't even a precipitating physical shock like it being dropped or hit.
> I have limited knowledge of guns. I understood that they had a physical safety switch that had to be manipulated before the firearm could be used. Is that the case?
Some handguns have manual safety switches, others don't. For example, the Sig P365 (an excellent, highly regarded sub-compact pistol often used for concealed carry), has models with or without a manual safety (you can also install a safety yourself if yours doesn't have one). Some handguns also have a "grip safety" which requires you to firmly hold the grip to disable the safety.
> If so, is the safety left off when people are carrying with a round chambered? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of the safety?
Because modern firearms have a variety of built-in safety mechanisms, separate from manual safety switches, which prevent unwanted discharges, the only thing that will cause a good firearm to go off will be the trigger being pulled. Combining this fact with modern form-fitting holsters which fully cover the trigger guard, it becomes impossible to fire the gun while it remains in the holster. This means that even without a manual safety switch you can carry safely without worrying about the gun going off until you draw and pull the trigger.
Echoing another reply to your comment, if you do have a safety on your gun you would typically toggle the safety while training to build muscle memory. This means you would practice enabling the safety, holstering the firearm, drawing the firearm, disabling the safety, and firing in a swift motion so that you always disable the safety when drawing.
> Lots of informative comments in the thread about how carrying with a chambered round reduces the time and complexity to getting a shot off.
This information should be kept in mind whenever anyone, especially a gun advocate, expresses dismay at the frequency of police shootings in America. America is so awash in guns, and people willing to use them, that for the average cop it is better to shoot first and ask questions later than to risk returning home in a body bag. We’ve just been informed that in threatening situations there is no time to chamber a round, but cops are simultaneously supposed to take the time to evaluate the threat to their safety.
> We’ve just been informed that in threatening situations there is no time to chamber a round, but cops are simultaneously supposed to take the time to evaluate the threat to their safety.
I think you have misunderstood the order of operations in a violent encounter. The issue of chambering a round is in light of the fact that you have already identified an immediate violent threat and you need to end that threat. The entire question of carrying chambered/empty is completely separate from threat identification and whether or not a shooting is justified.
You also simply don't appear understand the time scale in which violent altercations and legitimate responses take place. They happen quickly, and so once a threat has been identified you need to remove as many barriers to action as possible. Adding 1/2 to 2 seconds can easily be the difference between life and death after you've already made the judgement about the situation. Again, the issue here isn't whether or not someone has identified a threat but rather how quickly and effectively they can respond after they've identified the threat.
If we want to speak intelligently about use of force and police reform we should avoid conflating unrelated issues (i.e. whether or not an office acted appropriately versus the ability to act properly after a threat has been identified).
These arbitrary distinctions are in your mind. The real world is messy, and there is an algorithmic fallacy at the core of your argument.
You've carefully laid out why carrying a chambered weapon is critical for minimizing the reaction time to a perceived threat. So you've explained why a suspect has his gun chambered. It's anyone's guess when that suspect decides he has "identified an immediate violent threat" in the cop near him. Now the cop, by definition, must identify and respond faster than the suspect pulling out his chambered weapon. That doesn't work well for the cop, and you've optimized away any time for his to reason and react about the situation he's in.
You haven't reasoned about anything you are saying.
> the cop, by definition, must identify and respond faster than the suspect pulling out his chambered weapon
You are correct about what the cop must do here, assuming the suspect pulled a weapon. If that didn't happen, then the cop doesn't necessarily need to do that.
> That doesn't work well for the cop
That is entirely possible (though rare) for a cop. Part of the trade-off of them getting virtually unlimited power to protect others is that potentially saving other people's lives outweighs potentially saving their own lives.
> America is so awash in guns, and people willing to use them, that for the average cop it is better to shoot first and ask questions later than to risk returning home in a body bag.
This is only true in certain circumstances, though it makes a lot of people uncomfortable to discuss.
Yes, cops (should) face higher standards for their behavior and the safety of those around them. That's by design. Supposedly that's why we respect them more than, say, a cashier, but both sides of that deal have broken down.
To me that just sounds like a huge excuse for cops who are rarely ever shot at in real life. The majority of cops never even have a reason to draw or fire their gun their entire career. Being a cop isn't even a very dangerous job, and all but a handful of cop injuries on the job are due to car crashes that they themselves initiated. A random residential framer has a far higher chance of injury and death than cops in even known dangerous and highly criminal areas.
I’m not saying cops are always free of fault, and yes, some are trigger happy goons. But in an environment that affords close to zero reaction time, it is no surprise that cops are trained the way they are, and behave the way they do. Indeed, they are not in danger most of the time. But when they are, they have close to no time to think about it. As a result, it is in the interest of their own well being to assume that all situations are dangerous and to act accordingly.
they don't "go home" in a body bag. they go to the morgue, and to a funeral home, to a grave or an urn. You know about as much about guns as you do about deaths. You are only posting emotionally loaded responses, not actually thinking about a word you say.
That you’ve resorted to quibbling about the literal meaning of a common piece of figurative speech is pretty funny. It also implies you have nothing of substance to actually say on the topic. Instead, you’ve chosen ad-hominem.
you don't even understand the meaning behind your words. you are just parroting phrases about a topic because your tribe said so. they tell you how to think and you just obey, its literally the definition of a religion. a belief without proof.
Beyond the tragedy here - the implication of this is that USAF security forces were carrying a widely understood to be mechanically unsafe handguns in the presence of nuclear weapons. I am not saying a stray round can cause a criticality but shooting a nuclear weapon or its associated delivery and logistics systems is suboptimal.
It's just as bad to be carrying mechanically unsafe handguns in the presence of people.
Not only that it looks callous if you say otherwise, but also the dollar cost the military put on a human life probably is higher than the typical cost of fixing a bullet hole in a nuclear weapon.
The problems with the civilian version (the 320) are well documented (by law enforcement officers and the civilian community) and there appears to be a root cause and solution. (Not an expert but replaced trigger group?)
Two different issues. Drop safe and uncommanded discharge. The rework is only for the former. Sig still denies the latter has ever happened. I'm guessing that's about to change though as I know of 3 separate instances of uncommanded discharge that are well documented. Two with law enforcement (one on video posted earlier in this thread) and now this one). There's something very off with the FCG in this firearm.
I mean the people here are largely from the US. And while some politicians and the media likes to pretend gun ownership is something only deeply conservative rednecks hold to, it simply isn't true, gun ownership and the support of gun owner rights in the US crosses all political and social boundaries. And it makes perfect sense when you realize how few people in the US trust the cops, military, courts, or politicians to protect them from others, and they have seen the very real threats of many groups and organizations that have repeatedly put forth ideals of wanting to kill others for petty ideological bullshit.
On top of that you have to add in the important historical contexts weapons are involved in which garners peoples interest.
And then there is the engineering ingenuity and craft involved in all the mechanics of how they operate and the {hopefully) fine machining and techniques used in creating them, the same way someone might marvel at the internals of different clocks or watches.
Tangentially related: here's a gunsmith going into detail on improper modifications leading to double firing and failed drop tests: https://youtu.be/ppuyoeoTLMA
> That campaign included a successful effort this year to secure a change in New Hampshire law that will protect Sig Sauer from future liability lawsuits regarding allegations the gun should come equipped with certain safety features.
If you want to know how we arrived at this particular moment in American history and society, this is a fine place to start.
1. The P320 had a real issue with firing when dropped. Although it had passed all drop tests, when dropped at a 25-degree angle onto the rear sight, the weight of the trigger was enough to fire the gun. There is a voluntary fix available for older weapons, but no recall has seen necessary.
Now, we have many videos and widespread discussion about this. Millions of people and police officers own P320s, and sometimes they make errors. It's natural to blame the gun when freak accidents occur, especially when they result in injury. The narrative of a big, greedy company trying to hide issues is always present and can be applied to almost anything.
2. Cases where the gun fired without the trigger being touched are very questionable. From lawsuits, examples include: carrying a round in the chamber and wrapping the P320 in cloth to move it; or carrying a round in the chamber and placing the P320 into a handbag. The case where a police officer's P320 fired while holstered (and there's a video of it) was studied by the FBI. The report notes that the officer had keys in his hand when he moved it near the holster. In most such cases, it's very easy to see how something could have touched the trigger. If the P320 had a genuine systemic issue, it would show up in statistics as an above-average number of accidents.
3. Now a separate P320 "out-of-battery fire" issue that's gaining traction online. This is clearly a typical hand-loading or questionable ammunition source issue, which is relatively common with all firearm models.
Summary: Starting with real issue, social media attention attached to some thing can have it's own life. making a typical number of incidents, with a variety of causes, look like a huge trend.
In this situation, the FBI was able to duplicate the ‘spontaneous firing of a chambered round’ by pressing down slightly on the slide with nothing else going on.
SIG needs to get their head out of their ass, or they are going to burn the whole company to the ground.
There are no numerous well documented cases. You link to one well documented case that was document I was referring to. It does not say what you said.
They were not able to duplicate the firing the way you think BRF was able to replicate firing in holster with keys in hand.
---
From the document:
"The MSP motor officer had objects in his hands at the time of the event, including keys."
then
"BRF was successful in using keys, both flat and serrated profiles, to press the trigger while the M18 was holstered. The keys were approximately 1.7” and 1.0” respectively. The trigger could be fully pressed to the rear with sufficient pressure against the side of the trigger only, or by using the holster as a fulcrum. During this test it was observed that the keys caused an abrasion on the trigger guard near the area of the abrasion seen on the weapon when it arrived (Figure 13)."
There was abrasion from the keys in the gun, BRF was able to replicate firing in holster with keys in hand.
From the conclusion: "examination of the subject weapon did not independently provide evidence of an uncommanded discharge it does indicate that it may be possible if sear engagement is lost. The disabling of the striker safety lock through movement and friction creates a condition which merits further exploration to fully assess potential risk."*
“On July 31, 2024, a MSP motor officer was standing in a squad area with other members when
his department issued Sig Sauer M182 fired uncommanded. The firearm was reportedly
secured in the department issued Alien Gear Rapid Force Level 3 holster at the time of firing.
According to the MSP motor officer’s statement and the statements of others present, at no
time was the trigger pressed intentionally or inadvertently3
. The MSP motor officer had objects
in his hands at the time of the event, including keys.
The subject firearm, while in the holster, was removed from the member’s leg and placed in an
evidence bag pending further evaluation.”
Do you work for SIG or something?
Of course someone could reach into the holster with keys and hit the trigger, but there is no conceivable way it could be that in this situation. And this isn’t the only time - I’ve seen several videos of Sig P320’s doing this that are completely unrelated to this situation.
I can read what you wrote. You said that the evaluation duplicate something. Only thing they duplicate was the possibility of key firing. You must be referring to that.
They were not able to duplicate physical malfunction.
Yes. "elements" of physical malfunction, not the malfunction.
That means they were able to individual safety mechanism fail, but not all of them. The intact gun would not fire all by itself if it was hammered in the test.
Add to that they have issued a voluntary trigger system, but not a recall. Meaning they won't admit the problem (required for a recall) but acknowledge a need for a change. Even with the upgraded FCU (which all the military guns should have) there are still reports of this issue occurring.
It’s arguably even worse than that: their entire PR strategy around this issue has been not just denial but “accuse everyone who says the gun has a problem of being Woke Communist Gay Liberals out to destroy America”. If you’re not up to speed with the P320’s issues, it might sound like I’m exaggerating: I promise I’m not, you can go look up their press statements.
I’d call it shameful behavior, but it’s increasingly SOP from a class of people who have deliberately exorcised their ability to feel any shame.
A lot of the discussion in the comments here is about gun mechanisms.
This could be considered gun tech. Note that HN doesn't require posts to be tech related, although this post might be a little borderline regarding the "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." guideline.
There are really two separate claims being made about the P320 and unintentional discharges.
One claim is that the gun can fire when dropped at a certain angle from a certain height. The voluntary "recall" lets you send it back to Sig and they replace some parts. I think the cause was because the trigger itself was bulky enough for a drop to give it enough inertia to fire, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
The other claim is that the P320 can fire without being dropped, and while holstered, seemingly on it's own. That's all I really know about it.
I own a P320, and I consider it an unsafe weapon at this point. I have not had the self-recall fix done and I'll never chamber a round in it again, so I guess it's a paperweight now.
A week or so ago the FBI report investigating an incident of unintentional discharge back in 2024 was released via FOIA. This particular case was a police officer who had the firearm in the holster, and by just normal movement it went off. Multiple layers of the striker fire system safety’s failed, and fired the chambered round.
What was particularly beneficial/unique is the P320 was kept in the holster when given to the FBI to investigate, and only removed after their forensic team X-rayed it, giving us pretty solid case study of how it happens
This guy does a great job going through the report: https://youtu.be/LfnhTYeVHHE
Thanks for the link, but I'm not sure what the point of the 50 minute video is. Here's [0] the pdf of the report. It's really not that long.
[0]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L7RXrneHlzfjrewMFIeeyc-nel3...
Context can be helpful for laypeople
50 minutes of video can be helpful for ad revenue.
Crazy that Sig Sauer is pushing back on this as lies then. (per featured article)
It’s crazy if you have good morals and care about your fellow man.
If you want to make boatloads of cash and don’t care about lives, you follow the rules and the same playbook as Remington did when their rifles suffered a similar self-firing phenomenon that killed customers.
Delay, deny, defend yourself and take in as much cash as possible until you are legally boxed in. Hope at that point your profits are greater than your penalties, such that they are just another cost of doing business.
What amazes me are the Sig Sauer fanatics I see online in the gun communities defending them endlessly as if they can do no harm.
> ...have good morals and care about your fellow man.
Seems opposed to the values of an arms manufacturer.
I’ve yet to see any industry for which it applies.
Delay, deny, defend is a pretty bold position when your customers are guaranteed armed.
Are you seriously suggesting their customers would commit murder over this? And how would admitting their faults make such an unstable, revenge-bent person not want to kill them?
Normal people don't get bent toward murder until all other options are exhausted. I mean this whole thing seems very rare so probably not, but jesus take some fucking ownership. Bald faced lying is pretty fucking enraging and despicable. I'm not sure what you are so worked up about.
I don't think that is crazy at all, our whole system incentivizes corporate behavior exactly like this.
From your tone I assume that you would expect Sig to come forward, analyze, discuss and hopefully solve these problems as soon as possible.
But that would be utterly stupid from their point of view. Public opinion cares very little about the details-- anytime you get associated with issues like this is simply bad for your brand/stockpric: downplaying, denying and gaslighting is absolutely the way to go here for the company.
IMO to fix this you would need to strongly increase personal liability specifically for misinformation and delays in cases like this, and we would need to reward good behavior (proactive fixes, honest communication).
But just look at the whole tetraethyl lead debacle: This cost at least a million years of human lifes (!!), after the lead industry denied known problems and purposefully obstructed/discredited critical researchers (e.g. R. Buyers and H. Needleman) for decades. I strongly believe that a number of decisionmakers should have ended up with a dead penalty or lifelone imprisonment, but there were ZERO consequences for anyone involved, and current rethoric around "deregulation" makes it obvious to me that zero lessons were learned.
I agree culture these days is default corrupted and crazy. Still crazy though. I think we need good old fashioned justice.
Eh, SIG is losing a lot of customers for life with the way they are treating this situation.
Well yeah cause they get shot.
[dead]
I'm a recently licensed firearms owner from Canada and as part of the safety training part of the licensing process, I became aware of how unsafe the P320 seemed to be. It really feels like that model needs to be taken off-market, undergo significant redesign, and for Sig's marketing sake, probably re-emerge as some new model like the SP321 where the S stands for "safety" :-)
What I'm not as familiar with is why hasn't Sig done this? It really feels like they've been doing ad-hoc patch design adjustments to a fundamentally unsafe design at this point. But I'm also not very knowledgeable about firearms yet.
