Not clicking on that at work, but, if it's related to the P320, there's no reason that Congress hasn't ordered an investigation into this.
There's a decent chance that the handgun our men and women are issued is a danger. When the M16 had problems early in Vietnam there was an investigation and they found out it was a powder issue in the cartridges. No (good) reason that there's not something similar for this issue here.
And Sig can dig their heels in all they want, but when you've got ranges banning P320s and they're in the bargain bin at the local gun shop, well, the market has spoken. You can't unring that bell. Stop production of the P320, fire the executives, and do what it takes to repair this issue.
- A company recently filed a patent for a fix[2] and they offered Sig the rights to it before filing, but Sig refused.
- The Air Force has cleared the 320 for use[3]. In my pessimistic opinion, they probably determined the cost to procure new weapons would exceed the cost to replace lost airmen.
They didn't just clear the gun for use, they arrested the airmen who shot the guy and lied about it. It totally changes the framing of what happened.
In a Friday statement, a Department of the Air Force spokesperson said that the unidentified arrested person is accused of making a false official statement, obstruction of justice and involuntary manslaughter.
In this case, the whole "it want off by itself" claim was a lie.
> In this case, the whole "it want off by itself" claim was a lie.
I think we need to await the facts of the case and the judgement. The only public information I've seen strikes me as unusual.
The accused airman is being charged with involuntary manslaughter, which coupled with the extensive issues with the P320 brings up more questions than it answers.
I could come up with my own conjecture based on that information, but there's enough people doing that already.
The fact remains that the P320 malfunctions. There's been countless documented cases, and numerous recorded demonstrations of the issue on YouTube and elsewhere.
This is why I came around to appreciating the California Roster of Handguns regulation. Firearm manufacturers should be held to a higher safety standard.
Originally I thought it was ridiculous that my first conceal carry sub-compact Springfield XD-S came in a case with a large sticker across one side saying it was illegal in CA. At which point I learned about the stringent drop, firing and performance test that was required and how manufacturers will make a separate and specific quality and safety upgrades to the model variant legal in CA. After a fair amount of use I understood why the XD-S was not and is still not legal in CA. Mine had a higher-than-I-am-comfortable-with rate of jamming. I'll be buying CA approved firearms from now on.
Interesting info about the P320 M18:
The P320 M18 has 3 variants: 320CA-9-M18-MS, 320CA-9-M18-MS-10, 320CA-9-M18-MS-CA.
The 320CA-9-M18-MS-CA is the only one legal in CA [0]
According to Sig Sauer site wording, the CA tested version came after the version issued to the military -- thus I am taking a guess that t was not as rigorously tested as the CA version (and probably has fewer safety or other military specific features that make it less reliable)
Even if the Airman’s firearm did fire on its own without them pulling the trigger, it begs the question, why was this loaded handgun pointed at anyone that they didn’t intend to kill.
It can be both Sig and this Airman’s fault at the same time.
Try conceal carrying or outside the waistband without ever pointing a loaded handgun at something you don't want to kill. It is pretty much impossible, unless you're using a pretty unusual holster. A waistband holster will pretty much always end up pointing it towards some part of your body at some point, and even a shoulder holster it is pointing at someone else.
Carrying a handgun relies on that rule not being followed and instead the holster preventing anyone from pulling the trigger, but if the gun can go off without a trigger pull all bets are off.
I’m not a gun guy. I can accept that sometimes a holstered gun ends up pointing at somebody occasionally. And I can accept that a gun might rarely discharge at random for a while, I mean that’s a design flaw but if it is rare enough I guess it will take a while to be recalled, right?
But does it seem a little weird that the two events coincided?
>I can accept that sometimes a holstered gun ends up pointing at somebody occasionally.
It's not occasional. If you carry AIWB (appendix inside the waistband, a common position), it's routinely pointing at your own leg (and other anatomy) as you move around.
It does strike me as a bit odd to hand a holstered gun to someone while pointing it at them -- as a matter of politeness, if nothing else. But there are other incidents where a P320 is said to have discharged into the leg of someone carrying it in a holster.
That goes for every co-incidence. It's called that for a reason and they are always 'a little weird'. I listen to the Electric Light Orchestra, my neighbors light bulb burns out. It is more than 'a little weird'. It is also a coincidence. And it probably happened more than once.
