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This is a completely incorrect interpretation of a FMEA (failure-modes-and-effects-analysis) / "Risk Chart". ISO quality systems regulations / the army mandate engineers sit in a room and dream up every way the device could fail and/or harm someone. You then classify the risk of that harm, so in all cases an unintentional discharge would be "high risk". This does not mean the pistol has a high chance of discharging, that is a separate metric for odds of occurrence. Even if the pistol was redesigned to only have a 1 in a million chance of unintentionally discharging, the "risk" category would stay "high".
At least while I was at NASA, a high impact score (ie death) would still elevate total risk even if the likelihood was low.
> [Nerds] sit in a room and dream up every way the device could fail and/or harm someone
Well, yeah. And as it happened they postulated the failure mode that was actually (allegedly) seen in practice. And they were right. So the "no one could have known" side of Sig's defense seems out the window here. They could have known, and they did, and relevant experts told them.
I really don't get your point here. You seem to be saying that risk analysis, in the abstract, as a whole field of practice, has no value because of the lack of certainty? But... managing uncertainty is the whole point. Do you really live your life like this? "I mean, people say fentanyl is dangerous but you never really know, right?"
I don't understand the snark. It's plain to see that the GP is arguing that the media report is misunderstanding the document.
Whether that's a correct critique or not, I don't know, but your reply is certainly misunderstanding their comment.
They don't care.
"The Smoking Gun" is part of the Everytown Support Fund [0], which has been lobbying for gun abolitionism. It was created in opposition of the NRA by Michael Bloomberg [1]
Just like how the NRA would skew stats against any form of gun control, an organization like Everytown would skew facts the other way around.
Firearm abolitionism and unrestricted firearm access are both equally dumb.
There is a middle ground that can be found, but the extremes on both sides make it impossible to compromise. Gun ownership is a 2nd amendment right and often needed in areas with limited population density and access to police or animal control services (try dealing with packs of feral hog like most rural communities in the American West - can't be done without .223 calibre ammo), but that doesn't mean we can't add safety and training requirements given that there is a real issue with gun smuggling that is exacerbating crime across the Americas as well as the inability to prevent and flag high risk individuals from purchasing weapons (especially via private sales).
IMO, an Israeli style model would be best - Israelis are allowed to own a private weapon, but are required to get tested and recertified every year AND need to show that they have a gun locker. All weapons are also registered and cataloged, and all gun sales need to be notified and allowed by the Ministry of Public Safety.
If Israel can do it, the US absolutely can as well.
The Swiss model would be a much more reasonable approach. Shall-issue purchase permit on passing a background check, and the requirement to keep the firearm locked up when not used. But if you live alone, your locked front door counts as "locked up."
Statistically, the problem isn't keeping scary guns away from everyone, because the vast majority of people will never shoot anyone. The whole "you're more likely to shoot a household member than an intruder" is a red herring, because the vast majority will do neither of these things. What matters is disarming the suicidally depressed, as well as a subset of people who are disproportionately likely to commit violent crime. 60-85 percent of gun deaths in the US are suicides, jurisdiction dependent. The prototypical gun homicide in the US is a young minority man with a criminal record being killed by another young minority man with a criminal record using an illegally-possessed handgun, usually involving street gang disputes and/or the illegal drug trade.
So what matters is being able to disarm people who exhibit violent tendencies and/or suicidal depression "left of bang."
> The Swiss model would be a much more reasonable approach. Shall-issue purchase permit on passing a background check, and the requirement to keep the firearm locked up when not used. But if you live alone, your locked front door counts as "locked up."
This describes how it works in Seattle, WA.
Washington is a must-issue concealed carry state though. When working at Microsoft I had to sign something saying I’d keep my gun in my car when on campus.
> So what matters is being able to disarm people who exhibit violent tendencies and/or suicidal depression "left of bang."
I agree
> The Swiss model would be a much more reasonable approach. Shall-issue purchase permit on passing a background check, and the requirement to keep the firearm locked up when not used. But if you live alone, your locked front door counts as "locked up."
I disagree simply because unlike CH, our neighboring states like Mexico, Haiti, and Jamaica are all facing severe public security issues due to US originated gun trafficking, and this blows back into the US.
Adding some additional securitization to our rules more in line with those in Israel allow us to help defend ourselves from contagion.
If the party that support the 2nd amendment also views organized crime in Mexico and Haiti as a national security risk, then using the securitization framing is an easier sell.
Yes, but then you'd have to create a database of gun purchases and that would be illegal.
https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-database...
You can drop the weapons catalog requirement that Israel has, and you would still add significant guardrails against misuse.