It's really sad because, straightforwardly, there's no penalty for just saying PEBKAC. Gun industry has tons of US legislative-granted legal immunity lest they ever accidentally become victim of a legal process that holds them accountable for, say, a mass shooting.
They've been saying it was a political witchunt and avoiding dealing with it. This, hopefully, breaks the dam.
I've spent my career working with great marketers and I don't think any single one of them would advocate for the approach that Sig Sauer took with that stupid "It Ends Today" campaign. In fact, I'm sure all of them would have recommended the exact opposite.
They should very quickly pivot to a "It [100% Safety] Starts Today" remedial campaign admitting there's a problem, following-up with full transparency about how they plan to reorient their organization to make the situation better, then providing frequent proof of progress towards the safety goal. There's a critical window for them to turn this from a crisis that might sink the US division of the company to one that serves as the basis for why they were compelled to adopt safety-first design processes for their guns.
This is their version of the [1982 Tylenol Crisis](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/tylenol-murders-1982) but they've really fumbled the ball so far.
The issue here is a question of whether the product is defective. The various legislation passed to protect firearm manufacturers against nuisance “defective product” lawsuits in the specific case where the product functioned as intended and was used illegally by a violent criminal, do not apply.
This is not a political issue. This is a discussion about whether a product is defective.
> The various legislation [...] do not apply.
Well, except specifically for Sig Sauer on the topic of an external safety in New Hampshire[0]. Which, given that's the thing people have been filing lawsuits in New Hampshire about, is a bit of a political issue, no?
[0] https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-05-28/sig-sauer-p320-pisto...
The lack of an external safety is not a defect. Many guns, probably a majority of new sales don’t. Anyone buying P320 knows there is no external safety. Sig should be liable for defects, and potentially negligent design, but seems reasonable not to be able to sue them for not including an external safety.
The US military uses the M17 and the M18, two versions of the P320 that have manual safeties.
And most US law enforcement uses Glock pistols, which are also famous for having no external safety. There's a lever integrated into the trigger such that the trigger must be pulled before it can travel backward, and there's a safety internal to the slide that ensures the firing pin cannot travel forward until the trigger has been pulled, but there is no external safety anywhere. Pull the trigger (by any means, finger or otherwise -- tangled up in string, caught on a pointy object like a pen, whatever) and it will fire.
I think the new law preventing the suing of manufacturers for not including external safeties is a good thing.
I also think Sig Sauer are intentionally gas-lighting the public on the safety of the P320/M17/M18 and should withdraw it from the market.
Edit: I have nothing against Sig Sauer in general. I've shot a P228; it's a beautiful weapon, and I would buy one in a heartbeat. You couldn't pay me enough to have a P320.
I do not think that allowing people to sue gun companies for not having an external safety is a good way to accomplish the goal, if the goal is actual safety.
If the consumer protection bureau of a state wants to make an external safety a requirement for pistols sold in the state, I think that is a legitimate use of government authority and is used all the time with other kinds of products. Personally I think such a proposal evinces a complete lack of understanding of modern handguns and I would be opposed to it, but it is a legitimate use of government powers, and is not just a back door way to sue a disfavored company out of existence.
For this particular case I think that discussing external safeties is a distraction. In my opinion a handgun should not discharge under any circumstance where no one and nothing pulled the trigger. As a firearm owner I have that expectation of every firearm I own. I deliberately chose not to buy an Sig 320 because of the large number of reports of accidental drop related discharges; it makes me think that there might be a design defect.
And it still does not help, because the safety only blocks the trigger but not the striker from firing, thus the Air Force incident that started, this topic, became possible.
This is about lots of money, which always is a political issue, especially in the US. The fact-finding discussion is only relevant in court.
To be fair, they're just straight up Wrong, capital-W. Trying to apply a general idea of legislation to a very specific scenario with lots of details and specific legislation. See sibling comment, Zimpenfish.
There's no computers nor chairs involved, however.
You ever heard the phrase "chair force"?
It's a shame, because it is a super nice gun to actually shoot.
But at this point, given how Sig has responded (the article has a nice summary), the cover-up is bigger than the crime, almost. The trust is broken at an organizational level.
I don't feel like all manufacturers would respond like this, and it isn't the response I expect from somebody reputable.
Yeah, too bad. It’s actually quite an innovative and cool design. Shoots pretty good for a striker (still a far cry from CZs and 2011s). The ecosystem also started to develop around it (eg 1911 angle grips, high quality holsters, etc.) Sig optics and accessories also got quite good, too.
https://youtube.com/shorts/cOUfurKIjnI
Consider the Canik TP9SF Elite rather than the ubiquitous Glock. My EDC is an TP9 Elite SC. Thousands of rounds through it and support is outstanding. Several advantages and features over big G. Nothing wrong with the Glock 17 G5 or 19 G5.
I don’t know if the Sig P320 has a similar firing pin safety design to the P365, but I optioned to go with Springfield Hellcat vs P365 specifically because the Hellcat has two separate safety catch points on the firing pin assembly, thereby eliminating a single point of failure, while the P365 essentially has one (see photos here https://www.reddit.com/r/gunsmithing/comments/f7dgnl/how_saf...). Glock has also has a redundant “two-catch” internal safety design, and has a well established safety record (hellcat just worked better for my needs; glock was an equally good choice from a safety standpoint). It’s common in the US to carry in “ready” configuration (barrel loaded); IMO if you choose to do this, a single point of failure is unacceptable. It’s why hammer fire (with hammer disengaged requiring initial DA trigger pull to push hammer back) can be safer; you can also cover the hammer with thumb while drawing and feel if the trigger is accidentally engaging, helping to prevent a negligent discharge.
For anyone interested, here is a video showing Glock internal safety mechanisms: (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg2tlV1oqVM).
A mechanical description of Sig P365 internal safety in comparison to Glock: (top comment from https://www.reddit.com/r/SigSauer/comments/c5ddz5/can_someon...).
Video comparing P320 to Glock internal safeties: (https://youtu.be/dLm23zJGSL0) Note: it does appear that P320 has a more robust internal safety design than the P365.
I think the first claim is cover for the 2nd. if they admit there are uncommanded discharges, their reputation is decimated and they will lose an entire batch of lawsuits. If they dont do anything, guns will keep uncommanded-discharging until there is overwhelming evidence (I think we're at that point already)
Use to really enjoy shooting SIG, they felt well made, reliable, hell the military was adopting them over the 1911... Nothing led me to get rid of it, but I just found Glock to make a better handgun all around. Either way, much prefer single action revolves for their safety, accuracy, and reloading.
> I have not had the self-recall fix done
Why? Also, isn't that only an issue in early P320s? (at least according to Sig)
> and I'll never chamber a round in it again
Isn't this good enough for most uses? Heck, a long time ago I was trained to only chamber after unholstering AND entering a situation requiring quick response. The extra round not being worth the risk. 17 instead of 17+1 for the 9mm P320, right?
Honestly, this all smells like an overblown hysteria campaign to pump American brands. I would like to see the accidental discharge rate per units in use. This is one of the most popular handguns.
From that angle, we can also argue that losing a door or a plane or two during flights is not a big issue for Boeing and people in general, because it's the only problem known with these planes, and it happens pretty rarely, no?
Heck, even if we believe Boeing, it's the pilots' problem who are not retrained for the new plane which doesn't need training.
Honestly, also this Boeing thing smells like an overblown hysteria campaign to pump American planes.
> Honestly, this all smells like an overblown hysteria campaign to pump American brands.
Sig Sauer, Inc is an American company, and M17/M18 are manufactured solely in US. Afaik the design is also from US.
> Sig Sauer, Inc is an American company
It appears to be the American half of a German-owned transnational company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIG_Sauer
The German company and American company are clearly related, given the German company is alleged to have manufactured and shipped firearms to the American company with falsified end-user certificates, which the American company then resold to Colombia in violation of German law: https://www.nhpr.org/post/ceo-nh-gun-maker-facing-five-years...
> to pump American brands
Sig is an American company, owned by a German holding corp, but still significantly more American than any other pistol mfg being considered, Glock or Beretta.
Too many examples of the discharge happening in YouTube and Sig gaslighting the public about it and blaming liberals made it even worse. The gun had a recall after fighting the public and then there were still problems. I hear the issue may be tolerance differences between part versions that can lead to the safety failures when mixed together.
The brand damage has been significant, but for the most part isolated to this pistol. Now, if another Sig model has a similar issue in the future and a similar response comes from Sig, the loss in trust will be immense and potentially unrecoverable.
As far as not keeping a round in the chamber, yeah, some people still do that, though that method has fallen into disfavor amongst the CCW types. But even when not ready to fire, there is a lot of time when that pistol could be loaded and go off, I.E. holding the pistol at low ready. Pistol on the bench facing down range as you check something or take a pause, unloading and reloading etc.
Pistols are already incredibly easy to accidentally hurt oneself and others that adding in this variable is just intolerable for most I think.
The gun community wants that gun to work reliably, that means it must fire when intended to fire, and only then.
I've had one since before the military adopted it. I've been carrying it for years daily. It has never once went off on its own. I run with it, jump with it, have carried it in a small cross body bag. It has never just fired by itself. I have over 5k rounds through it.
The only time my gun has went off was when I pulled the trigger. Has your gun ever went off without pulling the trigger?
Most of the videos I see on YouTube are people who were fiddling with the gun, in some kind of physical altercation, or carry some sort of back on the side they carry. I didn't get the fix from Sig either.
I think it's crazy to use anecdotal evidence to decide to continue to use a gun with a small chance of accidental discharge.
Dont all guns have a small chance of accidental discharge? Improper handling and ignoring the firearm safety rules is not something I regularly do.
No, mine has never discharged without intention. I have had it for years and have put thousands of rounds through it. I keep it clean and maintained properly, and the only issue I've ever had with it is some jamming when using crappy FMJ range ammo.
All that being said, I'm not trying to say there is definitely an issue with the P320, but there is enough out there to give me some doubt. Perhaps there will be a fix at some point, but until then it's just not worth it to me.
This also isn't happening with other guns. If you google any other gun brand and the words unintentional discharge, you will still only get results for the P320.
> I've had one since before the military adopted it. I've been carrying it for years daily. It has never once went off on its own. I run with it, jump with it, have carried it in a small cross body bag. It has never just fired by itself.
I mean, that’s quite literally survivorship bias…
Ah, Sig. On the one hand, gold (P365). On the other hand, painful, agonizing failure (P320).
If you make new-design firearms in any significant volume, you will have safety recalls. I don't know how many times I've gone to another gunmaker's website to see a banner announcing a safety recall. The important thing is that you stand behind your product 100%, and Sig's not doing that, even with arguably the most prestigious military contract in the world that one can hope to get for their pistol.
I wouldn't purchase any new Sigs after seeing how they've doubled-down on denial here. This is a life-taking/life-saving tool. It cannot be wrong; it cannot fail.
P365 is great if it fits in your hand. But agree, denial has me pretty put off.
P365XL, no?
Although, a short grip is a feature for conceal carry, in my opinion. Even with nicer "winged" appendix holsters, the grip can still print fairly easily on fuller-sized handguns.
The P365 has a design flaw where there is a pinch point on your palm when changing magazines.
The first time my partner used it, she gave herself a blood blister on the palm of her hand.
Additionally, the trigger is super mushy, with like 4 different sticky break points, where only the last one is actually for firing. I hated everything about it; we bought it only because it fit her hand.
It was my first and last Sig. I have no idea why people buy pistols that aren’t Glocks.
I've had good luck with the P365s I've fired, though with Sig's apparent lack of QA, perhaps they're not consistent across production batches.
Re: your partner's hand and the blood blister, did you ever find something for that?
"I have no idea why people buy pistols that aren’t Glocks."
Jam halfway through a magazine? I'll stick with my Ruger from the 80s, thanks.
What about P226? I heard only raving reviews on that one.
>> I have no idea why people buy pistols that aren’t Glocks.
Eh, that glock grip never felt right to me. The moment I picked up a PPQ it felt like someone had designed a grip specifically for my hand.
There is a lot of accidental discharge happening when people holster their pistol improperly and the trigger snags on something or they inadvertently press the trigger while grabbing it. However, I’ve seen at least one footage of a Sig 320 discharging while properly holstered (Sig tried to claim the retention hood wasn’t properly closed but it clearly was): https://youtube.com/watch?v=OSAI_HUZDI0
Not knowing anything about guns I would assume you would engage the safety when putting the weapon in the holster. Is that not true?
~"It's complicated".
There's really 2 different things here:
Firstly, there's "How many things are between my finger on the trigger and shooting the gun". The furthest you get is not having a round in the chamber, where you have to pull back and release the slide to chamber a round. In that state, basically nothing you do to the trigger or any other part of the gun will result in a discharge. You could use the gun to hammer a nail into a board and it would be really inefficient but also not result in you shooting anybody. From there, you can have a round in the chamber but the safety on. Some guns have no safety. Some guns have more than one (a common combination is a toggle safety and then a bar built into the trigger that must be pulled first before the trigger can be pulled). The safety's job is to stop the gun from slamming the firing pin into the back of the round. All of this matters a lot for the kind of issues that were common with Serpa holsters, where users tended to slide their finger along near the trigger and were accidentally pulling it as part of their draw from the holster.
Secondly, there's "is there anything stopping the firing pin from just smacking the round and firing it w/o the trigger or anything else being involved". In some guns, the firing pin is physically blocked from striking the round until the trigger is pulled back: there's a piece of metal or other impediment that's in the way, and when you pull the trigger it slides out of the way and then the mechanism pushes the firing pin forward. But in other guns, that isn't the case: the firing pin is held away from the round by some style of tension, but isn't physically blocked. On those guns, if you have a round in the chamber and you whack the gun in the wrong direction, the firing pin can push into the round and fire it. Sig's prior claims were that this was not possible on the P320. Evidence suggests that they are incorrect.
This is a hard question to answer, but I'll try to boil it down to this specific firearm. Many handguns, like all Glocks and many Sigs, these days are "striker fired," meaning there's an internal hammer that strikes the hammer versus an external hammer. Internal hammers are more complicated than external hammers, and that includes, in the case of Glocks, two built-in safeties internally that would prevent misfires. The only way they would fire is if the trigger is pulled. Period.
There are no external safeties for the operator to engage with these handguns. They will only go off the trigger is pulled - so drops should not set it off, nor the actions in the video. You have to intentionally pull the trigger for the gun to go off, which is the ultimate last word in safeties.
There are still semiautos with external safeties hammers, the most famous being the 1911. These are what's called single actions. The trigger weight (amount of pull on the trigger) is relatively light, so they have an external safety for the operator to engage/disengage.
I personally prefer single actions, hammer cocked, safety engaged, but this is always a very, very personal preference by people that carry. I own Glocks, but I would not carry one because of the lack of external safety, however, I would never criticize anyone that does. This is 100% strictly boils down to what the person is comfortable doing.
> Glocks, two built-in safeties internally that would prevent misfires. The only way they would fire is if the trigger is pulled. Period.
Two built in safeties, plus a half-cocked striker instead of fully cocked like Sig. Another big difference is that one of the safeties is a physical thing sitting in between the striker and the primer. The equivalent on a sig 320 is a physical thing sitting in front of a lug attached to the striker, not actually in between the striker and the primer. That makes it a single point of failure, because if the lug shears off of the striker, the gun immediately discharges.
The big failure case for a Glock is something (drawstring, etc) getting into the holster and pulling the trigger. If you commit to never holstering without going really slow and shining a light down in there to verify nothing is getting at the trigger, it's safe. Which works if you just never take it out of the holster except at the range. Remove the holster and gun as a unit, stick holster and gun together in a safe, etc.
The absence of external manually activated safeties is really orthogonal to whether it’s striker fired or external hammer fired. There are countless guns that have external hammers with traditional double action or single action modes, but still lack an external safety. This is true of many many SIG and HK models.