Keep in mind you would not have heard of it if the story was "gun goes off somewhere in america, no one harmed, desk now has awkward hole". It's like the anthropic principle of news. You would really have to dig into the base rates to know if the coincidence is suspicious.
Carrying a chambered gun in a holster covering the trigger is not negligent. It's how millions of military, law enforcement, and civilians carry on a daily basis.
Having one in the chamber IS actually a fucking ridiculous way to carry on a daily basis. That makes sense in a war zone, it makes zero sense walking the streets of any American city.
Source: many years of carrying a weapon in a professional capacity.
I would recommend you take an entry level CCW class. There are valid reasons why one would or wouldn't carry with one in the chamber, and opinions can be respected. However, not knowing why it might make sense for someone else to choose indicates severely flawed "professional" knowledge and a deficient education. Most of the 'against' reasons are much stronger with the kind of rifles soldier get drilled on in boot camp, some of whom walk away with a very simplified view of gun safety tailored around their military rifle that is wrongly generalized to modern striker fired CCW pistols.
I certainly don't expect I'll be able to address this from someone confidently bragging about years of "professional" experience carrying an unchambered weapon as the only right way to do it on the street, so hopefully you can find a class with someone with a background you respect so it will go through your brain.
> I would recommend you take an entry level CCW class.
I had to take one to get my Texas License To Carry (at the time a concealed carry license). I don't know what they teach in other states, but Texas has strict regulations on when and how to use deadly force. Including when to point a gun at someone.
Basically, not having a round chambered means you're too late to do anything with that gun other than use it an expensive blunt instrument -- or -- be possibly charged for brandishing/intimidation. Either you are being approached/charged at and are in immediate danger of bodily harm or you are not. If you are, you better have a loaded round ready to discharge.
Ofc, there is also the use of deadly force to protect the immediate and active threat to personal property. No real immediate need to have one loaded here. However, I don't think people carry because they are waiting to shoot someone trying to steal their car or other property under the Castle Doctrine. Which if someone is willing to kill another who is stealing their parked empty car, there are bigger talks to have other than if they are carrying with a load round or not. I don't usually keep a round chambered at home, my siblings have offspring that come around and even though it's a bit of a family tradition to learn to learn gun safety and shooting before age 10 -- I still don't care for the thought of a fully loaded gun not in my immediate possession.
There absolutely are valid reasons. Like I said, patrolling in an active war zone is an example of one.
Walking around on base for example isn’t even remotely close to one. This isn’t uniquely an American thing but it’s extremely common in the US in a way that absolutely isn’t in any kind of comparable country.
I don’t know what it is exactly, other than maybe the very weird and extremely pervasive “operator mentality” that seems to make everyone extremely horny for pretending situations are much more dangerous than they really are.
If you’re going to carry a weapon it’s really a very basic requirement that you can do some reasonable level of threat analysis and respond to the situation around you as it develops.
Again, I’m not saying those situations don’t exist where it makes sense but they are absolutely the exception and are a very weird thing to pretend are the default. I think it’s a culture problem and people are just scared.
Everyone "on base" in the USA has had a background check. I've visited bases (never been in the military), they will not let you in without running a background check. Sometimes people on base might have a mental breakdown but they are not letting people with history of armed robbery or felony assault etc on base. You are much safer on base from a surprise pistol-range attack than you are on the street. The threat on base are people outside the base, you know, in rifle and not pistol range.
On the flipside, when I got a flat on my bicycle in the city a guy walked up to me with a gun, pointed a gun at me to take my shit, and I would not have had time to rack a weapon (and god forbid it jammed). I knocked the guy's arm and punched the guy which stunned him enough that I was able to run off without him getting a good shot off; I would have had enough time to get off a shot with a chambered weapon (didn't carry at the time) but I never would have stood a chance if I pulled out an unchambered gun.
But this is exactly what I mean. I’m not shooting anyone over a fucking robbery for gods sake.. it’s such an incredibly disproportionate response to the situation. Likewise, there’s almost no situation where he was ever going to shoot you. Just hand over your shit and move on, everyone can go home to their families.