Even without Israeli style gun cataloging, the rest of the Israeli gun control requirements should be able to pass the "objective criteria" test from Buren while also reducing the risk of misuse by tying license ownership with criterias such as mental health, training, and access to safe storage.
Oh, I entirely agree. It just seems absolutely nuts that the US government (or rather the state governments, because ultimately they'd be dealing with it) cannot attribute a gun to a purchase because they've specifically made it illegal to do so.
When you're dealing with that mindset, no wonder gun control measures as unremarkable as mandatory safes and training are anathema.
As a former legislative assistant during the Aurora shooting, it's because gun abolitionists and gun fundamentalists are extremely organized interest groups, and risk your chances during a primary.
There is a silent majority that feels the 2nd amendment and gun control can co-exist, but they are not represented by any type of organized lobbying group so that voice is not heard.
It's also become a culture war signifier, so if you are a D who is fine with controlled gun ownership instead of abolition, you will face severe lobbying from Everytown, and if you are a R who is fine with controlled permitting instead of maximalist shall-issue licensing, you will face severe lobbying from the NRA.
"If Israel can do it, the US absolutely can as well."
This is not just a matter of technical ability.
In practice, you cannot simply bypass current reading of the 2nd Amendment by SCOTUS, unless you have enough support to amend the Constitution again. Which, on this controversial topic, no one has.
I know, and my argument is that the Israeli model can be safely argued as falling within the current reading of the 2nd amendment, especially after NYSRPA v. Bruen
The reading of Buren allows control on concealed carry and gun ownership via objective criteria - which is what Israeli gun permitting rests on as well.
Yet, I have never seen a single organization fight for an Israeli style compromise for gun control in the US - almost all lawfare is either for abolitionism or unrestricted ownership.
So the important bit here is that the guns failed drop testing. And that's bad.
The rest of the article seems to misunderstand FMEA style "write down every conceivable bad scenario in the universe, how bad it is, and then what you have done to stop it", and then spins this as "look at all these horrible known issues they knew about". I hope a jury doesn't view it the same way, because it would be an epic bad for safety everywhere if engineers writing down a list of bad things to avoid and mitigate was forbidden by company lawyers.
The important bit is that the guns failed drop testing and then Sig Sauer updated the design to fix the issue.
In a nutshell, the defect that causes the guns to fire when holstered occurs when there is a small amount of pressure on the trigger. If the slide (top part of the gun) is wiggled / nudged, it will fire. Also, the gun can fire when dropped. Both these issues are mitigated by other manufacturers with a trigger safety and longer trigger pull.
>Both these issues are mitigated by other manufacturers with a trigger safety and longer trigger pull.
And just not having hot dog down a hallway tolerances at the slide to frame interface.
The trigger stuff lives in the bottom half of the gun and the bang stuff lives in the top half and only goes bang depending upon the relative position of the trigger stuff. So allowing the top half and the bottom half to move around a ton is generally unwise unless you make accommodations elsewhere in the design so that you still have proper relative position regardless of where in the hallway the hotdog is.
There are videos online showing that this also happens with Glocks (when the trigger is depressed to the wall) [0]
Really, any gun where the sear is in the grip and the part it connects to is in the frame could have the same issue.
I think Jared's video is good at conveying the mechanics of striker-fired guns, and he is completely correct that this issue exists to some degree in every striker-fired gun (and is not an issue in them). However, the parts in the P320 have so much variance that the wall is very "mushy" on some of these guns. I wouldn't be surprised if we find that these uncommanded discharges involve both movement in the trigger and movement of the slide.
It may be the case that variance is so wide that there are some P320's which are in that "depressed to the wall" state at rest, but that would require an x-ray or CAT scan of the offending guns, and I don't know if anyone other than Sig has one. There is also a safety on P320's that should be stopping this from happening, but again, it is a part with very wide variation, and on some guns it seems it doesn't work (Sig issued a recall over this already).
I agree with Jared that this problem is a lot trickier and weirder than people give it credit for. The sort of core of the issue is that everything about the gun was done cheaply and they flew a little too close to the sun, but I believe they have no idea what in particular they cheaped out on too much.
I understand your speculation on the amount of variance, but I haven't seen any data to support it.
Sig's "recall" was a drop-safety issue, where in certain orientations the weight of the trigger could generate enough momentum to allow an unintentional discharge.
I'm curious what the different levels of "cheaping out" saved in terms of manufacturing cost.
So am I. I expect that Sig doesn't know what to fix here because taking every part up to be more precise is very expensive.