This is why I said I'm boiling it down to the 320. It gets too complicated to throw in DA/SA
Many modern guns for personal protection do not have manually actuated safeties and instead rely on other mechanisms to prevent accidental discharge. For example, glocks have a "trigger safety." Without getting into minutia, these sort of features do a fine job of ensuring the gun does not fire unless the trigger is intentionally actuated.
The reason manual safeties are going away is that for side arms, time matters A LOT. Gun fights are typically over within just a few seconds and the person who fires first has a huge advantage. A long time ago there were quite a few major incidents involving police and manual safeties which resulted in most departments changing their policies such that they carry with the safety off or, typically these days, glocks which have no manual safety.
Regarding the p320. For one, the 320 does not have a trigger safety. In fact, there are numerous "innovations" on this firearm which were made to cut costs, improve trigger feel, and various other things. This rose a lot of suspicion when the gun first came out actually - especially the lack of a trigger safety which many consider essential for striker fire guns intended for carrying on your person. On top of that, sig did end up making a p320 with a safety as this was a military requirement. The thing is, it is possible that the "innovative" sear mechanism within the p320 may allow the gun to fire even when the safety is engaged. In fact, there have been reports of just that happening.
The gun that was being carried in Air Force incident is the military version of the p320 which does in fact have a manual safety. Also, the leaked reports state the incident happened whenever the gun was in the holster and the holster was removed and placed on a desk facing the victim. This is when the gun misfired striking the victim in the chest. There is speculation that the gun may have in fact had the safety engaged whenever this happened. If so, this would explain the prompt response by the AirForce.
Regardless, the purpose of manual safeties are not to prevent guns from discharging on their own (aka. "uncommanded"). Manual safeties are intended to protect against "accidental" discharges where the trigger gets pulled "accidentally." That's not what happened in the above video or the AirForce incident.
One more thing to note. The officer in this video was using a Sig Sauer holster so there should be no risk of the holster itself being the problem.
> The reason manual safeties are going away is that for side arms, time matters A LOT. Gun fights are typically over within just a few seconds and the person who fires first has a huge advantage.
I know there are a lot of people who share this opinion, but speaking as ex-military, I think it's quite disingenuous and dangerous. Real life isn't some old-fashioned Western film where draw speed matters. If an adversary is malicious, carrying a round in the chamber, and decides to pull on you, he has the element of surprise. There is no real-world situation where you are really just that much better at drawing and firing accurately that you will out-draw an adversary who drew on you first, with the possible exception of Special Forces / Navy SEAL types who drill it ad-nauseum and had 99th-percentile reaction speed to begin with. But thinking that ordinary people can do it is sheer hubris. Thinking you can do it from concealed carry is utterly laughable.
In a real world firefight you're either close enough where martial arts is relevant or you're not. If martial arts are relevant, then the guns are irrelevant. If you're further away, what matters is whether you can get behind cover, which will give you time to unholster your weapon, disengage the safety, and chamber a round.
You don't decide to carry a gun in public because you think it will save you if someone walks up to you from behind and decides to shoot you in the back. You do it for the times when gunfights are not resolved with the first shot. Responsible citizens carry their guns in such a way that prioritizes the safety of those around them before their own personal safety.
This isn’t true in robberies where someone pulls a gun as an intimidation tactic.
There are plenty of videos where the store owner shoots a robber who pulled out a gun before the robber could fire.
It's rather debatable whether it should be legal for store owners to shoot robbers and call it self-defense; not all states protect shop owners in such circumstances, and state law may differentiate between when robbers pull lethal weaponry and when robbers pull toy guns that were not actual lethal threats. In the US you take further risk if there end up being racial differences between the shop owner and robber. Consider https://www.quora.com/When-is-it-legal-for-a-shop-owner-to-s... as a quickly Googled example.
A shop owner's actual best strategy, in states without firm stand-your-ground or castle doctrine laws that also apply to businesses, is probably an under-the-counter button that calls for police as a silent alarm while responding slowly to stall for time (and consider closing up shop and moving if local police are not quick and reliable to respond). Even in states with more friendly legal environments, risking your life by drawing to defend your inventory or cash register is practically the definition of penny-wise, pound-foolish. You are risking your life over, what, several hundred or a few thousand dollars? And even if you do walk away from the gunfight, how much would it cost to repair all the damage from the gunfight; if you get injured, how much are the hospital bills and subsequent increase in your medical insurance premiums?
No, while the Second Amendment may still be alive on paper, I think its protections don't do much for shop owners these days. A more effective defense would be if that police-alarm button also released a quick-acting sleeping gas, but those aren't really available in real-world contexts and carry lots of unintentional risks.
Do you have any examples of a store owner being convicted for shooting an armed robber?
Because I can show examples of store clerks being executed despite fully complying with the armed robbers.
What does any of that have to do with your stance that carrying with a safety on is just as effective? When root causing problems, it's important to compartmentalize. Whether or not someone should carry a firearm is completely orthogonal. Especially in this instance where clearly it makes sense for military security forces protecting nuclear facilities to carry.
Data has shown that if you have a need to carry a firearm on your person, it is prudent to carry with one in the chamber and the safety off. For this reason, firearm manufacturers have been using this as a design criteria. It's not impossible to design safe firearms which meet this criteria. See Gaston Glock.
Back on topic, the Sig P320 was designed to not have a safety. The military version has one, but that's only because military requirements hardly ever change. The P320 and it's military counterpart, the M17, are designed to be carried loaded with no safety. The fact that they randomly go off when doing this is not a failure of the operator or some systemic societal problem. It's a failure of Sig to meet design requirements.
Stop victim blaming.
>A more effective defense would be if that police-alarm button also released a quick-acting sleeping gas, but those aren't really available in real-world contexts and carry lots of unintentional risks.
Rapid fog generators seem ridiculous at first glance, but they're remarkably effective in many circumstances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX-130jedbo
I suppose the robberies where the shop owner gets shot instead aren't getting the same amount of clicks like the "justice being served" ones, so maybe that's the explanation.
There are in fact civilian situations - many of them captured on camera - where the difference between carrying in condition 1/2 vs condition 3 is critical to the outcome. Active Self Protection on YouTube has thousands of examples of defensive incidents involving firearms, and the cost of the extra time and mechanical complexity to rack a round is a common theme.
THIS.
Unfortunately, public perceptions are mostly driven by:
(1) Mass media portrayals - which are carefully scripted to maximize market share, clicks, and sales
(2) Rule of Cool - or whatever "feels right", to emotionally-driven humans living in a society where guns are a major point of contention in a bitter culture war
Ex-military in what?
A tank wouldn’t ride around empty. You wouldn’t search a house with an empty rifle. You wouldn’t go on patrol with an empty rifle.
EDC !== military engagement
Why is every opinion qualified as "ex-military" always tend to be hyperbolic, technically incorrect and full of appeals to authority rather than actual factual information?
> There is no real-world situation where you are really just that much better at drawing and firing accurately that you will out-draw an adversary who drew on you first
There is, and it is called training. Get a timer, hit the range, and get your shots on target from concealment in under a second - while getting off the "x" - this is a standard I have trained many people to meet first-hand. And it doesn't take a specialist to get this level of training, either; it takes a few years, several thousands rounds of ammunition, and periodic maintenance, just like any craft.
> In a real world firefight you're either close enough where martial arts is relevant or you're not. If martial arts are relevant, then the guns are irrelevant.
Disparity of force - another well known concept you ought to familiarize yourself, especially as it is one of the most critical elements of legal defense in a shooting.
> Responsible citizens carry their guns in such a way that prioritizes the safety of those around them before their own personal safety.
Smart people legally carry a firearm to defend themselves and their family only from unexpected deadly threats. They would never intervene, get involved with, or otherwise "rescue" anyone else with lethal force. The "sheepdog" mentality you've put on display is honestly offensive and gives a bad name to firearms owners.
> it is called training
Even if I take you at your word for the sake of argument, what percentage, do you think, roughly, of gun owners are going to take "a few years, several thousand rounds of ammunition, and periodic maintenance" to get to that level? Because guns without manual safeties are sold to people regardless of such skill level, and no such demonstration of skill is required for licensing in order to purchase such a manual-safety-less weapon. Especially in legal environments where the Second Amendment is used to justify weapons purchases without or with minimal licensing or other restrictions, it is all the more incumbent for people to understand what their real limitations are, for their own safety.
> Disparity of force
Perhaps, instead of "a few years" at the range, you might want to take a couple of self-defense classes? In the range where martial arts matter, skill is a far greater determinant than sheer physical size. I'll grant you that martial arts is not a universal strategy (e.g. people in wheelchairs), but I would also argue that, of the people for whom martial arts is not a strategy, in a significant plurality if not a majority of cases where such incompatibility is due to frailty, such frailty will also usually preclude the kind of "few years, several thousand rounds of ammo, and periodic maintenance", not to mention reaction speed, that it would take to actually succeed in a drawing contest.
> They would never intervene, get involved with, or otherwise "rescue" anyone else with lethal force.
Many, many Good Samaritans out there would disagree with this offensive take that shows more how society has disintegrated than anything else in this thread. The audience should note that I, someone who does carry, am apparently a "sheepdog" because I decide to employ a manual safety, am aware of my limitations, and encourage others to be honest with themselves instead of thinking that they're big people just because they went out and bought a firearm.
For what it's worth I'm also "ex-military" and the person you are replying to is in fact wrong. For many, a "manual safety" is a preference but for others confident in their training it's not necessary or desirable. I also own a P320 (but will be purchasing a Glock soon) and stopped shooting in shortly after these stories came out. Unfortunate, because all things considered I really did like that pistol. Anyway, depending on branch of service, deployment experience, time in service etc a lot of veterans' experience with handguns is minimal, amounting to firing enough rounds on the qual range once a year. No idea about OP's experience, but these things do tend to correlate if you get my meaning.
Well said.
[flagged]
Great so us petite women are back to having a natural disadvantage to would be attackers. My gun is an equalizer. Doesn’t guarantee me safety but when I’m on that empty subway car late at night and a large aggressor enters the car, I’m at least on equal footing.
Those who wish to disarm us women are doing so from a position of luxury. Where you’re never felt what it’s like to be completely at the mercy of those drastically bigger and stronger than you. Or perhaps you come from the luxurious position where rapes don’t occur by large unarmed men.
Either way you’re not a friend of women’s rights.
The emphasis of identity politics talking points here gives off the same vibes as a lot of "as a black man" style posts
I don’t “identify” as a petite comparatively weak individual, it’s just a physical fact. I’m not ashamed that I’m weaker than most men. I fail to see where “identify politics” entered into my post.
Instead everyone brings guns into everyday situations like road rage.
[flagged]
That isn't going to stop crime in the US or make dangerous areas in the US really any safer though. Nobody is concerned about someone legally carrying deciding to randomly shoot them.
Plenty of mass school (or other) shootings were done by legal firearms, using legally bought ammo.
I get what you say, but if folks are smart they should be concerned by any firearm, legal or not. Its trivial in US to obtain one if your record is still clean, you can be a proper psycho weirdo and still get it.
The people afraid of doing psychotests to get a gun which can kill tens of people easily in skilled hands... I'd say they are afraid for a good reason. Its like being afraid of driving test to get the license to drive.
Okay now you’re being hyperbolic in the other direction. There are plenty of incidents of minor arguments / road rage turning deadly because someone legally carrying decided to draw and use their firearm when there wasn’t any imminent danger.
It’s certainly not the norm for gun violence in public but it’s certainly not a nonexistent risk either.
Okay yeah sure, it can and does happen on occasion, but how often matters a lot. We can't just ban everything over every rare and unlikely scenario, and it will still do basically nothing to stop 99.9% of gun crime. Plus from when the CDC was allowed to research such things, they found between 500,000-3,000,000 cases of defensive firearm use per year in the US, 2-10x as high as violent crimes.
Maybe you live somewhere privileged enough that you can rely on the police to protect you, but most of the US doesn't. For many people in the US police response is 30+ minutes, and the police themselves pose as much of a threat to them as the criminals they are calling about if a potential danger.
And more people with guns is what is going to stop crime and make dangerous areas safer?
I never said it would make things safer, but it isn't the cause of our crime problems.
I live in the Netherlands a country with a huge drug cartel problem and still civilians don't carry guns.
Criminals shoot eachother and occasionally they shoot law enforcement if they are really dumb. Normal people when there is a shoot out just hide until the incident is over. You'd have to be stupid to get involved. More guns do not equal more safety- especially not because your average wannabe Rambo can't shoot for shit.
And how is that different than the US? Do you think people when they hear gun shots all grab their guns and run outside in the US? The US has a crime problem, but that crime problem is neither caused by guns nor will be solved by gun prohibitions.
Even despite the prevalence of legal firearms the US busts illegal gun factories every week, there is no feasible way to disarm the US population except through them wanting to be disarmed and willingly destroying their guns. And until US police stop shooting people with impunity, courts stop imprisoning people for being poor, the government stops deploying armed US troops on US soil and running a gestapo squad, and until crime rates drop to something not resembling countries without functioning governments, I don't see why the US population should want to disarm themselves.
Some people choose to cower when there is danger, others choose to act in defense.
You may choose to call one group of people "normal", just as I could about the other, but it is plain to see how silly that is.
The short answer is that modern handgun design leans away from safeties that must be actively toggled by the user in favor of automatic safeties and interlocks that are transparent to the user, like the seat switch in a riding mower. Manual safeties still exist but they're considered an accessory feature.
That video is nuts. Should never happen
I recently bought a SIG P320, and a week later, I started reading articles about it self discharging. =P It’s not like it happens all the time, but it seems that if the safety lever spring’s thickness is off by a thousandth of an inch, and the height of the post it fits on is also off by a thousandth of an inch, and you drop the pistol at just the right angle with enough force, the FBI reportedly got it to discharge once during testing—though officially, the results are inconclusive. Now, some law enforcement agencies are quietly replacing the P320 with the Glock 19. Personally, I’m keeping mine because it’s a great gun, and I love that 21-round magazine. However, I sent in my warranty card in case there’s a recall or something similar.
Odds are, you'll never experience the self-discharging issue. Having said that, I don't find a mostly-reliable firearm acceptable from a safety perspective. If I don't pull the trigger, it cannot go bang, ever, for any reason.
I’m not taking odds on an edc item which takes a lot of banging around. Glock 18 is a simple choice.
I'm still very curious why the P320 beat out the venerable Glock 17 & 19 combo in the Army's recent selection. It would seem being able to change from duty to compact is more of a gimmick than practical. I'd wager most P320's will spend their service life in exactly one configuration.
Sig does have a way of making every pistol feel like it was custom molded to your hand - but Glocks "Just Work".
"I just want them to make one with a damn thumb safety and if this competition won't make them do it, nothing will." - some US Army ordinance guy about Glock, probably.
COLT 1911 45 ACP condition 1.
Charged and locked, hard to screw that up.
"Cocked & Locked" is usually how people refer to this - and it is easy to screw up. Under stress, people's fine motor skills vanish, sometimes resulting in the safety not being disengaged as you draw from the holster. Additionally, it can be accidentally flipped off during handling.
Modern firearms have multiple internal safeties to prevent accidental discharges (unless you're Sig apparently).
It depends.
If for some reason you're open carrying in a holster (like perhaps a police officer or soldier would be), and someone tries to get your weapon off of you and succeeds, a manual safety could save your life. They probably won't realize that the safety is on, and when they point the weapon at you and pull the trigger, nothing will happen, giving you a chance to escape or fight back.
Without that manual safety, the weapon just goes off and you now have an aftermarket hole installed in your body.
There's less of an argument manual safties in concealed carry, though. The opponent shouldn't know you have the weapon until it's drawn, so there's less chance of them getting it out of a holster.
I assume, based on your writing, that you have very little or perhaps no firearms training, particularly with duty carry and concealed carry.
> and someone tries to get your weapon off of you and succeeds, a manual safety could save your life.
This is something straight out of a movie...
Your assumption would be wrong. Not a pro but not a n00b either.
I don't want to look up the sources here and now (work policies) but it does, on occasion, happen.