The only scenario where things start to get ACTUALLY dangerous is you pulling out a weapon and suddenly you’ve gone from a 5/10 situation to a 10/10 situation where everyone is liable to panic and do something stupid. You’re about to go from a bad day to maybe your last day here and for what? There is just no point in that story where adding another weapon to the picture improved things at all.
On a side note, I think there is a LOT to be said for having a strong sense of situation awareness and how to do risk management on the street. I spent a good amount of time years ago living in Nairobi and I was one of the few people in my circle of friends who didn’t have a gun in their face at any point. I’m not trying to say I’m somehow special, I think that can happen to anyone but I wish people didn’t have their entire personal security model centered around having a weapon because it’s actually a really shit plan in real life.
Edit: I don’t know if you’re familiar with Robert Young Pelton but he is a war correspondent wrote a book called the worlds most dangerous places which is part adventure travel guide and part how to stay safe in actually honest to god dangerous places and situations. He just started a podcast based on that book and I think you might get something out of this: https://youtu.be/3dhh5_oJsqQ?feature=shared
If someone is intentionally pulling a gun on you, you should expect they intend to kill you with it, and respond appropriately. And if having a chambered weapon is as dangerous as you say, then you should also maybe expect, they might accidently set the gun off at any time. That's a no from me dog. I'm not just going to pray they only just want my shit, and don't intend to use it to rape my wife, or my child, or even me, or just to kill me for the lolz.
And yeah I've been in the third world, including Syria. I think the penalty for me having one in Syria was probably the death penalty (LOL!), I didn't give a shit. Some people did shoot at me, I survived.
But this is again what I am saying. Of course you can get yourself into such a state where you immediately go to the worst possible case scenario and get yourself so worked up where the only logical conclusion is that you need a weapon with one in the chamber at all time… just in case.
But that is just being scared and has nothing to do with actually assessing and managing risk.
A modern striker fired pistol that is designed properly (like glock gen 3+) is not going to go off unless you pull the trigger. I don't understand why you wouldn't carry it chambered, if you are going to carry. You shouldn't be pulling it out of the holster unless you are about to shoot someone with it, at which point, why just stand around racking it and hoping it doesn't jam?
I mean honestly, you and I are coming from very different places mentally. There’s just no scenario where I would be walking the streets in the US doing my normal day to day shit with a weapon to begin with.
I understand that’s become a very normalised thing to do there but is something that would get you laughed out of the bar in pretty much the rest of the English speaking world.
Again, I don’t know what to tell you other than I think there is a paranoid culture problem here where everyone is just terrified of everything all the time and nobody seems to know how to step back from the edge and deescalate or again like I keep saying learning how to ACTUALLY judge and manage risk. It’s an actual skillset that will serve you much much better than a weapon ever will.
The same thing goes for just learning how to not panic if you find yourself in a sketchy situation. The ability to remain calm is hands down the most impressive and helpful thing I’ve ever seen from the actually dangerous people I know and have spent time with in some capacity or another.
I won't share my opinions of your statement, but I've seen no information on whether or not there was a round in the chamber at the time of the incident.
Regardless, depending on the situation and specifically in the USAF, you are ordered to either carry with a round in the chamber or not, and you'd damned well follow those orders.
It's beside the point, but I imagine, based on my own first hand experience, that USAF Security Forces typically carry without a round in the chamber, in most situations. I did Weapons Courier duty and I was ordered to carry a round in the chamber and be "locked and loaded" at all times.
It would be wild news if a firearm was able to discharge without a round in chamber. Even without information, for it to discharge there must be a a round in chamber.
Marine Corps order for MP and armed guard standard is round in chamber, weapon on safe, slide forward, hammer down. It stands to reason that is the standard case for all military LEO.
All that to say, anyone who says you shouldn't have a round in chamber is living in a fantasy world.
> anyone who says you shouldn't have a round in chamber is living in a fantasy world.
That was historically a very common military rule, and AFAIK it's still common worldwide, just not in US.
IDF is particularly famous for having empty chamber as the standard protocol, which is why this is often colloquially known as "Israeli carry". And you can say a lot of things about IDF, but one thing for sure: they have operational experience.