I think one of the best demonstrations of this, with detail on the amount of travel required for most striker-fired handguns is this video [0]. Lots of detail and relatively methodical.
This video does not show a Glock firing with a "small amount of pressure on the trigger", which is what the OP said the issue w/ the P320 is
I'm pretty sure you're not implying otherwise, but it's an outrageous design flaw regardless and selling these while being aware of the problem (to the military no less!) should carry devastating consequences for the manufacturers.
The gun firing when the trigger is being pulled is not a design flaw, and it is 100% mitigated with the safety that the military has in their guns.
Glock, unlike Sig, uses a trigger safety. It doesn't just require any trigger pressure, the lever safety needs to be pushed back. Is this bad? Of course. The Sig flaw is sig-nificantly worse.
So a classic sig double action or 1911 wouldn't be effected? He video says striker fired specifically. Cocked and locked I'm not sure how you would make this happen.
Hammer-fired guns have a similar issue if you drop them directly on the hammer (or on parts that can move the hammer) when the hammer is cocked. When the hammer is not cocked, there's no available energy in the firing mechanism to discharge the gun. Striker fired guns are effectively in the cocked state at rest, though. In a "cocked and locked" state, you would need the drop to disengage or overcome the safety, not just the normal trigger mechanism.
Not affected in the same way. The original M1911 design has a floating firing pin held back only by spring tension, so in theory it might be possible to get it to discharge without pressing the trigger by dropping it straight onto the muzzle from a sufficient height. This is so unlikely in practice that it's not a real concern. Some newer variants also incorporate an extra internal safety that blocks the firing pin from moving.
1911, and 2011 going off when dropped:
With the safety on too. Interesting
You have to partially pull the trigger to release the safety lever on the stiker. Once you do that, all bets are off, you have manually overridden one of the main designed safety features.
It is like saying, if you tape the trigger safety down on the Glock and drop it can go off, therefore it is a design defect.
You're kidding me right? I thought guns were at least somewhat safe in general but putting the trigger safety on the trigger is...
I'm used to the kind of engineering where the goal is not to kill people I guess...
> Both these issues are mitigated by other manufacturers with a trigger safety and longer trigger pull.
And even by Sig themselves in other models. It seems to be a problem specific to the P320 / M17.
Also, does not help that the US Army does NOT want this FMECA document released. From the article that is cited the US Army's project manager & legal counsel gave this response to help Sig justify keeping the document sealed:
> The Army position would be to oppose the distribution to the public of the > FMECA document as it potentially reveals critical information about the > handgun (design, reliability, performance, etc.).
Also, they’ve had numerous issues with their triggers failing to reset correctly and/or otherwise misbehaving. That was the focus of the original ‘voluntary upgrade’.
That this giant mess of bad tolerances, sloppy change management, iffy manufacturing outsourcing, and a design which is sensitive to these issues it seems inevitable these kinds of random and hard to reproduce problems would occur. And the more they sold, the worse it would get.
Do that in something which literally can cause death and serious injury if it fails, in an environment where all your competitors designs don’t have these issues and hence users tend towards ‘round in the chamber’ and carrying them in all sorts of messy real world situations? Guaranteed disaster eventually.
Bad sig.
The brand was dead to me many years ago (extractor snapped in the middle of a course - seemed like bad metallurgy, or a bad design), but this is entirely another level of crazy.
Agreed. One of the greater examples of brand destruction of the 21st century.
>Both these issues are mitigated by other manufacturers with a trigger safety and longer trigger pull.
No. They are mitigated by a firing pin block that must be lifted by the full travel of the trigger, so that the block is lifted out of the way, for the firing pin to access the primer.
https://www.shootingillustrated.com/media/5nsj1a3l/firpins.j...
You forgot to mention that the gun also needs to have a bullet chambered. Not exactly how I would carry a holstered weapon, but hey, I’m 100% certain people do exactly that. Especially in a military situation so I’m not judging.
"There has to be a round in the chamber for a round to be fired" seems sort of tautological if I'm being honest.
Very, very few serious people would argue that anyone carrying a firearm should carry it without a round in the chamber. Yes, "Israeli carry" is a thing, but is almost entirely endorsed simply as a training carry-over from a time when people carried different weapons of widely varying mechanical safety features in a very unique high-threat environment.
If you're carrying a firearm professionally, or in the US "recreationally" for personal protection, carrying without a round in the chamber will be seen by most people as a pretty stupid decision.
As a Sig 320 owner, and someone that knows at least 3 other sig 320 owners, I disagree. None of us ever carry our weapon chambered. I probably know 10+ guys that own guns, including a few police officers, and I'm going to ask the officers about this because honestly, I would be surprised if they even carried their weapons chambered.