> Not a pro but not a n00b either.
Unfortunately the 2A community is filled with fud and hollywood-esque beliefs. Those who have little training or practical experience often fall victim to believing these fantastical "what-if" scenarios.
The amount of times a firearm has been taken out of someone's duty holster and used against them is a statistical rounding error. Most LEO departments require Level 3 Retention holsters, making this scenario nearly an impossibility. Additionally, a safety isn't going to save someone's life if the "bad guy" has wrestled control of the firearm away from the owner.
This entire scenario is fiction. Manual safeties often do more harm than good - which is why just about all modern handguns have no manual safety (outside of the few States which, out of ignorance, require them by law).
This comment should just be pinned to the top for folks curious about why manual safeties are undesirable.
Here is an entire video talking about it, by an attorney who works in the firearms industry:
https://youtu.be/7NXDuKQF9kU?si=uRXnYvhMMKIN8BKa
I'd take this with a grain of salt. I generally like James' content, but he has always been a huge Sig supporter and throughout the p320 debacle, he's been more supportive of Sig than I think he should be.
Wasn't Sigs offer significantly cheaper than Glock?
Off by one errors strike again, unless you EDC a machine pistol?
A Glock 18, huh? I’d fucking love to edc a Glock 18.
Their report outlined here and the police officer’s account of the unintentional discharge occurred without dropping and while securely in the holster without any items intruding in the holster (i say that because it was a prior excuse Sig made for the unintentional discharge reports)
https://youtu.be/LfnhTYeVHHE
A thousandth of an inch would do it? They couldn't give more margin-of-safety to a critical part like that?
A thousand of an inch isn't such a theoretical number. It's about 25 microns, and I've shimmed one of my back-focusing photography lenses for less than that much (about 10 microns, to be specific). This is something that they ought to be able to machine for, but depending on the context, it might not leave much room for error.
> A thousandth of an inch would do it? They couldn't give more margin-of-safety to a critical part like that?
If it's true, that's truly terrible design.
Its likely a misunderstanding and/or mischaracterization of "tolerance stacking."
A safe example is bike chain. If each one is 1 inch +- 0.01", if every single one is +0.01" then ten links will be long by a tenth of an inch. And might pass QC on the bike when pedaled by hand- but it'll fall off when somebodies full bodyweight and 100hrs of wear is out into it.
That's not how errors add up, it's nonlinear. You have to take the sum of squares. So in your case, it wouldn't be 10 * 0.01 = 0.1, but sqrt(10 * 0.01^2) = 0.032, which is less than one third of a tenth.
I provided a "worst case", not statistical, example.
For those who want an example, calculator, and demo see: https://www.smlease.com/entries/tolerance/tolerance-stackup-...
NB: using disks like the site does provides a clearer example.
At least one of those critical components (P/N 1300739-R) is manufactured in India. Is that a contributing factor?
Ian from Forgotten Weapons posted an interesting video on this a while back:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QusWrho19zE
And then a more recent follow up
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3iWVs2uD1XY
+1 Forgotten Weapons
Ian ("Gun Jesus") is amazing, even just from a history / engineering perspective.
I like it far better than more Michael Bay leaning content in that space, though there's good fun in a "Can this 50 cal go thru X ?" videos haha.
[flagged]
Do you have any evidence of this? The only thing I can find anywhere is a video of Ian timing a trans cosplayer who's doing a shooting match dressed as 2B from Neir: Automata (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhn18QhVzVM), and an Instagram post of him with a gay 2nd-amendment advocate (https://www.instagram.com/p/C2nh1HIy_uS/?hl=en).
https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/comments/1e78bjz/k...
As Karl has deleted his twitter posts, there is a screenshot
This isn't really sufficient, especially not from Karl. I agree with Karl's politics but not with branding someone a Nazi or anti-LGBT for staying out of them.
And a humorous "solution" to the problem: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I_p6XEB1ySo
He just did another follow-up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjEhgXAALL8&t=802s
Just watching this, and he's saying this model has no manual safety. That's an absolutely wild design choice in my mind!
Sig makes many handguns like that and many of them are standard issue for law enforcement in US municipalities.
Many pistols don't. It does lead to a higher risk of accidental discharges (that's how we got the term "glock leg"). That's also the argument that Sig made - that every unintended discharge was due to user error. The evidence is increasingly clear cut that this isn't the case, and the pistol can go off on its own when jostled while properly holstered, but Sig persists in trying to claim the pistol is safe and blame the users.
"that every unintended discharge was due to user error" -- Sig is doing a fantastic job of making it clear that that's false (as you say).
The real statement is "every unintended discharge on a known-safe gun is due to user error." I would believe that all unintended discharges on, say, a Glock 17 are user error. I no longer can believe that of Sigs.
And it's like brakes on a car. If it fails for even one person one time and causes one accident, that's too much. The stakes are way too high when you're dealing with something that can take lives if it malfunctions.
I’d wager that poorly maintained brakes fail and lead to a collision many hundreds of times per year. I think “unmodified and properly maintained”, neither firing mechanisms nor brakes should fail (and I think that’s what’s in question here).
I carried a Sig in Afghanistan and whilst I was very experienced with firearms, the no manual safety thing gave me major heebie geebies
If you have experience with firearms then you know that very few modern handguns have manual safeties.
While this statement might be true there doesn't seem to be a reason you are making it.
modern consensus is that a manual safety is more of a liability than a feature - correct handling obviates it, and in the worst case a manual safety may prevent you from deliberately firing the weapon.
correct handling requires the use of a holster which completely covers the trigger. a properly-designed firearm is safe in a properly-designed holster.
the handgun that effectively established this concept (the glock) does not contain enough potential in the fire control at rest to discharge a round, but notably, the p320 does.
It may seem wild, but wilder still is having to manipulate small components under extreme duress in a sub-second period of time, while one or more lives suddenly depend on it. This is why almost all individuals who carry professionally or from experience do not use equipment with safety.
It's crazy how the P320 has such a bad reputation, while the P365, a 9mm micro-pistol by Sig Sauer, is a phenomenal piece of kit by comparison. I purchased mine in 2018 and it's seen thousands of rounds put through it with zero issues encountered.
Agreed. It seems that Sig really dropped the ball with the P320. My top 3 most used hand guns are the CZ P-10 F, the Sig P365, and the Sig P322.
I honestly never thought I'd ever buy a modern handgun unless it was made by Sig. Until I tried the CZ. The P-10 F is my favorite full sized striker fired pistol. And that's coming from a guy that owns 30+ Sig pistols.
Yeah, just from a reputational standpoint I'm not sure I ever want to buy a Sig unless it's used. Too many other good brands to financially support. I've been eyeing a Canik or Walther, I want a premium trigger. The CZs are reliable weapons, but their trigger feels "gritty" to me. My Sig SP2022 is my favorite trigger of the guns I own.
I had the opposite experience with the P-10 F. Granted it's the only CZ pistol I own. But it's also the only modern pistol I own that was ready to go right out of the box without any kind of needed improvements or modifications.
Fwiw, I love my PPQ Q5 Match.
As someone who has never touched a firearm, I'm curious: what are you doing firing thousands of rounds? Is it target practice?
Yep target practice. There's different types. There's obviously your, slow, precise target practice focusing on tight groupings and hitting the target where you want to hit it however there are a bunch of other more specialised drills for training reaction speed and ability to actually perform at a moments notice.
While your initial drills start out using relatively few rounds at a time, more complex/difficult drills involve far more rounds, often requiring multiple magazines and multiple targets. These types of drills are generally aren't done at your basic indoor shooting galley ranges but even there there are plenty of ways to burn through a substantial amount of ammunition.
And while part of it is that in general shooting as a hobby is fun, another part is that some types of drills just require a lot of ammunition. ex: malfunction clearing drills where there are non-functional rounds mixed in to your magazines and you need to perform your drills with as little time loss compared to normal as possible. i.e. knowing how to react when things go wrong under pressure.
And so a single range day can easily put someone through tens of magazines which quickly gets into the hundreds of rounds. Then assuming you are going to the range weekly, biweekly, or monthly, that puts you into thousands or even tens of thousands of rounds per year.
As a recreational shooter, thousands of rounds is really not that much. I virtually never leave a range trip with fewer than a hundred rounds fired. And yes, for me, it's a combination of practice and fun ("plinking").
If ammunition didn't cost what it did, I'm sure I would shoot a lot more.
Practicing until it’s muscle memory. Progressing through increased distances, smaller targets, more challenging conditions. Particularly in long-range shooting, dialing in hand loaded round configurations for accuracy and consistency.
I think it’s possible for many shooters to achieve parts of a flow state when doing this. Imagine the satisfaction of throwing, catching, or hitting balls over and over in muscle memory, letting your mind and body work together to let your coordination and accuracy improve to solve the puzzle.
A thousand rounds is not that much. A standard box has 50 rounds, if you fire four boxes in a weekend, you can easily go through a thousand rounds over a month.
Now at $.25-.$30 / round, this does add up to an expensive hobby.
It really depends on the weapon / type.
I’d estimate I have shot over 100K rounds of 7.62 thanks to a good amount of time as an M60/M240 Gunner
Imagine a driving range where a new ball was automatically teed up as soon as you hit the last one. It’d be really easy to keep hitting balls, trying to get the perfect most accurate shot, right? Then you’d want to hit three in a row, then five, then you realize you’ve been at the range for two hours and have spent way too much on ammo. That’s what recreational shooting is like.
It's fairly common advice that if you are carrying for self defense then you should be firing at least 100 to 200 rounds a month at the range to maintain your skill. That's not all that difficult to do; especially with a relatively high capacity handgun like most 9mm.
You're absolutely correct. Part of why I have not been conceal carrying lately, is because I haven't prioritized consistent practice at the range in recent times. I want to ensure I'm proficient if I'm going to carry.
I should have clocked tens of thousands of rounds by now, at least one order of magnitude larger. Especially since micro-pistols like the P365 need the user to be more consistent with training, given that it's more difficult to be accurate with than with a full size gun. But life happens and I need to readjust my priorities before I get back to consistently visiting the range again.
For additional perspective, you can easily blow through 200+ rounds in one sitting - often under an hour, depending on what kind of drills you are doing. Many of the courses I've taken require a minimum of 300 rounds.
This is part of why "gun people" roll their eyes when the news talks about someone "hoarding thousands of rounds" - it's no where near as much as you might think, and people like to buy ammo when it's on sale (ammo's expensive!).
Like anything you want to become proficient at, you need consistent practice. How many free throws do you think LeBron has practiced? Now imagine you die if you miss. Also it’s fun to blast stuff.
i liberate a LOT of places
I am mostly a P365 carrier/shooter now, but for a couple years a P320 Compact was my primary handgun (with an X5 P226 SAO for competition); I put probably 15-20k rounds through the P320 (1k round classes, etc, back when ammo was $150-180/case) (and never got the drop-safe mod done), and no problems. So it's some combination of QC, specific units, and bad luck -- but even a 0.001% risk of something happening is a big deal.
The quick P250 -> P320 without really designing it properly does seem to have been a mistake, though.
Why would it be crazy when they're completely separate systems?
All I know about this situation is what I've read in these comments just now. I don't have a dog in this hunt.
But I think the surprise is that a company who makes something considered highly reliable would make a similar item that the Air Force claims is killing their airmen. It'd be like Toyota making another pickup, the Bellevue, that likes to randomly explode. Sure, things happen, but Toyota? Huh, that would be unexpected.
With SIG USA specifically there's a long track record of making firearms that can only be described as problematic. For example, their attempt to adapt SG 55x to the American market - all versions had some issues, but especially so the ones chambered in 7.62x39.
The unusual thing here is that this is a problem in a product that managed to pass US DoD acceptance testing. But the drop safety issue was already known at the time, so one has to wonder just how much in soft bribes SIG had to spend to get it adopted regardless.
Not sure that's the best example, since Toyota did have the unintended acceleration issue, though I still don't get whether the consensus among smart people was that it was purely user error.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehic...
I mean, the new Toyota Tundra seems to have lots of problems with its V8, and I'm not sure people call that _crazy_.
You must mean 2021 Tundras. 2022 and up are twin turbo V6 only.
Ford made the Pinto. The Volt or Bolt from GM had battery fires. I believe Tesla has had multiple safety and quality issues come up.
May be my age, but I wouldn't say any of those brands are a mark of quality. Rather the opposite in fact.
They are all interesting in their own way (especially Tesla), but certainly not quality/reliability-first organizations.
Is any mass produced car made by a quality first org? I'm sure we can dig in and find examples. Someone brought up Toyota and Japanese cars. How about the unintended acceleration issue and the frag airbags?
I don’t know where we’d draw the line for “quality first” but I’d argue Toyota at minimum qualifies
That doesn’t mean they’re perfect: cars are incredibly complex machines and mistakes are inevitable. But the airbag issue was a vendor (used by many companies) and IIRC the acceleration issue wasn’t that much bigger in Toyotas than other makes
There were no reports of the unintentional acceleration in other makes.
Too young for the major news headlines about Audi?
True, I was considering the same timeframe as the Toyota issue. However, their reputation would likely be supportive of quality and be another example for my point.
What? Unintended acceleration happens _all the time_. It’s usually driver error or a stuck floor mat. The vast majority are drivers who hit the accelerator thinking it’s the brakes then panic when the car speeds up. Toyota had some design issues that seemed to make it more likely (though the software was found to be fine) and got attention due to a viral 911 call and a poor response.
They were absolutely not the only make with unintentional accretion reports/issues at that time; nor presumably today, but I haven’t seen recent numbers
Fine, let me be more specific - unintended acceleration due to mechanical design issues (sticking pedal, even without floor mats). The point is, Toyota was raised as an example of quality, yet here we have a design issue. This also shouldn't be a surprise since the floor mat issue can be solved by design changes sound on other vehicles. So yes, manufacturers can make good and bad products. There are no manufactures who make only perfect products - it's not a surprise the P320 could have issues when the poster holds the P365 in such high esteem. The only thing that statement really displays is the suppression of cognitive dissonance being suddenly unachievable.
Ford, GM, and Tesla are all bottom barrel automakers. All three of them relying on the government to prop them up, too. Otherwise, the Japanese market would have obliterated the American automotive industry ages ago.
> Otherwise, the Japanese market would have obliterated the American automotive industry ages ago
Or the Chinese in the last 5 years like they have done in Europe and rest of the world.
Yeah, I feel like BYD would kill Tesla if they sold cars here.
Usually, when a company makes something good, the things they make that are similar to that thing are also good.
Conceptually, the P365 and the P320 are very similar. Semiautomatic, striker-fired, polymer-framed, tilting-barrel centerfire pistols with replaceable serialized fire control modules. One's just bigger than the other. The guts of it are what changed, and you wouldn't think it'd be too hard to implement the P365's striker system within a larger pistol.
The fact that it's smaller changes two important factors for trigger systems - mass and geometry. Geometric differences for things like sear engagement or even travel of the striker before encountering the block can change how it functions. Mass is another critical element when it comes to dropping it and how the parts could move to release the striker, etc. These are the types of changes they tried to implement in the FCU update for the P320. The P365 is a completely different design for the FCU anyways. For all we know the fatal difference could be that the stamped housing for the P320 FCU flexes in a certain way to trigger the disconnect while the P365 is machined and doesn't flex as much or in the same way. Whether or not something like that would scale without affecting the desired weight or dimensions, I dont know. It certainly would affect price for larger stainless billet and more machining.
I got my wife the 365SAS, and liked it enough to get one for myself. It's so good for CC, and holds reasonable accuracy out to 15 yrds
This seems to suggest carrying with a chambered round. Is this prudent without an external threat? They can drop the thing, or some kind of impact can yield a “design problem”. Can’t they just chamber when there’s a need?
It depends on your job in the USAF. I was a security augmentee[0] and we did not chamber a round. But the Airman who died likely protected missile silos, which are "no-lone zones" and they would be carrying with a round in the chamber.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-person_rule
The P320 is known to have accidental discharges for civilian owners (honestly - don't buy one). But Sig Sauer has stated that the M18 military version did not have those problems. We will need to wait on the results of the investigation to find out.