USAF SF is probably different (if SOP hasn't changed) because USAF SF gets so little time in training. USAF SF also ironically seem to have the largest numbers of disciplinary issues. Your average Marine, even a non-rifleman, has far better firearms training than a USAF SF airman.
Disclaimer: I was not SF. I was merely surrounded by them in a very high security environment. :-)
Yeah, when I carried a 9mm on watch on US Navy bases, I always had a round in the chamber, weapon safe, slide forward, hammer down. I think it makes sense if you're doing concealed carry in a civilian context to not chamber a round, but if you're on watch and responsible for responding, I think it's different.
I'll admit, that one's just my opinion, since the community is very divided on this and there's no consensus.
I feel that the safety versus response time trade off is worth it for me. It could be from my military background, but for me a negligent discharge is one of the worst things I could possibly do with a firearm. I was also raised to never trust a safety and unload my gun when crossing fence lines while hunting.
Fair enough, I can respect the difference in opinion. A couple notes though on the military or hunters ed training safety that might influence their training
1) The safety mechanisms on say a glock are different than on a lot of military rifles soldiers are trained on. An Ar-15/M16 can go off without pulling the trigger if the firing pin gets stuck in the channel. That won't happen with a glock because the safety physically blocks the primer from being struck. Also in theory a free-floating firing pin could maybe somehow get slammed hard enough or slam an abused primer enough to set off some military rifles.
2) Some hunting shotguns or military rifles aren't drop safe. Modern handguns are.
3) A military rifle or hunting rifle generally has the trigger exposed at all times you are carrying it. A CCW handgun, you are not exposing the gun and trigger unless you are about to shoot someone.
Now I've never served in the military, other than a rag-tag Kurdish militia. What I would imagine the boot sergeant or whatever they are called do, is tells the soldier they will keep the manual safety on or the weapon unchambered and leave it at that, because explaining the intricacies of a striker-fired pistol vs an M16 to a bunch of barely out of highschoolers from Guam who are already exhausted from sleep deprivation and jarring work-outs would not be terribly productive.
> An Ar-15/M16 can go off without pulling the trigger if the firing pin gets stuck in the channel. That won't happen with a glock because the safety physically blocks the primer from being struck.
This is precisely one of the issues with Gen1 Glocks that was remediated. The firing pin safety prevents the firing pin from moving forward unless the gun is in battery and the trigger is partially depressed. It doesn't force the pin to move backwards if it is jammed forward (due to dirt). A pin that's jammed will slam fire the gun when racked.
IANAL and the article is light on details, but charging involuntary manslaughter seems significant here? If the arrested airman negligently caused the trigger to be pulled with no confounding factors (e.g. poor firearm design or poor holster design), surely that would be regular manslaughter at least?
No, criminal negligence or even recklessness would be involuntary manslaughter. “Regular”, voluntary, manslaughter requires intent to kill (but differs from murder in that it does not require malice aforethought). The textbook example is heat-of-passion killing.
Interesting. I looked up the UCMJ articles for manslaughter and murder, and the language is actually quite plain; reads to me like you are obviously correct that this case would clearly be involuntary manslaughter.
Really? I thought heat-of-passion killing was indeed murder. Whereas voluntary manslaughter is more like when you punch someone in the face and they crack their head on a curb and die. You intended to hurt them, but you had absolutely no intent to kill.
But IANAL, and to the extent I pay attention to the law, that kind of basic criminal law isn't it.
I linked the UCMJ articles in a sibling comment. I think gp's description is correct for the UCMJ. Part of the problem IMO is that there are ~52 definitions of manslaughter/murder in the US (one for every state, civilian federal law and the UCMJ) so that answer is always highly context specific.
It depends on jurisdiction, but involuntary manslaughter can just mean that someone died and you didn’t intend to kill them. You can still be negligent (playing with a loaded gun) and have it be involuntary.
You are begging the question, in the classic meaning of the phrase. What issue specifically? I haven't seen a claim yet that ultimately didn't boil down to: "and the trigger was pulled".
Maybe the issue is that the 320 is too close to a competition trigger, and it isn't appropriate for a duty gun. But the gun has been under a microscope for years now, and no one has shown a design defect that causes the gun to fire by itself.