I wouldn't carry with a round in the chamber if I carried a 320 either.
There is zero chance that those police carry un-chambered
My father was taught to use condition 3 carry (unloaded chamber) with a 1911 in the 1970's US Navy. It all depends on circumstances.
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That's exactly how guns are supposed to be carried. Exceptions exist, but if you're carrying a gun you ought to be ready to use it.
You might not, but this is exactly how a pistol like this should be carried.
Certainly not the first time something like this happened. During Vietnam, the US Army sent soldiers into combat with the M16 knowing that it had major issues that often caused it to jam. We’ll never know exactly people were killed by such a bad decision, but it quickly became infamous early in the war.[0]
0: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/m16-rifle-viet...
There was nothing wrong with the M16/AR-15; the Marines had been issued the weapon in Vietnam as well (with different ammo than the army received) and it worked fine.
The issue was that the Army Bureau of Ordinance insisted on making 5.56mm ammunition with a propellant composition different from the one that Stoner had specified when designing the weapon, one that was entirely unsuitable and led to jamming.
Yes but it was worse due to design problems with the gun as well, seeing as how they did change it - I.e. adding chrome plating to the chamber and barrel which reduced fouling, and actually including a proper cleaning kit.
The chrome lining was done to significantly increase the service life of the barrel and to reduce corrosion in some environments. Prior to the M16, chrome lining was only used on machine guns due to the volume of rounds that went through them.
Far more rounds were put through the M16 by soldiers than prior weapons like the M14. Despite the chrome lining, M16 barrels still wear out over time and have to be replaced.
There was nothing wrong with the M16, it worked very well for a number of years. Then the US Army unilaterally modified the ammunition to save money in such a way as to make it no longer within specification for the weapon. Predictably, the use of out-of-spec ammunition caused issues.
The Army never changed the ammunition back. Instead, the weapon was modified (M16A1) to be compatible with the formerly out-of-spec ammunition and the issues went away.
You can't blame the M16 for the US Army using ammunition that wasn't fit for purpose.
A dishonourable mention for the original A1 version of the British SA80, which required high levels of lubrication to operate properly, and as a result often jammed in sandy environments... like Kuwait and Iraq [1].
I seem to recall the A0 also used to yeet the magazine when you ran with it across your chest on the sling, because the mag release button had no guard (but that might be me misremembering it. )
And the Berretta slide failures. And many similar issues for all kinds of things.
I was going to mention this! I was on a range and watched a slide completely break in half after firing. The Beretta’s where terrible.
Are you referring to the M9/92? I don't own one but I've heard it's one of those guns that everyone who was issued one hates it, and everyone who bought one on the civilian market loves it - the implication being they just don't shoot it enough to run into any issues.
Here are some follow-ups to the article cited. Pretty wild what Sig's response has been:
https://practicalshootinginsights.com/the-document-sig-sauer...
https://practicalshootinginsights.com/sig-sauer-vp-consumer-...
https://practicalshootinginsights.com/new-unsealed-sig-sauer...
https://practicalshootinginsights.com/a-year-before-the-army...
This article makes me wonder about comparative analysis against other models and brands. It is good Sig Sauer produced a failure mode analysis. Where are the competitive analysis documents?
It also makes me wonder if the reason it can't fix some of these issues is because it is working around patent issues.
Pure speculation.
> This article makes me wonder about comparative analysis against other models and brands. It is good Sig Sauer produced a failure mode analysis. Where are the competitive analysis documents?
Presumably buried in the woods along with whatever shenanigans went down to award XM17 to Sig over Glock without going through the full predescribed testing in the first place
It appears based on some other court documents that Sig with the P320 intentionally excluded a trigger tab safety based on marketing decisions to be competitive, which every other striker-fired handgun has included. That along with some other issues appears to be the basis for where the P320 design went wrong.
The reason they can’t fix these issues is someone in leadership likely literally has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and is quite literally incapable of acknowledging a mistake or problem. To the point they’ll inevitably torpedo the company rather than take any ownership or responsibility.
If the Board is smart, they’ll fire the person before it gets to that point - but if they were smart, they probably wouldn’t have hired the type of person to get them into this mess in the first place.
What is the personality disorder that makes someone with no medical training believe they can diagnose "likely" mental health disorders in Generic Executive in a company they have no direct relationship with?
> "In a company of our size, would anyone ever believe that there was a real issue going on, and we wouldn’t address it?"