[0] An extra duty typically assigned to junior enlisted - we only armed up during exercises. Which brings back a story - we were waiting on the trucks to take us to our posts, and the room was full of Airmen armed with M16s and M60 machine guns. And we were all watching Justin Wilson cooking up some delicious Cajun food on the TV.
"But Sig Sauer has stated that the M18 military version did not have those problems."
More lies and misdirection on Sig's part. The only mechanical difference is really the manual safety (which works on the trigger and not on the striker), and if we're being generous the second would be the spanner screw. They should have the upgraded FCU, but in the civilian world there are still reports of the issue even after the upgrade.
That may be personal preference, but IMHO there’s no reason to conceal carry if you’re going to do it without a round chambered.
I’m a huge Sig collector and I’ve been a fan of theirs since the 90s.
I’ve carried a Sig daily for 20+ years. I only carried a P320 for a few months until I finally downsized to the P365.
But I’ve got to admit that their PR and response to these incidents is not a good look.
But I am a bit confused as to what is causing these unintentional discharges. I know they had a problem that was addressed years ago so I’m not sure if the current problem guns are ones that were never sent back for modification or if there is some kind of unrelated problem.
Regardless, I’ll still carry a Sig until CZ makes something comparable to a P365. But it’s unlikely that I’ll ever buy a new Sig again.
Check out this video, the FBI report got released a few weeks ago. This was a FOIA’d report from 2024 of a police officer who had the P320 holstered, doing normal movements (didnt drop the holstered firearm)
Unique case in that the FBI got the firearm still in the holster (it hadn’t been removed or the round cleared after the discharge)
This is what has led to the recent uptick in Sig scrutiny, then unfortunately the OP incident happened and it’s rightfully so made Sig’s situation much worse
https://youtu.be/LfnhTYeVHHE
> IMHO there’s no reason to conceal carry if you’re going to do it without a round chambered.
Why is that your opinion? Surely there's a wide variety of plausible scenarios where carrying a concealed weapon without a round chambered is much better than not carrying a concealed weapon.
When you draw from concealment, an experienced shooter needs only get their grip and an eye picture -- point gun at target and fire. You only need to train muscle memory to get into a firing position, which is also what you are regularly training every time you live fire or dry fire.
If you don't have a round chambered, you need to draw, rack and release the slide, hope a round is properly chambered (in a panicked situation you might not rack the slide properly), then get into a firing position. This is a much more complex movement and evaluation of state. You are pulling the gun up, manipulating it with two hands, then moving it forward and finding your grip. In an emergency, that time loss and complexity of motion is considerably more difficult to train.
Even experienced shooters will draw from a holster and immediately present their gun and try to fire, and then realize they don't have a round chambered, have to bring the gun back to rack the slide, and then present the gun again.
You conceal carry because you want to be prepared at an emergency to deal with an imminent threat. Adding complex manipulations to that erodes your ability to do that, and any modern pistol should not fire unless you pull the trigger. They should be safe from drops, shakes, or manipulations.
If your threat isn't "I need to have a firearm ready asap", then you should consider not conceal carrying, in which case you may want your pistol unloaded or unchambered.
I’m a panicked position maybe you should not fire a gun.
If you cannot even chamber a round who’s to say you can hit what you want to hit?
You're right, you should wait for the police, because when seconds matter, the police are minutes away.
In what situation do you imagine a civilian legally using a gun for self-defense is not “panicked”?
I am not.
Well, at a range, sometimes can't properly rack the slide and still hit everything I wanted to hit. I got used to doing lock/release instead due to that skill issue.
I probably spoke imprecisely. I meant rushed, which has a similar but different meaning than panicked.
First, in most states it is not legal to point a weapon at someone unless you are in a situation where you're legally allowed to pull the trigger. That is, you are legitimately in fear for your life. In that situation you will likely have very little time to act in self defense.
Second, racking a slide is an action that requires fine motor control. Under the pressure and adrenaline dump that accompanies a life-or-death situation, fine motor control goes to crap. If you are fumbling with your pistol, it's useless.
Third, if you don't feel comfortable with your ability to safely handle a loaded gun, you probably shouldn't be carrying at all.
Because if you're going to carry, you should choose something that's safe to carry with a round chambered (i.e. not a Sig P320). There are countless videos showing real-world examples of defensive handgun use. One common thread is that there's virtually no time between when you realize you're going to need your sidearm and when you need it. The extra second it takes to rack the slide and chamber a round can be the difference between surviving the encounter and not.
> One common thread is that there's virtually no time between when you realize you're going to need your sidearm and when you need it.
I would be surprised if this is true for the majority of situations. I'm sure there are situations where you have very little time, but also many situations where the additional time it would take to chamber a round is negligible.
In addition to the lost time, you'll have a hard time racking the slide from the adrenaline dump. Also, the bad guys always have first-movers advantage and you're always playing catch up.
After watching thousands of violent encounters on John Correia's "Active Self Protection" channel, I agree that round-in-the-chamber is absolutely necessary if you're carrying for self protection.
https://www.youtube.com/@ActiveSelfProtection
Most states prevent you from drawing without firing, because it is considered brandishing / threatening.
So you either draw and fire and call the police and tell them what happened, or you don't and just... deal with the consequences of whatever happened instead.
>Most states prevent you from drawing without firing, because it is considered brandishing / threatening.
I'm not sure how many other states work this way, but in Florida, brandishing is considered non-deadly force as a matter of law[0]. So the standard for self-defense is different between brandishing and firing: deadly force like firing requires a higher degree of threat to be considered justified self-defense[1].
[0] https://reason.com/volokh/2023/05/24/loading-and-openly-carr...
[1] http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Displ...
I know only an average amount about guns/gun laws (which is to say, not very much), but this seems pretty off to me.
If someone is going to attack me with a knife, but then I draw a gun and they run away, surely that's not illegal because I didn't shoot them.
It'll all come down to:
1. Could you have reasonably escaped?
2. Could you have reasonably de-escalated (or were you the one who escalated to get here)?
3. Can you convince a jury (and the cops) that your life was in danger? If there are no witnesses, this is tough. Typically you're allowed to use deadly force only if you fear loss of life/limb. Yes, yes, plenty of cases where juries ruled in favor of the shooter when there was clearly no risk of loss of life/limb.
4. Do you have the relevant insurance to cover your legal defense costs? If not, you'll likely make a plea deal with the prosecutor even if you were clearly in the right.
I would say if the guy lunged at you with a knife and you drew your gun and he ran away, you'll be fine if there are witnesses.
Search "brandishing laws"
I'm familiar with the idea of "brandishing" being illegal, but I looked it up anyway. I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menacing which says "Self-defense is often explicitly given as an exception."
It seems like then it would be legal to draw a gun without firing if it was in self defense? I have a hard time believing that there are any cases where shooting someone in self defense would be legal, but scaring them away wouldn't.
This is not exactly what you’re referencing but I bring it up to show just how complicated things can be: Minnesota recently ruled that you do not have the right to use deadly force if you have the opportunity to escape.
And this is the crucial bit, quoting the article: “The court decided the principle also applies to people who merely use the threat of force — meaning one cannot pull a weapon in self-defense if there are other means to escape, even if the person is threatening them with death or bodily harm.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/minnesota/news/minnesota-supreme...
That's pretty standard in non-"stand your ground" states (with the possible exception of your own home).
The whole point of "stand your ground" is that you do not have the responsibility to escape.
But again, there's no distinction between brandishing and shooting. The Minnesota law applies both to brandishing and to shooting.
"There are various situations in which brandishing a firearm may occur. For instance, pulling out a gun during an argument or altercation with another person could be considered brandishing. Additionally, waving or gesturing with a firearm in a manner that suggests aggression or hostility towards others may also constitute brandishing. It is crucial to understand that even if no shots are fired, and no physical harm is inflicted, the mere act of displaying a weapon in such circumstances can lead to serious legal consequences."
Source: https://www.dischleylaw.com/blog/2024/june/understanding-the...
Which states don't have self-defense exceptions to brandishing laws? Note that shooting someone is also assault, but self-defense is an exception to assault.
I’m fine with a brandishing charge if it defuses the situation and ends the threat and I don’t have to kill anyone.
I would take almost any criminal charge over being forced to kill somebody.
If I hadn’t been willing to brandish at least once, I would have had to shoot to kill, and that sucks bad. Being in a gunfight is the last thing that I want besides being dead or severely injured.
This just in: you don't get to pick the category of the emergency when SHTF.
That's like saying "I only wear seat belts on the freeway" or something equivalently vapid.
> There are countless videos showing real-world examples of defensive handgun use.
Tangential: if you enjoy watching that kind of content, I highly recommend the YouTube channel "Active Self Protection"
I don’t conceal carry but it’s commonly known that you don’t draw your weapon unless you’re shooting to kill. In those situations, if there was time to chamber a round then there was time to escape. If you draw your weapon as a warning or, worse, fire warning shots you’ll be arrested for brandishing at least.
>In those situations, if there was time to chamber a round then there was time to escape.
500ms, just enough time to open up console and type noclip to escape
> if there was time to chamber a round then there was time to escape
This is only true for Usain Bolt. Chambering on draw adds 0.5s or so.
For me, that's acceptable for any scenario outside of a pistols at dawn duel in front of an old west saloon.
> pistols at dawn duel in front of an old west saloon
Probably not much less likely than a lot of the scenarios people are fantasizing about in here.
well, again, let me preface this with I don't conceal carry nor do I feel in my day to day life unsafe to the point I want to conceal carry. However, I got interested in IDPA, as a hobby, which is a shooting competition that does time trials through a practical scenario. For example, move to a station, fire at 4 targets from behind cover, move to another station, reload, move to another station and fire at 3 targets. Your score is determined by speed through the scenarios and the accuracy of your shots. i'm no stranger at all to shooting firearms having spent a large portion of my childhood hunting and years of going to the range. During my intro to IDPA class I was shocked at how hard it is to keep everything straight in your head and operate a handgun safely and effectively under the very minor stress of a time trial and a group of people watching.
Now, in my 49 years i've been in only one situation where i was attacked, beat up, robbed and would have been justified to use lethal force in my defense. Had i been armed I would not have had it together enough in the amount of time i had to chamber a round, aim, and fire. Unless your brain is trained to respond there just isn't time to think through anything, it's like your mental capacity just grinds to a halt in those moments. If you have it together enough to chamber a round, aim, and fire you have it together enough to use run-fu and escape the situation.
finally, once again, i don't conceal carry and thank my lucky stars my job doesn't involve making decisions like draw and fire or don't. Maybe someone with more training and experience will weigh in in this conversation, i'm just giving my two cents.
This dichotomy is obviously false though.
If an attacker doesn't have a firearm you probably have time to chamber a round, if the attacker misses a shot at you you have time to chamber a round, if you have time to take cover you may have time to chamber a round and then be in an approximately 50-50 situation, etc.
This might be the impression one gets from watching movies or television shows, but its not reality. Anyone who has either trained with a handgun, or even just viewed videos of real-world confrontations will know that this isn't the case. In many encounters you have almost no time. Racking the slide and acquiring the target adds a massive amount of time (its even worse when you are under pressure).
Most defensive uses of a firearms occur at a short distance, less than five yards. It takes very little time to cover the distance. For those who are interested, here is a video covering what it looks like when someone with a knife runs straight at someone at 21 feet, you will see why the idea that people have time to rack the slide is absurd (https://youtu.be/_2zfw_4DYdQ?t=79).
Six metres is half a tennis court. That's a distance that I can easily run to get in position to hit a volley. Of course you can run that distance and stab someone as he takes his gun out, and if you are to counter that you must move too.
If you're rooted as a tree, of course you'll be killed. You must make use of your own movement to create time, just as Nadal does when he step diagonally back from the ball 'sal y entra'.
people have such insane opinions on this despite the knowledge out there. there are so many videos of self defense shootings out there now, including videos with analysis etc.
people posting talking about combat rolling and chambering after their assailant misses a shot. what the fuck lmao
> people posting talking about combat rolling and chambering after their assailant misses a shot. what the fuck lmao
I generally try to show them a little bit of grace. For many people their sole exposure to firearms is through video games, movies, and television shows. They have a strong "knowledge" of how things work and genuinely have no idea that their ideas are at odds with reality. Its similar to how non-tech people think "hacking" works.
> if the attacker misses a shot at you you have time to chamber a round
Is that based on recorded personal times, or are you just assuming?
Because I can shoot the mozambique in 1.9 seconds. Chambering a round is much slower than that.
I mean that you must take cover upon him missing, and then somehow reposition yourself and fight.
There's been debate over this for decades that has run its course.
The consensus is carry chambered or don't carry.
There is not consensus.
I appendix carry; I’m not carrying chambered, period. My remaining options are to not carry, or carry in condition 3.
I think that’s a simple decision.
If I ever felt the legitimate need to daily carry in condition 0/1, I would move. Cities definitely, provinces generally, nations if necessary. Life’s too short. I’m not in the special forces.
I don’t have to be ready for every conceivable scenario; just most of them. And that’s more than enough.
If history is any guide, now’s the time when someone tells me that not wanting a loaded and cocked .45 pointed directly at my right testicle for 16 hours every single day means that I have a cheap holster or haven’t trained enough or don’t have the right pistol or something. (I’m fairly certain that none of these are true.)
PS: A much more likely scenario than a knife guy charging from 20 feet is a routine encounter with an LEO who wishes to temporarily disarm me during a traffic or Terry stop. I absolutely do not trust some dipshit cop to remove a condition 0/1 pistol from my waistband without fucking it up, which would likely happen right around the time it is pointed at my femoral artery, or worse. Fuck that noise.
Not OP, but having a round chambered can be advantageous in a self-defense scenario, where every second counts. Having to think to rack the slide before firing could be enough for your opponent to get to you first.
People take this "every second counts" idea as though it's axiomatic.
I've been in my fair share of sus situations in my life and they've been either telegraphed (people starting with yelling, then intimidation, then getting into personal space) or ambiguous. I was recently at a block party with a loud DJ, and some guys fired several rounds and it took minutes to figure out what was going on. Even the first responders were amazingly sluggish in their response.
Hell, I had a guy sneak up behind me while I was parked in my car, bang on my window and tried to start shit with me. I had enough time to shoot off a text to my wife to stay put while defusing him.
So I personally think people with good situational awareness have plenty of time to act appropriately in a variety of common dangerous situations.
> I've been in my fair share of sus situations in my life and they've been either telegraphed (people starting with yelling, then intimidation, then getting into personal space) or ambiguous.
The problem is that in a "sus situation" you would not be able to chamber a round without brandishing the firearm, which in many situation would be illegal in a merely "sus" situation where you don't have a clear threat (brandishing laws, intimidation, etc). This is why many self-defense advocates encourage people to carry with a round chambered while also carrying something like pepper spray for situations where lethal force is not necessary.
> So I personally think people with good situational awareness have plenty of time to act appropriately in a variety of common dangerous situations.
Most people I've encountered who carry concealed would agree that you should try to keep yourself from being in common dangerous situations. The reason they carry is not for the avoidable situations, since they'd obviously just avoid them, but for the unavoidable situation. The vast majority of people who carry concealed never need to use their firearms, the point is to be ready to defend oneself and others if the situation should arise.
When I carried regularly I was always *extremely conscious" of having a sidearm(s) at the ready. And, knowing the the civil laws of engagement (=> I read all of Massad Ayoob's stuff) the result—for me at least—it makes you the most meek, chill person ever (if you actually understand the power that you have on tap which I surely did).
Pretty much everyone I know in the gun community would say that all the situations you mentioned are ones where you better not draw your gun.
As another commenter pointed out, drawing your gun in those situations is usually a pretty serious crime (supposedly even showing that you're carrying a concealed gun to ward people off is a crime in some jurisdictions - I haven't verified).