The issue is the gun goes off by itself without the trigger being pulled. Remember that all this type of gun has the firing pin under spring tension all the time. The only thing keeping it from firing is a latch mechanism that is supposed to only activate when the trigger is pulled but if the mechanism is defective and too close to the edge the latch can disengage without the trigger being pulled or touched. There are numerous YT videos of this occurring.
There is no evidence of this, no reproduction of it firing without the trigger being pulled, and not even a good theory on it. The YouTube videos are involve pulling the trigger far enough to disengage the internal safeties.
I 100% agree it is concerning, but in this video you can't see whether the trigger is pulled or not. Holstering the gun creates a risk of the trigger being pulled. The gun goes off while it is being pushed in, which suggests the trigger is catching on something.
If the gun was able to fire by itself, without the trigger being actuated, then someone should make it happen on video. Shake the crap out of it, bang on it. Take it in and out of a clear plastic holster 1000 times until the supposed defect happens.
It goes off as the holster he bends over and bumps into the officer next to him. The holster is clearly being moved and touched.
Regardless, if there is a defect in that particular gun, they should just demonstrate it. If it isn't the holster, or something in the holster pulling the trigger, make it happen outside the holster.
I’ve seen multiple security videos of P320’s going off in holsters in the field with no plausible way anyone or anything could have pulled the trigger.
The police video where two officers are wrestling with a suspect, one officer has a large hanging key fob on the front of his belt which enters the other officers Safariland holster as they wrestle, and pulls the trigger.
The range video where they are standing on the line was allegedly a modified gun with non-Sig upper and trigger.
I understand what it looks like, but we have the guns from those incidents, and no one has looked at them an pointed to a defect, or reproduced them firing without the trigger being actuated.
A gun in a holster can fire when it is moved and the holster is poorly fit, incorrectly configured, or there anything caught in it like tail of a shirt, drawstring. Also, many police have a flashlight on their pistol, which opens up space quite a bit making it easier for things to get caught inside.
Whether it’s an explicit design flaw that allows the gun to fire with no interaction with the trigger at all, or one where the gun is prone to fire unintended when circumstances are less that ideal, and an interaction that shouldn’t cause it to fire does. Who cares. It’s perfectly reasonable for law enforcement and the military to want a higher level of safety than what is apparently possible with this handgun.
A hair trigger is unsuitable for police security use because guns are routinely drawn on people as a threat to exact compliance.
A hair trigger is unsuitable for combat use because of the "errybody be muzzle sweeping errybody up in here" nature of combat.
Those two uses are 99.99% of what the air force needs its pistols to do.
They could give it better tolerances so it has a "good trigger" without "hair trigger" but that will cost a lot of money. Or they could give it an absurd trigger pull like duty guns had in the "good old days" but that will cost just as much money for equivalent results because you'll need to train the force more to get the same accuracy of fire.
Additionally, with the fairly sloppy nature of these guns and the fundamental nature of how handguns work, it's not unforeseeable that they do get clapped out to the point of just going off if you bump the slide right as they age since they're so close to that as is.
Considering how many people need to be trained/equipped and how often the air force fires sidearms in "real" situations both of these solutions are way, way, way more expensive than a few bodies.
The P320 absolutely has design and manufacturing flaws. The P250 fire control unit was shoehorned into a striker fired pistol when they should've gone back to the drawing board like they did with the P365, which doesn't have these issues.
There are also manufacturing issues with intermingling parts with different geometries intended for different calibers and building guns with the wrong parts, such as installing a 10mm Auto/.45 ACP takedown safety level in a 9mm gun, or installing a metal injection molded firing pin safety that's out of spec, worn, or contributes to tolerance stacking in such a way that the gun becomes unsafe.
These are all good theories. Someone should demonstrate it if true. When there were drop safe questions, it was able to be reproduced, and there was a change to address it. Show an uncommanded discharge, show why it happened. Then you have a design or manufacturing flaw.
I think the problem is that there's not a single identifiable problem. There's a series of related problems caused by manufacturing and engineering decisions that lead to parts not interoperating as designed.
For example, Sig offered a "voluntary upgrade" to fix the well documented drop safety flaw with the P320, and there's video proof of the same guns going off still in holsters.
Sig is going to be playing whackamole fixing these issues if they ever admit to it, so they won't.