*awkward silence*
> someone in leadership likely literally has Narcissistic Personality Disorder
What a wild, unjustified claim. Not every arrogant fool has NPD. If you want to throw that claim around you best be ready to cite the clinical definition.
That's not really an Occam's Razor conclusion. I would say the reason is that multiple lawsuits were already filed, and to admit the gun was defective essentially means you lose all the suits overnight. At the time, they chose to ride it out because they didn't know how many of these guns were actually defective.
My guess is it was a perfect storm where the defect rate was low enough to escape their quality control but high enough (or perhaps delayed long enough, meaning it takes years for the defect to appear) to lead to a clear signal after the horse got out of the barn. Enough suits were filed that they perhaps risk bankruptcy if they lose all of them.
That's just my speculation, and seems to be more plausible than some side effect from mental illness.
> In that statement, the company also blamed the “anti-gun mob” for attacks on the P320.
lol, no words left to describe this.
You are commenting on a post written by "Everytown for Gun Safety" one of the largest gun control groups in the country, so this is definitely part of a campaign by the “anti-gun mob”.
In my circles, what was astounding was the right wing gun club were doubly offended by this attempted blame. Either because they were offended for being called anti-gun leftists for having concern over the p320 or because Sig seemed to be ducking responsibility with some Trumpian style PR. Maybe both. I recall seeing comments like “it’s not the left, they don’t even know what a f**n sear is”
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Are you referring to [Harlon Cater: the man who militarized the cops and the NRA](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1KenPS9FUFfumy2D3auvuR?si=F...)?
I've only been around "gun culture" for 5-6 years or so, but not a single person I know in the fairly conservative area of my fairly conservative state thinks talking shit about a gun company means you're anti-gun - especially Sig which everyone hates now.
Nobody takes the NRA seriously or cares anything about what they do, either, so maybe I just happen to be in a sane pocket of the culture but other than the obvious paid shills like GBRS who are terrible human beings anyway, even on YouTube and other sources everyone has been talking shit on Sig for a year or longer.
> maybe I just happen to be in a sane pocket of the culture
Same in my circle too. NRA is perceived as an embezzling joke that spends more on yachts than preserving the right to keep and bear arms, and Sig is an untrustworthy joke that is allergic to taking accountability.
Eh, this is someone in SIG leadership using every scapegoat and excuse they can to avoid having to acknowledge or take responsibility for their screwup, instead compounding it to the point where it will seriously hurt the company - maybe even torpedo them.
The things you’re talking about give them some cover/mechanisms, but most other manufacturers are looking on in horror at this, not copying them.
Yeah American gun culture is now substantially LARPers kitting up like they're going to the front lines.
Ironically they call people who are into sportsmanship "fudders" and any gun that doesn't have a picatinny rail and a 20-round clip a "fudd gun." The reference is to "Elmer Fudd."
Being a Fudd isn't about being into sportsmanship. It's about opposing the civilian ownership of firearms besides bolt action rifles and non-semiautomatic shotguns.
You can find Fudd being applied to all manner of behaviors, it’s certainly not universally a gun control label.
USPSA competitors will refer to IDPA competitors as Fudds just because of the scoring differences.
It’s really just like calling someone a boomer but in a gun context.
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Yes we all know the difference between a clip and a magazine. This isn't adding anything to the discussion.
I think the idea that if you don't know the basic names of something your opinion on it is suspect is a fair criticism. Especially with the very odd reference to a 20-round magazine. There is no state in the country where a 20-round AR magazine is legal and the standard-capacity 30-round magazine is not. Virginia has a 20-round maximum but only on handguns.
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Move briskly and kill people?
That's a deadly twist to "move fast and break things" motto.
Seriously, Sig Sauer. You are making weapons, not disposable pens, and the world leading disposable pen company literally uses "standards x 1.5" as their baseline.
Sig Sauer: “You take some of the shots you don’t make”
There's another article that is cited where Sig with someone else was apparently developing the fixes to resolve these issues years before the gun was actually tested with the US Army, but didn't deploy the fixes until they were pressured:
https://practicalshootinginsights.com/a-year-before-the-army...
And those "fixes" didn't fully resolve the issues.
Those fixes apparently resolved the drop safety issues. The uncommanded discharges that have been in the news as of late—where holstered P320s seemingly discharge on their own—is an entirely separate issue. Sig denies that there's a problem, blaming holster designs, debris in holsters, and people lying to cover up their own carelessness.
One thing this article fails to mention about the Air Force incident is that the Air Force has made an arrest for "making a false official statement, obstruction of justice and involuntary manslaughter."
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2025/08/08...
Sig claims the issue was resolved. Keep in mind that Sig never admitted to the issue. They only issued a voluntary upgrade and never issued a safety recall.