So not sure what the point of your comment is. You're describing scenarios that are irrelevant to the thread.
Oh, and just BTW, lots and lots of cases of people acting like you ending up dead. Acting appropriately in dangerous situations doesn't mean you will come out on the better end.
there are plenty of videos online showing situations where it did matter.
if you google around for "Ring camera video appears to show man shoot assailant in self-defense" you can find one.
some people do live in legitimately very dangerous places. whether one should carry chambered is a function of that.
I recently got into handguns and training.
I recommend everyone who has access to it go into training where you take a real handgun that's been modified to shoot laser and has CO2 recoil. The setup is that you have a screen (perhaps all around you), playing out a scenario. You're in a convenience store, and something may happen that requires you to defend yourself.
Even with a fair amount of training, the adrenalin surge is significant, and the time you have to respond is very limited. Doing this eliminated any illusions I had regarding guns and safety. There's little time to rack the gun to put a round in the chamber. And if you haven't done it, it's not easy to rack a gun (you need the right grip, angle, etc). And racking can fail. Even I, with very limited experience, have experienced multiple failures while racking.
People mentioned videos where people practice doing all this, and time themselves. I saw a video where someone 3 yards away draws a machete and runs at the other person. The time he has to draw and defend is just not enough at 3 yards. One needs to actively dodge the machete while drawing. Adding the complexity of racking is almost a guaranteed failure. The person drawing was very experienced (and a handgun trainer), knew the attack was going to come, and still had a low success rate.
Other things I've had to unlearn:
"Why didn't they just shoot at the legs?" At short notice, in an emergency scenario, aim is very poor. People train for these situations to get a reasonable likelihood of hitting a person without needing to spend time aiming. And the primary way to do it is to aim at the body - not arms/head/legs.
"Why did they have to shoot the person 3 times?" See above. Aim is hard, and there's a good chance of missing. When your life is on the line, you are not going to shoot once and check if it hit. You'll shoot 3 rounds quickly. When I did the simulator, I often shot 4-6 rounds without even realizing it (and was told by the instructor to keep it down).
This may be hard for some to believe/digest. As I said, I didn't believe it until I was put in those (simulated) situations.
Another thing I thought was crazy: People sleeping with a loaded gun by their bed. A guy did a video where an intruder was in the house and running towards their room. They timed different scenarios (unloaded with magazine on the side, different gun safes, etc). He succeeded only with one particular gun safe, and only with the gun fully loaded.
If I ever keep a gun at home, it will not be for "defend against an intruder in the middle of the night". It's just too risky to keep a loaded gun next to your bed. But if you have good reason to believe someone is after you, this is the only way to go.
Having said all that, if I carried a gun, I'd likely not have a round in the chamber. But that's really me saying I'm not going to carry a gun for safety purposes.
> saw a video where someone 3 yards away draws a machete and runs at the other person.
It's probably best to be realistic about what is possible. If somebody tried to whack you on the sidewalk with a machete, they would win 100% of the time, because you're not living 24/7 in a hyper-alert paranoid state keeping an incredibly close eye on everyone 360° around you. Unless you've drawn your weapon 100s of times in near-miss scenarios on people who look like they might be grabbing a weapon because their phone is in a coat pocket or something, it's just the truth. If you're going to live in a society you just kind of have to accept that you could hypothetically be killed in broad daylight by a very-motivated someone with no real opportunity to defend yourself. Happens to organized crime members all the time, and obviously they have way way more reason to be paranoid than regular people.
> If you're going to live in a society you just kind of have to accept that you could hypothetically be killed in broad daylight by a very-motivated someone with no real opportunity to defend yourself.
This is absolutely true, but security in depth, right? Just because it's easy for you to die in public, whether from a premeditated attack or an accident, doesn't mean it's pointless to add on a few layers to make that less likely. After all, everything happens in the margins.
> everything happens in the margins
including accidentally shooting yourself, accidentally shooting the wrong person, getting shot by someone else who misread who was the good guy with the gun and the bad guy with the gun, and turning it on yourself when the pressure of it all gets to be too much.
I don't think anyone in this thread disagrees with you on this.
Keep in mind that your point is orthogonal to the topic of whether you should have a round in the barrel or not. Everything you say here applies to both cases. (Well, OK, there's a tiny marginally higher chance of accidentally shooting yourself).
Indeed. I know someone who owns a gun and lives in a very sketchy area. The previous tenant in the apartment was a drug dealer, so sketchy people keep knocking on the door.
Making it very clear that he owns a gun effectively drives all of them away.
But that's where you make clear you have a gun. Concealed carry, by definition, is hiding that fact. There are pros and cons to open carry, but IMO, if you want the gun to act as a deterrent, open carry probably is a lot more effective than concealed carry.
Completely agree.
But let's extend the distance to 5 yards. Or 8 yards. Or whatever. There is a distance threshold where racking vs not racking makes a difference. It's not a thin threshold. You probably gain a decent number of yards by not having to rack.
Lots of things can go wrong while carrying a handgun (with or without a round in the chamber). I don't recommend people do it unless they are aware of a specific threat. But once you are under a specific threat, then it doesn't really make sense to carry it without a round in the chamber.
> Another thing I thought was crazy: People sleeping with a loaded gun by their bed.
To me this sounds like not putting your seatbelt on in case you ever need to get out of your car underwater: you're improving your chances at a statistically-unlikely event (home invasion) by making your chances worse at a much likelier event (accidental discharge).
> But if you have good reason to believe someone is after you, this is the only way to go.
What pray tell is this hypothetical threat? Who is this attacker who comes in your bedroom in the middle of the night to use lethal force against you, but gives you time to rouse, grab your weapon, and acquire target? Or they wake you by running in with full knowledge committed to memory of the layout of your house and your sleeping arrangements so that they can beat you to your gun safe? They’ve cased the joint but they’re not going to wait until you come out to get in your car in the morning?
If you believe someone is after you, your resources would be better spent getting support from others, or physically securing your living space, or getting the hell out of dodge.
> What pray tell is this hypothetical threat?
I said "if you have good reason to believe someone is after you". That precludes hypothetical threats.
People sometimes make enemies who threaten to kill them. Some of them actually try to kill them. Some of them are people who know them and their house/apartment intimately. Start looking around. Lots and lots of cases of people who get out on bail and kill the person in the next few days.
> They’ve cased the joint but they’re not going to wait until you come out to get in your car in the morning?
If you're going to kill someone, are you going to do it that openly, when it may be easier to do it in the home?
> If you believe someone is after you, your resources would be better spent getting support from others, or physically securing your living space, or getting the hell out of dodge.
I actually agree, with the caveat that only the last one works, and is not feasible for many.
A lot is feasible if your life is at stake. Living through a wild west fantasy of beating your murderous ex to the draw is probably the least feasible.
If forced to choose between rampaging through someone’s house in close quarters combat, or waiting outside for them to come to me, I’d pick the latter.
> If forced to choose between rampaging through someone’s house in close quarters combat, or waiting outside for them to come to me, I’d pick the latter.
And many wouldn't.
> A lot is feasible if your life is at stake.
I won't argue the point - people have different opinions on this, and it's not a topic you're going to get a "clear correct" answer for. The point still stands: Some people choose not to leave, and then their options become limited. They often have to live the rest of their life in fear, and not everyone can get a new identity.[0]
Also, as I and others have pointed out - just the mere fact that you have a gun, are trained to use it well, and keep it on/near you at all times will deter a significant percentage of problematic people.
The other thing to point out - this thread is filled with the extremes (including my examples). It's not always the case that someone has planned to kill someone. There is a continuum of threats.
BTW, try living in the rural[1] parts of my state, where everyone has a gun, and the police funding is low, and often the 911 operator will tell people "Sorry, we're out of resources and it'll take at least 30-60 minutes to get to you. Do what you can to defend yourself"[2] People routinely take advantage of the fact that the police will not get there in time, and not having a gun is inviting such folks.
[0] A coworker's father recently passed away. When it happened, he revealed to me that he had lived much of his life in fear that his father would show up at the door with a gun and shoot him. Even when he lived in a different state. Not exaggerating to say he was relieved when he died. Weirdly enough, he got a gun only after his father died.
[1] And by rural, I still mean a proper city where you have neighbors next to you, etc.
[2] Paraphrasing an actual 911 call.
> many people wouldn’t
Yeah, many people are stupid and/or crazy or just hotheads making rash decisions in the heat of the moment which kind of blows apart your rational calculus of armed deterrence.
I don’t know what your state is. I live in a rural part of my state, and the open warfare you’re describing doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard about. I think it might be time to move, friend. Whatever’s holding you there can’t be worth your life.
im curious where you live where home invasions dont happen. i live in one of the safest states in the US and home invasions happen here.
people actually do commit random violence in home invasions by the way. your having chosen not to look into it at all or read the news ever doesnt negate this. its to say that random violence in home invasions is common, but the point is that it does happen. and i think people should have a very effective means to defend themselves.
theres even been a serial killer that committed home invasions by claiming to be police upon breaking in. this also happened recently with those politicians that got assassinated.
if you dont want to have a firearm thats your choice. dont see why you think this is necessary for other people though.
of course home invasions happen, but they’re rare. and the number involving guns is much smaller. look up the statistics instead of getting scared watching the news.
so a police officer shows up at your door. you’re going to greet them with a gun drawn? that will get you killed.
i do own a firearm, but i don’t walk around with it like a cowboy. and i discourage others because of all the risks mentioned.
> look up the statistics
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/ascii/vdhb.txt
As of 2010, about a million home invasions per year in the US, 250k of which end up with the occupier (owner, renter) being a victim of some violent crime.
Not a lot ending in death though.
Also I think the numbers went down a bit from 2010.
>and the number involving guns is much smaller.
lol. a threat of violence can exist without the gun. im glad you are confident in your ability to beat any random, unknown stranger (especially tweakers) in a tussle. as someone with bjj and boxing experience i would say this is unbelievably arrogant though.
>look up the statistics instead of getting scared watching the news.
ive seen the same ones that the other guy replied to you with. this is almost not worth replying to because you are just being snide and dismissive. to reciprocate, do you realize that the statistics (which you havent actually read) aren't the governing force of what happens to you in your life? statistics are a model of reality. for example, what do you think the odds would say that between when i replied to your post yesterday and now, that i experienced a break in where someone was trying to climb into my son's room at 3 in the morning? do you think my first thought was about the statistical likelihood of it? for the record i live in one of the safest states in the US. life isn't a spreadsheet with numbers on it, genius. if you are comforted by those numbers, good for you. telling others to not be scared of bad things happening to them is peak dork arrogance.
A big part of the fantasy/thought process is you’re trained and vigilant, ready to respond in a split second to some threat in the Home Depot parking lot.
The reality is… not that.
The reality is that the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners who carry concealed strongly hope that they never, ever have to draw their weapon.
You're both right :-)
The reality he mentions is very much a reality. Lots of concealed carry folks obsessed with always being vigilant. Good idea not to hang around them, because hypervigilant people are prone to see threats that aren't there.
There is overwhelming consensus that you should carry with a round in the chamber. Most gun fights happen close and fast.
[flagged]
There is definitely thinking among some who CC they're going to be John Wick but "good guy with a gun" is definitely not "totally imaginary". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_shooter#/media/File:200...
2.8% is even worse than I’d have guessed.
2.8% of an already rare event is technically non-imaginary, but also definitely rounds down to imaginary.
[edit] on top of that, is it even a one-digit percentage of that 2.8% of a rare event in which having a round chambered made any difference? Yet there are people confidently posting as if it’d be absurd to carry without a round chambered. That’s plainly nuts.
That's only active shooter events. There are other cases where armed civilians have stopped a crime. I don't have such data readily available, though.
Only an anecdote here: a guy I know claimed to have "defensively" used his gun. When I pressed him, it turned out that he drew his gun on a guy "that looked like a dirtbag" when he was staying at a motel.
From his point of view his life would have been threatened (he might not be alive today!) had he not presented his firearm.
Estimate, if you can, the fraction of the "good guy" episodes that critically hinged on the 1s it takes to rack the slide.
Personally I believe it's a good feature if a guy has to give it a think for 1-2 seconds before blowing away the guy in front of him in the line at Whataburger.
there are hundreds upon hundreds of videos online of self defense shootings, including some where the victim draws second and successfully defends against a shooter. a lot of them happen in brazil too. coming to a thread about guns to state a ridiculous opinion about conceal carry strikes me as something someone mentally ill would do.
Yes, the only sensible reply in the thread. Everything else is theory-crafting.
Plenty of people spend time and money preparing for low-probability but highly catastrophic events. Purchasing insurance that covers your home for fire damage is one such example.
The fact that the chance of a well-maintained home burning down is vanishingly small doesn’t make this an imaginary risk.
Thinking about how to protect yourself from violent crime and deciding to purchase and carry a gun doesn’t seem fundamentally different.
Yes, it makes me wonder whether all the naysayers have any sort of insurance coverage?
There are no circumstances under which my fire insurance policy will accidentally go off and kill someone.
Lots of live action roleplayers
> The gun has been at the center of dozens of civil lawsuits claiming it has a design flaw, though judges and juries have delivered mixed verdicts over the company’s liability in these shootings.
It does sound like there is a specific design issue to be discussed.
Carry a double-action revolver, with an empty cylinder under the hammer. No chance that dropping it or anything other than a trigger pull will fire it.
If you need more than five rounds, you've already lost.
And what's the reason for USAF personnel to conceal carry on a USAF base? Article doesn't even suggest it was.
Military personnel generally can’t carry at all on post/base without a specific need. Nor keep private firearms at home, if on base/post housing.
This policy should tell you something about the actual cost/benefit of private arms as far as overall safety goes. Cuts through the noise and hypotheticals rather nicely.
"This policy should tell you something about the actual cost/benefit of private arms as far as overall safety goes. Cuts through the noise and hypotheticals rather nicely."
Yes, most people will feel quite safe in a secured facility with controlled access, simialar to court houses. Imagine living in a place where everyone has been vetted and the perimeter is secured with armed guards.
This is a genius idea. Sell on-base housing to safety-minded civilians. The HOA fees will generate a tidy profit.
Believe it or not, the general public can live in military housing. When the number of vacant homes on any base rises above a certain level, the housing contractor can rent them to anyone it likes. This isn’t common, but it’s possible.
Or living in a country like Japan.
Or.. very many countries that aren't the USA.
There are many parts of the US that people feel safe in as well.
There are tons of incidents with intruders on military bases where I am from. They are atrractive targets for criminals like thieves, too. Guards aren't a very effective deterrent.
Also, everyone I talked to who found suspicious activity while on guard duty confessed to me that they were terrified in the moment even though they were trying to project authority on the outside.
Depends on the base. Most bases have controlled entrances and patrolled perimeters. I do know of some that are more or less open or only require a photo ID for entry, but those don't seem as common. Or maybe times are changing.
Are you in the US? All of the US military bases I have ever been on either have far tighter perimeter security than anywhere bar maybe a high security prison, or have generally pretty good perimeter security and are so far out in the boonies that geography itself limits access.
That mostly tells you about the cost/benefit at a military base. Which is a place where you have to go through a checkpoint with armed people to even get in there in the first place.
They weren't concealed carrying.
These are Security Forces personnel guarding strategic nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. To illustrate the priority of their mission, Global Strike Command ordered that the troops normally carrying pistols be issued assault rifles in their stead.
Sure. Please understand my comment in context replying to that above it - that 'of course there was a round in the chamber because that's how you do concealed carry'.
I should have been more clear: if you're going to carry a firearm on your person, regardless of concealed or open, it should always have a round in the chamber.
That may be your rule, for all I know it's the USAF's rule, but it's not the British Army's, and it doesn't seem logical to me in a military context.
(I probably agree with you in the context of 'out in public and have decided you need a firearm', just not 'on a friendly military base and carrying a firearm as a matter of course rather than any acute reason'.)