It really doesn’t matter at this point whether someone is able to document it or not. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence of uncommanded discharge (yes the plural of anecdote is not data), and the reputational damage to the gun and the brand has already happened. If I were in the market for another handgun at this point, I would personally skip the Sig, because even at a %0.001 chance that this is a legit problem, my risk tolerance around firearms is pretty low, so I’ll just spend more and get a Glock where I’m certain it’s safe.
There is nothing in there except a sensational headline. The military asked Sig to come up with every possible theoretical failure mode for the gun, and assess the risk. There is nothing about a specific flaw that would cause the gun to fire uncommanded. The document is being misrepresented here.
There is a giant screw jammed in the trigger. That disengages the internal safeties. That's not showing the gun is not safe, that is intentionally making it unsafe. That provides no insight as to whether the gun can fire uncommanded, without moving the trigger, which is the claim.
The argument is that there exists a combination of states and tolerances when a P320 is loaded and cocked that could, theoretically, allow the striker to impact the primer forcefully without a complete and full trigger pull, one where you don't feel the break. This could either be while the finger is on the trigger (maybe a police officer pointing it at someone who has a weapon while commanding them to drop the weapon, for example) or not (in a holster).
Inserting that screw is meant to simulate a tolerance stacking issue wherein the pistol's components don't line up together in such a way as to prevent the striker from slipping past the sear.
Is it wonky? Of course. Could you probably do it with other pistols? Probably. Are there police officers and servicemen/women who need a convenient excuse for their negligent discharges? Yes. Should a real investigation occur? Also yes.
no if the trigger pull is near the sear line. that screw is pushing back the trigger very lightly. Friend has a p320, we replicated this test. I'd sat that unintended discharge could occur any time you finger is resting on the trigger.
Even if the gun went off by itself the Airman is still most likely negligent. The first rule of firearms is that you only point it at things you intend to destroy.
I agree and disagree. A holstered pistol is intended to be treated, for all intents and purposes, as deactivated and "on safe" for practicality reasons, even when loaded. Plenty of people carry loaded guns pointed at their bodies daily in holsters, safely at that.
Absolutely no one who carries holster relies on the rule of it not pointing at anyone. Surely they don't disarm every time they go up a second story, separated by the first only by 3/8" bit of plywood and sheetrock.
> The first investigation into the explosion, conducted by the U.S. Navy, concluded that one of the gun turret crew members, Clayton Hartwig, who died in the explosion, had deliberately caused it. During the investigation, numerous leaks to the media, later attributed to U.S. Navy officers and investigators, implied that Hartwig and another sailor, Kendall Truitt, had engaged in a romantic relationship and that Hartwig had caused the explosion after their relationship had soured. However, in its report, the U.S. Navy concluded that the evidence did not show that Hartwig was homosexual but that he was suicidal and had caused the explosion with either an electronic or chemical detonator.
Even worse, the Navy knew many of these powder bags were getting increasingly unstable as they were near/over their intended lifespan (many were made in WW2 and had not been treated gently), so what Sandia concluded was a likely accidental overram setting them off was likely a consequence of the Navy’s policies.
Policies that people had objected to at the time, but had been pushed through regardless due to ‘stop being a worry wart’/no one wanting to spend the money.
They still have the accident down as ‘Unknown causes’.
The "fix" only works on models with a manual safety and only when the safety is engaged. If you release the safety, like many people tell you (as a matter of subjective opinion) that you should while conceal carrying, it won't do dick. Or even just release the safety because you're going to fire soon but not sure when -- same deal -- same flaw and it could go off without pulling the trigger.
So the fix is as good as commercially useless, although better than nothing, the market is basically the guy who wants to be able to take it to the range and then always have it downrange while the safety is off.
Sig secured contracts for the Modular Handgun System (MHS) competition, with an objectively inferior design compared to every other entry, as well as the Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program with the Sig MCX Spear firing an objectively worse proprietary cartridge with higher pressure (lower parts lifespan), more recoil and weight, and less capacity. This design takes the firepower and weight of light arms design back to the sixties when battle rifles were still issued. We've forgotten what we already learned decades ago, standardized intermediate cartridges have a plethora of benefits in combat and logistics.