Yes, Sig should have issued a recall instead of doing a "voluntary upgrade."
Nevertheless, is anyone actually claiming that the upgraded P320 is not drop safe? The issue people are talking about these days is holstered P320s apparently discharging uncommanded, apart from any drops.
> world leading disposable pen company literally uses "standards x 1.5" as their baseline
Curious, what's this referring to?
Bic.
They make pens, lighters and razor blades, at least.
For their lighters, they use engineering resins instead of simple plastics. They have their internal standards stricter than EU ones for temperature and drop resistance.
They make their own inks for their pens according to their own standards instead of getting from someone. Their razor blades last at least 25% longer than their competitors, and they sell for much cheaper.
They are a company of contradictions. Their items are disposable, yet put many "higher tier" items to shame by being better, longer lasting and cheaper at the same time.
They are fundamentally an engineering and manufacturing company. It’s the same ethos as some Japanese manufacturers who put the effort to produce reliable, accurate tools for cheap and where the marketing department haven’t taken over. They really ought to be better understood.
While I agree with the title of the article, some of the contents seem a little over the top in the way they present them. We would need to see the document to know how bad it really is. Many of the failure modes could be user dependent for lack of training (ie finger in trigger guard when holstering). They also don't say which failure modes were fixed and what remained. That said, all you need is one valid failure mode to be dangerous.
"Sig Sauer also stated that the manual safeties on M17 and M18 pistols would resolve some of the issues,"
This would only be the training dependent ones. Mechanically, the safety only blocks the trigger and does nothing to block the striker or sear.
> They also don't say which failure modes were fixed and what remained.
The article links a document[0] which lists them. My reading of this is that it's not listing issues that were found in the P320, but issues that can occur in handguns in general. One of the items is "unsafe hammer decock", which has never been possible with the P320 because it does not have a hammer. It is listed as eliminated.
The remaining medium risks are:
- The user might accidentally pull the trigger by resting their finger on it when they do not intend to fire the gun
- Mishandling the gun might cause a foreign object to pull the trigger
- A drop or vibration might cause the gun to fire
- The user might accidentally pull the trigger a second time due to motion during recoil
- The user may accidentally pull the trigger while clearing a jam
- A broken firing pin could lodge in the firing position, causing the gun to fire when the slide closes
- The user might accidentally pull the trigger during holstering or unholstering
- The sear might fail to retain the striker, causing an uncommanded discharge when chambering a round, or a second uncommanded shot after an intentional shot
- Defective ammunition could rupture and injure the shooter or bystanders
- Recoil can lead to repetitive motion injuries
- Incorrect disassembly and reassembly can lead to a firearm which does not function correctly
Two of these (drop/vibration, failure to retain striker) describe the current uncommanded discharge problem. Five of the issues are different ways someone with insufficient training might mishandle a gun and pull the trigger unintentionally.
[0] https://smokinggun.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/gov.uscour...
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An important point to recognize is that gun manufacturers have almost no product liability exposure due to laws pushed by the NRA.
Of course the NRA pitched these laws to their members as protecting against gun violence victims suing the manufacturer, but they also slipped in that gun manufacturers have no legal responsibility to provide guns to buyers that do not fire unless the trigger is pulled.
If you're referring to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act[0] passed in 2005, that's not true. It only bars lawsuits against gun manufacturers and dealers for criminal misuse of their products, not for hazardous defects.
Remington settled a class action lawsuit[1] concerning rifles that could fire without a trigger pull filed after the passage of that law.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/remington-rifle-settlement-i...
You're probably referencing a New Hampshire law that prevents product liability lawsuits against gun manufacturers for not including manual safeties. That law would not prevent product liability lawsuits in cases where guns discharge without the trigger being actuated.
> they also slipped in that gun manufacturers have no legal responsibility to provide guns to buyers that do not fire unless the trigger is pulled.
Where does this idea come from? If this is the case, the document being discussed in the OP would not even exist, because there would be no need to document situations causing unintentional discharge.
> Where does this idea come from?
It seems to be acquired through social osmosis, i.e. hearing people talk about it and then repeating their assertions as if it were a fact - usually with subtle changes colored by the speakers own world view - until some version of "truth" permeates society. I guess you could consider it like a game of telephone at a societal level. The Citizens United case is another great example where what people think it held is very different from what it actually held. It's also frustrating given the fact that we live in a time where the barrier to verify these claims is incredibly low or even non-existent because of the internet.
Slightly more cynical take - it comes from gun-control advocates who want to repeal all of the firearms provisions in the PLCA lying about what it does to generate more public support for its repeal.