The Royal Marines of 43 Commando guarding the nukes at Faslane have loaded weapons.
The Security Forces at the base in question guard strategic nuclear weapons. The other USAF command most concerned is USAFE, where the threat of terrorism against a USAF facility is greater than in the mainland US.
Sure, there are scenarios. Article describes a classroom or briefing type situation though, it's holstered but on the desk. This is not someone on duty guarding anything.
The Israelis famously don't do this except for some special forces. Various videos put out by the IDF demonstrate racking the slide as they draw their weapon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swveA-_1dus
Military police need them to prevent people from entering the base.
Ok, but not relevant.
If a vehicle fails to stop at a base entrance, the gate guard hits the button that raises a barrier some distance past the entrance. Then they go for a weapon, if necessary. Post 9/11, that will be something with more power than a pistol.[1]
The barrier solves an old problem - what action to take when a vehicle fails to stop at a checkpoint. Most of the time, it's drunks or minor crazies. Lethal force is excessive and car chases on base are dangerous. Barriers became standard for DoD installations around 2005.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW79PLFuUGw
Many police carry a secondary handgun in case they lose their primary or whatever.
Tactical encounters often progress quickly enough that there's insufficient time to chamber a cartridge before the weapon may need to be fired.
The context of who is carrying these pistols in this command may also help: they're issued to the Security Forces guarding strategic nuclear weapons (and their delivery systems). It is the highest priority security mission in the military.
One would rather hope those guarding the nukes have rifles…
It's not an either/or situation. I'm sure they would have BOTH pistols and rifles.
A rifle and a pistol serve different purposes. This would likely have both.
It makes no difference if there is a round in the chamber unless there is a fundamental design flaw. The P320 is apparently a rare case of this.
This is extremely mature technology. People have been churning out defect-free designs for many decades. It is surprising that a company with the engineering experience and pedigree of SIG Sauer would design something with this issue. It would be like if Airbus designed a plane where the wing sometimes fell off mid-flight.
"The P320 is apparently a rare case of this."
Not that rare. Gen 1 and 2 Glocks had slam fires (that's right, "Safe Action" Glocks... the irony). The XDS had doubles or slam fires. I'm sure there were others, and now the P320.
Then gen2 glock is old enough to be considered one the original striker fired pistols. The parent is right. There's no reason to be making these kinds of mistakes these days. They industry has been churning out millions of safe striker fire personal carry firearms for decades now.
There shouldn't be a reason for these mistakes, but they keep happening. Do a little digging and you'll see. I've already mentioned the XDS and we all know the P320. The FNS had a similar issue too. I'm sure there are more if we dig. So while there are millions of safe striker fired guns, it appears there are also millions of unsafe ones in the past decade or so.
Firearms should never discharge unless the trigger has been pulled. It's an absolute bare minimum requirement. But you should always assume it will go off in the direction it's being pointed, even if you haven't pulled the trigger.
First law of gun safety: never point a gun at anything you wouldn't want to destroy.
In most cases with CCW if you were to actually need to use the weapon you would not have time to chamber a round. Even if you did have time (maybe you should run away?), doing so would draw attention to yourself (and might be fatal). The standard advice is to have one chambered or work to getting yourself comfortable with that over time.
Yes, if you are conceal carrying, having a round chambered is typical. You don't want to have to draw and rack the slide in an emergency.
Most modern pistols have multiple internal safeties to prevent firing without a trigger pull. There's something extremely wrong with the Sig 320.
This is table stakes for a carry pistol. The goal is to deliver a pistol that can be safely carried while chambered. You do not want to have to chamber if you need the gun.
This is not military, but it's widely advocated in the concealed carry community that you should carry with one in the chamber. The argument is that with modern pistol designs and the right precautions, it's generally safe; and that many scenarios where you might need to defend yourself need all the possible speed you can get. Having to stroke your firearm to load it can easily add 2 seconds to your draw.
That said, given all the stories I've read, I can't imagine carrying a P320 with one in the chamber.
It’s a personal taste kind of thing, where there’s decent arguments either way.
Proponents of having a loaded chamber value having the firearm immediately ready, because a situation where they actually need to draw on someone/something may not have time or space to use both hands to rack their pistol before someone/something is on them.
Those who want an empty chamber consider the increased safety vs potential malfunctions/accidents to outweigh the risks of being less able to respond to a small subset of threats.
There are policies that vary by branch. The USAF, for example, carries the Beretta M9 pistol (Not sure when they switched to Sig? Must be recent) with the safety off, and in double-action mode. So, round chambered, and a single (hard) trigger pull (Or a manual cock + light pull) will fire the round. Dropping it should not fire it.
I had to carry one in my vest in case of emergencies, and I never felt comfortable being one trigger pull from bang, while it's pointed at my waist for extended periods. Also, the double-action pull sucks, and it's harder to aim straight when putting so much muscle into the pull IMO. Had to have the finger on it in a certain way to get leverage. (The single-action pull after doesn't have this issue)
So, I would accept the weapon from the equipment guys, insert the mag, send the slide forward, put it on fire since that's what you're supposed to do... then put it back on safe.
Always carry chambered.
1. When you need it you won't remember to chamber due to stress
2. stress causes fine motor skill distortion
3. Only draw when you are prepared to fire (or you end up dealing with Brandishing laws)
a better alternative would be to not carry. if the stress is gonna mess with your fine motor control, youre probably gonna accidentally shoot a bystander anyways, because you happened to have been laid off earlier in the day.
the stree messes with your memory, so the barista looks like a threat. the stress messes with your fine motor skill, so you hit the guy waiting for his coffee. and of course, you gotta shoot the rest so theres no witnesses to have you charged for not actually doing self defence
Yeah, happens all the time.
don't forget shooting yourself at the end so you don't have to feel bad about shooting others!
a reasonably experienced competitive shooter can draw from a holster and put two shots on target in ~1.25-1.5sec. racking a round while drawing would probably put it around 2-2.5sec. that 0.5-1sec advantage could make a pretty big difference.
Gun crimes tend to be ambushes rather than something that even remotely resembles a duel.
So every second counts?
Can't pull when someone randomly has the drop on you chambered or not. Have to retreat/conceal first anyways. Far more likely to have a tragic accident than ever saving someone. Not long ago someone accidentally shot the neighbor's house right into the bathroom. Accidents happen way more frequently than random crime and should be the top concern for gun owners.
Then why aren't the police constantly having accidents blowing holes in everything?
The police committing accidental/negligent discharges of their service weapons has been a nearly constant source of social unrest in the US... Great example of how people carrying loaded firearms is a public safety hazard.
Answer: maybe.
Depends how responsive you want to be.
Can't you just put a seatbelt on right before a collision?
A gun carried without one in the chamber is just a totem for emotional coddling, nothing more.
Ian McCollum thinks it's likely down to tolerance stacking on one or more of the safeties as part of several production runs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iWVs2uD1XY
Since all services have adopted it, idiot proofing should be the main feature of the gun because it will be carried with idiots all the time and casualties accumulate.
This wasn't a case of an idiot, except perhaps placing the muzzle in a direction that a human would be present.
The gun was in the holster, and the entire holster was removed from the belt and placed on a desk. There's nothing in that course of action that would allow a finger or anything to get into the trigger well. The gun should absolutely not have gone off.
I didn’t read nabla’s comment as accusing the deceased of being an idiot. Rather, it was a statement that the military is full of idiots (aka teenage boys) and therefore any standard issue weapon should be designed appropriately.
A gun that can go off on its own even when handled properly is the opposite of idiot-proof.
> the military is full of idiots (aka teenage boys)
The Air Force is not. (The average Air Force servicemember is older, better educated, better paid and subject to more demands than the average servicemember in the other branches.)
I know some people who went into the air force out of high school. They are idiots.
Given a large enough group of people you will have examples of just about anything (including idiots)
Another example, it's estimated that 1-2% of all military members are part of or connected to an illegal gang organization.
> I know some people who went into the air force out of high school. They are idiots
Every population has some idiots in it. My point is the Air Force is difficult to get into, has a high fraction of educated servicemembers [1], has lower turnover and higher pay than the other branches. (Back when we measured IQ, the Air Force had a higher average IQ than the other branches and population.)
I know idiots who work at Google. That doesn't it's safe to assume the average person at Google is an idiot.
[1] https://www.collegevine.com/faq/90807/most-educated-branch-o...
I'm not sure if this is the message you intended, but it's worth noting that having a high IQ doesn't necessarily prevent someone from being an idiot.
Historically the word "idiot" was used particularly with those with very low IQ scores but now is a pejorative term.
Within the context, we’re talking about someone who can be trusted to be mature with a firearm. That’s more true for an average Air Force servicemember than the average American. I’d reflect OP’e scepticism if we were talking about the average Army, Marine or Navy servicemember, in large part because young men are stupid and the folks in those services skew younger than the Air Force.
Maybe - although it seems these days, being fundamentalist/evangelical is about the only hard-and-fast requirement..
Even an "intelligent" (i.e. clever) teenage boy or young man is often still an idiot (i.e. prone to astonishingly bad decisions).
[flagged]
If it was in the holster, most people don't teach that the muzzle direction rule applies (since in the holster it's supposed to be inert). A lot of carry methods have the muzzle pointing at things you would not want it pointing at when unholstered.
Yeah agreed. If people taught this than thigh holsters would be out (muzzle direction when sitting down), so would shoulder holsters. Pretty reasonable to expect a gun to not go off randomly, especially when reliable drop safety mechanisms have been around for a long time.
There's a joke about appendix carry of Sig pistols providing cheap bottom surgery for mtf trans people.
There's no holster in the world that would convince me to carry any gun in that position hah. I've seen some advertisement for concealed carry holsters that make me cringe. Only carry position that actively aims the gun at you when you sit down or bend over.
Thigh holsters suck anyway, the only people that use them are people that have never had to run in them.
I've never used one, but I did see a police officer with one once. Maybe there's certain sitting positions or something where it's more comfortable to wear all day.
Can't draw in a car with a thigh holster.
(Is easier to sit in.)
In general the safety rules I was taught were defense in depth -- multiple failures need to happen before someone can get hurt. So, even when you have a holstered firearm, pointing the muzzle away from people is preferable because then if it somehow does fail at least it's less likely to shoot someone.
Obviously that's not always practical, but if you are placing a chambered firearm down on a desk, you might as well try to point it in the direction of least harm, it basically costs zero to do.
Yeah I don’t disagree and do the same
"The gun was in the holster, and the entire holster was removed from the belt and placed on a desk."
If they can prove this in the investigation, this completely sinks Sig's defense that this can't happen with the upgraded FCU that they released to supposedly fix this issue since it's in all military variants.
There is a good chance there is security video coverage. Sig is cooked along with whoever their fanboys are in senior command. Hopefully that means the P226 Legion comes down in price :D
Where did you get those details? I've read a couple stories on this incident and haven't seen that mentioned.
I think there is a lot of coverage but this is where I heard the details: https://youtu.be/ssNFf_bMjf8?si=47rN4X7WArPbNckZ
Apparently not, when the profits are at stake.
I have a 320C that I purchased in 2018 and have shot less than 100 rounds out of. I tried to sell it recently and was offered by two gun stores, less than $200. MSRP was around $500. Very annoyed with Sig over this. Their statements have been no help either, talk about Streisand effect.
That's a normal price drop for most modern plastic guns when trying to sell them to a store. They will offer $200 and sell it for $350 next to the brand new ones at $475.
They are in a peculiar logical pickle: admit the gun is defective and lose all their current lawsuits plus many more that will dogpile on. Plus take a devastating hit to future sales.
Or deny it, saving face and relying on FUD that the discharges (several were caught on video ) were random or somehow the fault of the owners. Sig were even using some anti-anti-gun arguments (the same retorts that 2A people use against no-gun advocates) against their own customers! Saying they weren't being responsible or something along that line. It's a terrible situation for everyone involved.
Honestly, I’d take the $200 and run.
Maybe give them the gun, take the $200 and then run.
Better to be pointing it away from you when it goes off than having it pointed at you.
For more on this saga:
https://www.twz.com/land/army-making-no-changes-to-its-sig-p...
Interesting... I would have thought that maybe the military variant with the manual safety would be immune to this issue. It seems the manual safety is only a trigger block and not an additional or positive stiker block. It seems this offers no additional safety beyond keeping the trigger guard clear. So much for the military's insistence on a manual safety. Was there really any data showing the units using Glocks had issues related to a lack of manual safety? Sig added one, but clearly it was an afterthought.
One of my best friends runs a firearms instruction program and literally took a grinder to cut his in half... Mine is still in one piece, but I'm unlikely to ever fire it again. Kind of a shame that Sig Sauer chooses to deny/lie over simply addressing the problem head on. No respect and definitely lost a customer in me.
I'll probably switch to a Glock 19 at this point.
Everyone I know has been saying, for years, to not carry Sig 320s or their variants. Those things are dangerous. It's tragic it took the death of someone from what (at this point) was an entirely preventable outcome.
They didn't have good evidence until recently, though. Or at least that's my understanding.
The FBI & DEA definitely did an investigation and came to the conclusion that, at a minimum, not all the safeties on the firearm work as designed. https://www.outdoorlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/MSP-M...
Dated 2024. P320 controversy is obviously a lot older than that.
The Glock, on the other hand, doesn't have a safety lever. Instead, it uses a double trigger pull mechanism to help prevent accidental firing. I've often wondered if a safety lever gives people a false sense of security. With the Glock, you must always assume the gun is ready to fire, which requires careful handling.
I thought most law enforcement and military agencies use the Glock as standard issue. Isn't it?
Pretty sure my dad had a Beretta, but that was in the 90s, so that may have changed
The Sig P320 (M17/M18) is the successor to the Beretta 92 (M9) as the US military's standard service pistol.
Glocks are the most common among law enforcement in the US these days. The FBI's service pistol is a Glock 19M. Glock claims that the Glock 22 is, "by far the most popular police service pistol in the United States," which surprises me because the 17 and 19 are the service handguns at most big cities, AFAIK.
No. I don't think glock has ever gotten a US military contract.
They have a contract with the army and are used heavily in the special forces community.
I don't think this issue has been reported on the P365/x-macro platform, for those discourage by this unfortunate situation. Different striker system.
Yeah, i heard the P320 was originally a non-striker system that they modified to become a striker system to try and save research/development costs from creating a striker system from the ground up, which led to these wildly low tolerances in the FCU and ultimately a poorly designed firearm.
I’ve heard of no issues from the P365 models. A knowledgeable firearm instructor I talked to mentioned the P320 and P365 are entirely different designs internally, and the P365 holds up to Sigs (previously) positive reputation
The P365 does have essentially one point of failure on the striker assembly (see here https://www.reddit.com/r/SigSauer/comments/c5ddz5/can_someon...), and lacks a trigger blade safety.
Lots of informative comments in the thread about how carrying with a chambered round reduces the time and complexity to getting a shot off.
I have limited knowledge of guns. I understood that they had a physical safety switch that had to be manipulated before the firearm could be used. Is that the case? If so, is the safety left off when people are carrying with a round chambered? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of the safety?
The manual safety primarily stops the weapon from firing if the trigger is inadvertently pressed. In these cases, the trigger was allegedly not being pressed when the pistol discharged.
Aside from the manual safety (which is optional on this specific model of pistol), there are a number of passive safeties that normally must be overcome for the weapon to fire. Something appears to be failing in such a manner that the pistols are firing without being commanded to -- the trigger is not being inadvertently pressed, so the manual safety does not seem to be involved.
Most newer handguns don't have manual safeties. The ones that do should be carried with it on. If you carry with it off, you won't have the muscle memory to switch it off in the event it is accidentally engaged. Basically, if it has the safety, you should be doing the motion for disengaging it regardless of it's starting position. Some people still choose to carry with it off. You get into all sorts of odd stuff the more you look into it, such as MARSOC rubber-banding their 1911 grip safeties.
Some additional context here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44675889
FWIW I love the 1911-style grip safety. It’s a shame that more guns don’t have that.