Sig also won contracts for suppressors, optics, and probably more I'm unaware of or can't remember. Unit cost of the M7 is several times higher than the M4, it's heavier, has more recoil, carries less ammo, and the cartridge it fires is still stopped by commonly available body armor that's manufactured today.
Corruption is obvious in my mind, it's shocking Congress seems either oblivious or so complacent.
The intermediate cartridge doctrine is evolving as a result of improvements in armor. M855A1 5.56 cartridges fired out of a long (20") barrel may have success against modern armor, but slightly larger intermediate cartridges (6 and 6.5mm) are being adopted for supposedly superior performance. That doesn't excuse the weird 6.8 fury cartridge Sig designed around though.
And Sig is responding to .mil requirements, just like the other companies who introduced similar cartridges. It makes no sense to assert they're the ones forcing it on the military. The military asked for it.
The requirements may be goofy, but that's a requirements problem and not a Sig problem.
And if it turns out that someone in the committee made those requirements almost custom for Sig’s projects, and was either buddies with someone in SIG, or went to work for SIG later? As happens all the time in military procurement?
Sometimes the requirements almost seem to be purposefully goofy.
I can sort of see why they went with a completely new cartridge with the XM7; they want a common cartridge between the service rifle and machine-gun, and they want ballistic performance that can defeat certain types of body armor out of a barrel that's short enough to be maneuverable with a suppressor affixed to it. Would 7.62 NATO do that? I don't know. Maybe not.
The one that gets me, though, is the "modular grips" requirement for the competition the P320 ended up winning, with part of the rationale being a better fit for more hand sizes. C'mon. That seems like an interesting idea, but the idea of fitting soldiers for custom grips and keeping them in inventory, just seems far-fetched. Maybe I'm wrong. More importantly, it made the P320 the apparent shoo-in for the competition. It's like someone involved in the process knew someone at Sig and the two devised a requirement that only Sig could reasonably hope to fulfill. Then they undercut Glock on the price, and suddenly a well-regarded service pistol that is proven the world over just isn't good enough for the price, but this completely new design somehow is.
It just stinks of collusion between the military and someone putting in a tender for a contract.
There's also no good reason that there wasn't standard testing before adopting the P320 to be the M18. Sig undercut Glock on price and the DOD said "eh... good enuf"
If it’s a manufacturing defect as some theorize, then the sample guns could have passed with flying colors, but the later ones have the potential issue.
It's at least partially a design and engineering problem. Sig shoehorned the hammer-fired P250 fire control unit into the P320, which is striker fired. The P250, being hammer fired, uses a fully cocked hammer capable of setting off a primer when dropped, and the P320 (to my understanding) also uses a fully cocked striker, meaning less trigger input is required for firing.
Hammer fired guns are capable of doing this safely because they have a sear geometry that requires moving the hammer back against spring pressure with trigger input a very short distance before the hammer drops. Along with a functioning sear block in case the hammer slips off the sear without trigger input, this makes them very safe.
Basically every other striker fired gun on the market uses a semi-cocked striker with a trigger widget and sear block, which is a copy of Glock's design, and it's quite safe.
Sig deviated from this design without fully proving it out. Their guns don't have trigger widgets, which allows the trigger to move under momentum when dropped, causing repeatable firings. The fully cocked striker design leads to a shorter, crisper pull, but a sear slip leads to uncommanded firings, unlike a semi-cocked design, which doesn't have enough energy to fire a primer.
Combine this with poor control of manufacturing, intermingling of parts designed and intended for different calibers, as well as factories in the US and India with varying levels of quality control and poor spec for parts to begin with (metal injection molding for fire control parts), and safety critical systems like the sear block have been shown to not be 100% reliable. It's a system of cascading failures resulting in a firearm that's unsafe to carry loaded.
I’m asking out of complete ignorance here, and I’d like to learn. Why don’t these have nearly perfect safety mechanisms? To my naive mind, it seems easy to add a push button that comes between the striker and bullet, or locks the striker in place. Obviously it’s not that trivial or they’d probably have done it. Why is that?
I’ve owned rifles that had safeties that made it impossible to pull the trigger. Don’t these?