People who just dislike guns (or dislike the people who like guns) then repeat it forever, even after proven wrong.
I am sure that those people exist, by how many are they and what kind of power do they have? To me it seems that they are convenient boogeymen every time someone suggests a sensible reform that would make gun circulation less of a problem (like restrictions for criminals and mentally unstable people or background checks). I don’t doubt your sincerity, but this is just too simple a point of view for such a complex and nuanced situation.
> Where does this idea come from?
Anti-gun propaganda.
Anti-gunners first started practicing lawfare against companies involved in the gun industry by suing them for crimes committed using products the companies were involved with, even though this is a ridiculous idea never applied to any other type of product. They do it because, even when the lawsuits are thrown out eventually, they are still very expensive to defend and most companies in the industry don't have particularly deep pockets.
Gun-rights advocates got laws passed in a number of jurisdictions clarifying that gun manufacturers are only liable for genuine flaws in their products. This has largely squelched these types of nuisance lawsuits.
Anti-gun activists don't like that, so they frequently spread false information that such laws prevent manufacturers from being liable for genuine flaws in their products. Despite such false claims, no law ever passed or proposed actually does this, and no law in this area has ever been repealed due to actually blocking liability for genuine flaws.
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What law does this?
All that I can find are laws limiting liability for use of a properly functioning weapon, not against defects.
Keep in mind, too, that the US Army does NOT want this FMECA document released. From the article that is cited the US Army's project manager & legal counsel gave this response to help Sig justify keeping the document sealed: > The Army position would be to oppose the distribution to the public of the > FMECA document as it potentially reveals critical information about the > handgun (design, reliability, performance, etc.).
When the plaintiff is the US Armed Forces, does this still hold? Surely the contract with an arm of the military doesn't have the same protections?
They can freeze funds and cancel future contracts, which should be enough pressure. What's wild to me is the military version was not even remotely safer.
100% the families of those affected by Sigs goof ups should sue.
The NRA has been insidious since its coup back in the day and then its subsequent commandeering by the right wing as a propaganda tool: at one point, there was a popular pistol type (I don’t recall the make/model) that was really good at accidentally discharging and the NRA helped not only to shield the manufacturer from liability, but also to keep the guns in circulation because there was a specific group of people (cough black cough) who disproportionately favored this gun due to iirc low price point. It was pretty obviously a case of “well hey, if these guns are accidentally firing and killing _black folk_ then it’s not really an issue”
> multiple ways the pistol could fire without an intentional trigger pull
That doesn't sound ideal.
Master of the understatement :)
> If someone can just show us how to replicate [these uncommanded discharges] we will absolutely look at this from all aspects to make sure there isn’t any truth to this. In a company of our size, would anyone ever believe that there was a real issue going on, and we wouldn’t address it?”
This is exactly how I sound when I get a bug that is hard to repro. Just like these guns, there's evidence that the bug happened, but it's really hard to figure out how. Still a bug. People are still dead.
Uncommanded discharges are very well reproduced at this point.
At the very least that I'm aware of, there was initial work by Youtuber "3 P320s In A Trenchcoat" showing a series of ways to get the striker to drop w/o touching the trigger. More recently, a Youtuber with Wyoming in their channel name showed that they could reproduce them with just the slightest trigger movement in conjunction with wiggling the slide.
This last one is the most damning IMO. You can dismiss it because there's a screw in the trigger but he shows in a separate video that it's not actually screwed into the frame or anything - it's just there to keep the < 0.5mm of slack out of the trigger. Once that's accomplished, all you have to do is wiggle the slide around for a round to get discharged. He does it on the first attempt - even he didn't expect it to be that easy.
It's very easy to see how a police officer jostling around with a suspect or getting in and out of their car can cause the trigger and the slide to move at the right time to cause this issue.
I wonder how many people died when police encounters were escalated to “shots fired” by their faulty Sig.
It’s one thing for a gun to go off and potentially hit someone but it’s another when the first round fired triggers 4 cops to empty a mag each.
Are there a number of police shootings where the officer claims his gun "went off"?
One of the first rules of gun safety is never point the weapon at something you aren't intending to shoot. So by the time they are pointing their guns at a suspect, actually firing probably happens a lot? Or are cops actually trained to hold a person at gunpoint (I don't believe the TV dramas and movies where this happens constantly are realistic in this regard).
If so, it seems very risky, considering potential manufacturing or design defects such as discovered with the Sig.
When exactly an officer is trained to pull their firearm will vary by department.