The Springfield XD line has this. At least one S&W Shield model as well. Both are excellent pistols. Not that you're wrong: grip safeties aren't common.
It's amazing to me this P320 problem exists. Making semi-autos safe, even without a grip safety, has been a solved problem for over 40 years. How anyone thought a fully cocked striker is a reasonable design, or that the US military would adopt such a thing, is a disturbing mystery.
After Sig gets financially destroyed, and the US military has to correct this monumental mistake, we can at least look forward to no further designs like this. Who knows, maybe the US will do something intelligent and just issue Glock 17's, like they should have done at least 20 years ago.
The modern philosophy for a defense gun is that the holster is the safety. The holsters make it impossible to pull the trigger, and hold the gun securely all day. They are all supposed to be "drop safe" although there are some exceptions. So if somehow your gun fell out of its holster, it shouldn't discharge if you just let it fall (vs try to grab it).
Technically, a "safety" describes designs and mechanisms by which a firearm discharges if and only if the trigger is pulled.
Colloquially, the word is often used to describe an external safety that must be manually disengaged (otherwise there is no bang even if the trigger is pulled). However, in modern firearms, even those with external safeties also have internal safeties that mean that even with the external safety disengaged, if you dropped the firearm or hit it with a hammer or something, it would not fire.
As others commenters have said, in the case of the P320, the claim is that it would fire without the trigger being pulled; and in the specific case of the airman, it is further claimed that there wasn't even a precipitating physical shock like it being dropped or hit.
> I have limited knowledge of guns. I understood that they had a physical safety switch that had to be manipulated before the firearm could be used. Is that the case?
Some handguns have manual safety switches, others don't. For example, the Sig P365 (an excellent, highly regarded sub-compact pistol often used for concealed carry), has models with or without a manual safety (you can also install a safety yourself if yours doesn't have one). Some handguns also have a "grip safety" which requires you to firmly hold the grip to disable the safety.
> If so, is the safety left off when people are carrying with a round chambered? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of the safety?
Because modern firearms have a variety of built-in safety mechanisms, separate from manual safety switches, which prevent unwanted discharges, the only thing that will cause a good firearm to go off will be the trigger being pulled. Combining this fact with modern form-fitting holsters which fully cover the trigger guard, it becomes impossible to fire the gun while it remains in the holster. This means that even without a manual safety switch you can carry safely without worrying about the gun going off until you draw and pull the trigger.
Echoing another reply to your comment, if you do have a safety on your gun you would typically toggle the safety while training to build muscle memory. This means you would practice enabling the safety, holstering the firearm, drawing the firearm, disabling the safety, and firing in a swift motion so that you always disable the safety when drawing.
> Lots of informative comments in the thread about how carrying with a chambered round reduces the time and complexity to getting a shot off.
This information should be kept in mind whenever anyone, especially a gun advocate, expresses dismay at the frequency of police shootings in America. America is so awash in guns, and people willing to use them, that for the average cop it is better to shoot first and ask questions later than to risk returning home in a body bag. We’ve just been informed that in threatening situations there is no time to chamber a round, but cops are simultaneously supposed to take the time to evaluate the threat to their safety.
> We’ve just been informed that in threatening situations there is no time to chamber a round, but cops are simultaneously supposed to take the time to evaluate the threat to their safety.
I think you have misunderstood the order of operations in a violent encounter. The issue of chambering a round is in light of the fact that you have already identified an immediate violent threat and you need to end that threat. The entire question of carrying chambered/empty is completely separate from threat identification and whether or not a shooting is justified.
You also simply don't appear understand the time scale in which violent altercations and legitimate responses take place. They happen quickly, and so once a threat has been identified you need to remove as many barriers to action as possible. Adding 1/2 to 2 seconds can easily be the difference between life and death after you've already made the judgement about the situation. Again, the issue here isn't whether or not someone has identified a threat but rather how quickly and effectively they can respond after they've identified the threat.
If we want to speak intelligently about use of force and police reform we should avoid conflating unrelated issues (i.e. whether or not an office acted appropriately versus the ability to act properly after a threat has been identified).
These arbitrary distinctions are in your mind. The real world is messy, and there is an algorithmic fallacy at the core of your argument.
You've carefully laid out why carrying a chambered weapon is critical for minimizing the reaction time to a perceived threat. So you've explained why a suspect has his gun chambered. It's anyone's guess when that suspect decides he has "identified an immediate violent threat" in the cop near him. Now the cop, by definition, must identify and respond faster than the suspect pulling out his chambered weapon. That doesn't work well for the cop, and you've optimized away any time for his to reason and react about the situation he's in.
You haven't reasoned about anything you are saying.
> the cop, by definition, must identify and respond faster than the suspect pulling out his chambered weapon
You are correct about what the cop must do here, assuming the suspect pulled a weapon. If that didn't happen, then the cop doesn't necessarily need to do that.
> That doesn't work well for the cop
That is entirely possible (though rare) for a cop. Part of the trade-off of them getting virtually unlimited power to protect others is that potentially saving other people's lives outweighs potentially saving their own lives.
> America is so awash in guns, and people willing to use them, that for the average cop it is better to shoot first and ask questions later than to risk returning home in a body bag.
This is only true in certain circumstances, though it makes a lot of people uncomfortable to discuss.
Yes, cops (should) face higher standards for their behavior and the safety of those around them. That's by design. Supposedly that's why we respect them more than, say, a cashier, but both sides of that deal have broken down.
To me that just sounds like a huge excuse for cops who are rarely ever shot at in real life. The majority of cops never even have a reason to draw or fire their gun their entire career. Being a cop isn't even a very dangerous job, and all but a handful of cop injuries on the job are due to car crashes that they themselves initiated. A random residential framer has a far higher chance of injury and death than cops in even known dangerous and highly criminal areas.
I’m not saying cops are always free of fault, and yes, some are trigger happy goons. But in an environment that affords close to zero reaction time, it is no surprise that cops are trained the way they are, and behave the way they do. Indeed, they are not in danger most of the time. But when they are, they have close to no time to think about it. As a result, it is in the interest of their own well being to assume that all situations are dangerous and to act accordingly.
> cops are simultaneously supposed to take the time to evaluate the threat to their safety
Everybody else is supposed to do this. Cops can avoid this and suffer no liability or criminal charges.
they dont "go home" in a body bag. and the rest of your post is just as hyperbolic and ignorant.
How can you in good conscience write such obvious, and easily falsifiable falsehoods?
https://www.cleveland19.com/2025/07/24/3-lorain-police-offic...
https://nypost.com/2025/07/24/us-news/long-island-cop-shot-i...
https://www.wisn.com/article/milwaukee-police-officer-corder...
and on, and on...
they don't "go home" in a body bag. they go to the morgue, and to a funeral home, to a grave or an urn. You know about as much about guns as you do about deaths. You are only posting emotionally loaded responses, not actually thinking about a word you say.
That you’ve resorted to quibbling about the literal meaning of a common piece of figurative speech is pretty funny. It also implies you have nothing of substance to actually say on the topic. Instead, you’ve chosen ad-hominem.
you don't even understand the meaning behind your words. you are just parroting phrases about a topic because your tribe said so. they tell you how to think and you just obey, its literally the definition of a religion. a belief without proof.
Found one thread from a year ago. Others?
Sig Sauer guns hanging on soldiers' hips may be firing without trigger pull - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41087518 - July 2024 (37 comments)
Sig Sauer P320, a popular handgun with police, is firing on its own - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35530330 - April 2023 (31 comments)
Sig Sauer P320, a popular handgun with police, is firing on its own - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35530330 - April 2023 (31 comments)
Added above. Thanks!
Beyond the tragedy here - the implication of this is that USAF security forces were carrying a widely understood to be mechanically unsafe handguns in the presence of nuclear weapons. I am not saying a stray round can cause a criticality but shooting a nuclear weapon or its associated delivery and logistics systems is suboptimal.
It's just as bad to be carrying mechanically unsafe handguns in the presence of people.
Not only that it looks callous if you say otherwise, but also the dollar cost the military put on a human life probably is higher than the typical cost of fixing a bullet hole in a nuclear weapon.
Yeah I agree, school resource officers carry P320s. Unacceptable. Analyzing from a mission assurance vs. emotive standpoint.
The problems with the civilian version (the 320) are well documented (by law enforcement officers and the civilian community) and there appears to be a root cause and solution. (Not an expert but replaced trigger group?)
Two different issues. Drop safe and uncommanded discharge. The rework is only for the former. Sig still denies the latter has ever happened. I'm guessing that's about to change though as I know of 3 separate instances of uncommanded discharge that are well documented. Two with law enforcement (one on video posted earlier in this thread) and now this one). There's something very off with the FCG in this firearm.
There are still reports of the issue occurring with the upgraded FCU. All the military ones should already have the upgraded FCU.
Lordy, who knew Hacker News had so many gun enthusiasts?
I learned something new today.
If there is a topic, you will find someone on HN to go deep on it. I love it
I mean the people here are largely from the US. And while some politicians and the media likes to pretend gun ownership is something only deeply conservative rednecks hold to, it simply isn't true, gun ownership and the support of gun owner rights in the US crosses all political and social boundaries. And it makes perfect sense when you realize how few people in the US trust the cops, military, courts, or politicians to protect them from others, and they have seen the very real threats of many groups and organizations that have repeatedly put forth ideals of wanting to kill others for petty ideological bullshit.
On top of that you have to add in the important historical contexts weapons are involved in which garners peoples interest. And then there is the engineering ingenuity and craft involved in all the mechanics of how they operate and the {hopefully) fine machining and techniques used in creating them, the same way someone might marvel at the internals of different clocks or watches.
HN has always had a libertarian bent, and it's not a big leap from that to gun ownership.
Tangentially related: here's a gunsmith going into detail on improper modifications leading to double firing and failed drop tests: https://youtu.be/ppuyoeoTLMA
Also: Glock-specific safety checks: https://youtu.be/LFk_nq0HcEc
> That campaign included a successful effort this year to secure a change in New Hampshire law that will protect Sig Sauer from future liability lawsuits regarding allegations the gun should come equipped with certain safety features.
If you want to know how we arrived at this particular moment in American history and society, this is a fine place to start.
Yeah it’s just an incredibly crisp example of how corporations are valued above people.
I am sure those corporations highly valued the people they were giving a large sum of money to in a brown envelope to make that happen.
This is a good example of social hysteria.
1. The P320 had a real issue with firing when dropped. Although it had passed all drop tests, when dropped at a 25-degree angle onto the rear sight, the weight of the trigger was enough to fire the gun. There is a voluntary fix available for older weapons, but no recall has seen necessary.
Now, we have many videos and widespread discussion about this. Millions of people and police officers own P320s, and sometimes they make errors. It's natural to blame the gun when freak accidents occur, especially when they result in injury. The narrative of a big, greedy company trying to hide issues is always present and can be applied to almost anything.
2. Cases where the gun fired without the trigger being touched are very questionable. From lawsuits, examples include: carrying a round in the chamber and wrapping the P320 in cloth to move it; or carrying a round in the chamber and placing the P320 into a handbag. The case where a police officer's P320 fired while holstered (and there's a video of it) was studied by the FBI. The report notes that the officer had keys in his hand when he moved it near the holster. In most such cases, it's very easy to see how something could have touched the trigger. If the P320 had a genuine systemic issue, it would show up in statistics as an above-average number of accidents.
3. Now a separate P320 "out-of-battery fire" issue that's gaining traction online. This is clearly a typical hand-loading or questionable ammunition source issue, which is relatively common with all firearm models.
Summary: Starting with real issue, social media attention attached to some thing can have it's own life. making a typical number of incidents, with a variety of causes, look like a huge trend.
No, this is a very real manufacturing and design issue that SIG insists doesn’t exist, despite numerous well documented cases. See [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L7RXrneHlzfjrewMFIeeyc-nel3...] for one exceptionally well documented case.
In this situation, the FBI was able to duplicate the ‘spontaneous firing of a chambered round’ by pressing down slightly on the slide with nothing else going on.
SIG needs to get their head out of their ass, or they are going to burn the whole company to the ground.
There are no numerous well documented cases. You link to one well documented case that was document I was referring to. It does not say what you said.
They were not able to duplicate the firing the way you think BRF was able to replicate firing in holster with keys in hand.
---
From the document:
"The MSP motor officer had objects in his hands at the time of the event, including keys."
then
"BRF was successful in using keys, both flat and serrated profiles, to press the trigger while the M18 was holstered. The keys were approximately 1.7” and 1.0” respectively. The trigger could be fully pressed to the rear with sufficient pressure against the side of the trigger only, or by using the holster as a fulcrum. During this test it was observed that the keys caused an abrasion on the trigger guard near the area of the abrasion seen on the weapon when it arrived (Figure 13)."
There was abrasion from the keys in the gun, BRF was able to replicate firing in holster with keys in hand.
From the conclusion: "examination of the subject weapon did not independently provide evidence of an uncommanded discharge it does indicate that it may be possible if sear engagement is lost. The disabling of the striker safety lock through movement and friction creates a condition which merits further exploration to fully assess potential risk."*
“On July 31, 2024, a MSP motor officer was standing in a squad area with other members when his department issued Sig Sauer M182 fired uncommanded. The firearm was reportedly secured in the department issued Alien Gear Rapid Force Level 3 holster at the time of firing. According to the MSP motor officer’s statement and the statements of others present, at no time was the trigger pressed intentionally or inadvertently3 . The MSP motor officer had objects in his hands at the time of the event, including keys. The subject firearm, while in the holster, was removed from the member’s leg and placed in an evidence bag pending further evaluation.”
Do you work for SIG or something?
Of course someone could reach into the holster with keys and hit the trigger, but there is no conceivable way it could be that in this situation. And this isn’t the only time - I’ve seen several videos of Sig P320’s doing this that are completely unrelated to this situation.
I can read what you wrote. You said that the evaluation duplicate something. Only thing they duplicate was the possibility of key firing. You must be referring to that.
They were not able to duplicate physical malfunction.
They absolutely were able to duplicate elements of physical malfunction.
Yes. "elements" of physical malfunction, not the malfunction.
That means they were able to individual safety mechanism fail, but not all of them. The intact gun would not fire all by itself if it was hammered in the test.
And yet, it did in reality.
And there were clear manufacturing defects found when looking at the gun.
You started with "the FBI was able to duplicate the ‘spontaneous firing of a chambere"
And we end with perfect social media claim: "I believe it did happen in reality".
I rest my case.
Bwahaha, sure dude. That’s totally what is happening.
>1. The P320 had a real issue with dropping when fired.
Did you mean firing when dropped?
Yes :)
Not only does Sig deny that a problem exists, it denies these incidents are happening.
I'll never buy another Sig. They've burned bridges IMHO.
Add to that they have issued a voluntary trigger system, but not a recall. Meaning they won't admit the problem (required for a recall) but acknowledge a need for a change. Even with the upgraded FCU (which all the military guns should have) there are still reports of this issue occurring.
It’s arguably even worse than that: their entire PR strategy around this issue has been not just denial but “accuse everyone who says the gun has a problem of being Woke Communist Gay Liberals out to destroy America”. If you’re not up to speed with the P320’s issues, it might sound like I’m exaggerating: I promise I’m not, you can go look up their press statements.
I’d call it shameful behavior, but it’s increasingly SOP from a class of people who have deliberately exorcised their ability to feel any shame.
I have a P320 and I am frankly terrified of the uncommanded discharge. Maybe having a safety would have mitigated the issue.
[dead]
[dead]
[flagged]
How is this in anyway tech/HN related?
A lot of the discussion in the comments here is about gun mechanisms.
This could be considered gun tech. Note that HN doesn't require posts to be tech related, although this post might be a little borderline regarding the "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." guideline.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In the most abstract terms, this unfortunate death occurred because a gadget/device completely failed its security checks.
Apparently judging by the information at the end of the text, Sig Sauer is the “Boeing” of firearms.