If you're asking why there's no manual safety, it's because the modern doctrine for handguns says that it is unnecessary, on the basis that the handgun should either be secure in the holster or - if drawn - ready to fire. A properly secure holster prevents trigger from being pulled even accidentally, so if the gun is impossible to fire at all without pulling the trigger (as e.g. the Glock design achieves for striker-fired guns), the holster is deemed sufficient, and manual safety is considered a misfeature that doesn't add safety but makes deploying the gun more error-prone.
FWIW this isn't even a new take. Many popular DA/SA guns cannot be put on safe at all when they're not cocked, even though they can be fired through double action - logic here being the same, between heavy trigger pull and hammer block it just cannot fire without a trigger pull.
That said I personally don't agree with this analysis. Or, more accurately, I believe that the increased risk from not being able to use the gun when it's needed is not properly balanced against the increased risk from making the gun easier to fire, especially in applications where handgun is not the primary weapon (which is almost always the case for the military).
I glossed over parts of this mechanism above, but partially pre-cocked strikers require the trigger bar to pull the striker back more before the trigger bar drops down, releasing the striker. The amount the striker is pre-cocked is not enough to ignite a primer, and the act of pulling the striker back against spring pressure mimics the sear geometry of a hammer fired gun.
Fully cocked strikers are ready to ignite a primer if the striker drops. I don't know of another design like Sig's that has a fully cocked striker, which is not to say there isn't one, or that they're all unsafe.
The P320 in particular suffers from compromises shoehorning a fire control unit designed for one gun into another.
Combined with poor manufacturing techniques, tolerance stacking, part mixing, and poor QA, the striker block, which is the last safety intended to block the striker without an explicit trigger pull, can become ineffective.
To answer your question, there's no mechanical reason a handgun cannot be designed an manufactured to not fire without explicit mechanical input from the user. Indeed almost every commercially produced handgun on the market fits this requirement. A combination of failures on Sig's part has allowed this to happen.
As mentioned it is possible to make double or even triple safe (or more).
But some of the types of safeties increase the change you won’t have it on (because time to disengage the safety is too long/complicated) or that they will introduce additional failure modes.
For some missions, “unsafe” is better than “too safe” - think one step from gun drawn, finger on the trigger.
This is one of the reasons Glocks are so popular, as the trigger safety is really “easy” to disengage as it’s the same as the mechanism you use to fire.
But it doesn’t protect YOU from being a dumbass. Safeties that do that are dangerous in another way.
There was a lot of standard testing, very controlled for that matter... it just didn't include drops at an angle that seem to allow for unintended discharge... If I were to guess, Sig is well aware of that angle at this point.
Curious, what makes that not safe for work? It's a discussion about a handgun manufacturing error, and the manufacturer's failure to respond adequately to it.
They might have very zealous web filters. Something like Websense would categorize that site as "Weapons" related and visiting the site, even if not blocked, would result in a scoring change to the user's profile.
I don't blame them for playing it safe. I've personally had to help Bay Area HR types understand that looking at "weapons" sites by itself was probably okay when the company we worked for had thousands of employees across California and at least some percentage of them hunted, went target shooting, etc.
Weapons are for hunting, target shooting and killing people.
These HR types (and many in the general population) need to understand that there's nothing wrong with the third point. Aside from the obvious case of self defense, people can only protect their freedom as long as they have equally powerful tools a those trying to oppress them.
Democracy can only work with the ability to kill evenly distributed.
There's a reason all dictatorships have strict gun control laws.
(I own an ar15 and an ak47 and it is like comparing Microsoft’s MFC to a shell script. The former is all bloat and high tolerances and the latter gets the job done with fewer moving parts.)
Both guns have a bolt carrier, rotating bolt, and similar amounts of fire control group components. Both need to be headspaced within a spec of a few thousandths of an inch.
The biggest difference is about 20 years of industrial development (moving from stamped/milled steel to aluminum)
There's a decent chance that the handgun our men and women are issued is a danger. When the M16 had problems early in Vietnam there was an investigation and they found out it was a powder issue in the cartridges. No (good) reason that there's not something similar for this issue here.
And Sig can dig their heels in all they want, but when you've got ranges banning P320s and they're in the bargain bin at the local gun shop, well, the market has spoken. You can't unring that bell. Stop production of the P320, fire the executives, and do what it takes to repair this issue.