I'm sure every defense attorney in the country is checking what firearms the officers were issued for their clients where it might make a difference.
> vice president of commercial sales, said, “If someone can just show us how to replicate [these uncommanded discharges] we will absolutely look at this from all aspects to make sure there isn’t any truth to this.
Am I reading it correctly: if you provide us with a detailed bug report we will make sure to properly justify why we think it is not a bug and "works as intended"? :)
Reads to me like they’re gonna get rid of you.
What a shit way to phrase this. What makes these corporate monkeys lose the ability to speak normally?
Well that settles it… I’m never buying a Sig Sauer
There's possibly 4 million of these guns on the street. Sig should do a massive recall.
Note that not only has Sig Sauer lied about this and attempted to gaslight people[1], they have also sued organizations to force them to continue using the pistol after they chose to discontinue use due to the dangers[2]
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[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/DG6RkWCpkdw/#
[2] https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/gunmaker-sues-washingtons-p...
I don't know much about guns so maybe can help me understand. How is it possible that a holstered gun has pressure in the trigger in the first place? And also, shouldn't the safety always be on?
Many modern handguns do not have a manually activated safety. The Sig M17/M18 does, but the safety only blocks the trigger from moving rearward far enough to fire.
It may not block the trigger from moving enough to disengage an internal, automatic safety that prevents the firing pin from traveling all the way forward if it is released due to a malfunction. It is also possible that the firing pin block safety does not always work even if the trigger is fully forward.
Common failures would be to use the wrong holster, defective holster, or get some object in the holster that could snag the trigger as you put it in.
Some guns, striker fired, do not have safeties as you may think of them.
consumer versions of this pistol do not have a manual safety
they have internal safety mechanisms to prevent discharge, and these are important if you carry with a round chambered - in a striker-fired pistol, the firing pin is under tension and is only being restrained by the trigger and internal safeties
this is why I do not carry with a round chambered, if you appendix carry and something goes wrong, you will be missing an important appendage
Scary to think that I almost bought a P320 before I decided against it for a different reason.
I bought an M17 many years ago, and sold it a little over a year ago.
My local store will still take them but it's $100 store credit only.
Same, fortunately my local shooting range has a good selection of firearms to try. I tried the P320 and P365. I had been considering the P365, but it was so snappy I reasoned the otherwise completely boring P320 would be a better fit for my needs. However, it was close enough to another firearm I own that I decided to cool-off and see if I still wanted it in a month... then this all broke.
Not at all firearm specific, but "I'll get this tomorrow if I still remember I want it" has saved me countless thousands of dollars in my life.
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So much for the "guns don't shoot themselves!!" argument you occasionally hear from gun nuts. Yes they can and do shoot themselves!
Arguing with such a politically loaded sentence is probably a waste of time. BUT that's obviously not the intention of the quote. Actual malfunction induced firing is the exception, and its still a good saying to help people try and be safe/mindful. Not to mention even in that case there's still some movement or action leading to it nobody is saying that the sigs will just spontaneously fire while left sitting on a table.
Yes, this specific gun with this specific design issue that doesn't exist in any other firearm, and you now can't sell for more than $100 if you can sell it at all, and is banned by almost every professional shooting sports organization, and is banned by more ranges than its not can shoot by itself in very specific circumstances.
As a self-described gun nut, thought I'd make it a little more accurate :)
According to a court exhibit, Sig Sauer identified several deadly risks with its P320 pistols as early as 2017.
Even an arms manufacturer with a historic reputation for quality is vulnerable to the phenomena of Enshittification.
In this case, the historic reputation for quality is entirely disconnected from the company. SIG USA shares a brand with the German and Swiss companies with the same name, but it is not the same company that made the P226
All 3 entities - the German, Swiss, and US entities are owned by a German holding company L&O Holdings, but yes, the basis of the 226 was designed by the original Swiss entity.
“Enshitification” refers to pivoting from selling a product to selling the audience that bought the product. For instance, Windows putting ads in the start menu.
As awful as this Sig Sauer fiasco is, it doesn’t seem to be a result of a pivot to indirect monetization.
This is not what enshittification means. Facebook enshittified itself without ever having sold a product to its users. They were selling their users' personal data before they ever became enshittified.
Enshittification is about obtaining, then abusing platform semi-monopoly power to extract more money from your users and your customers by making your product worse.
> Enshittification is about obtaining, then abusing platform semi-monopoly power to extract more money from your users and your customers by making your product worse.
Yeah, this is how I meant it.
In the case of Sig, it was probably cost-cutting, product management by committee, corner-cutting due to tight business reqs, or some combo of the above.
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Few people would be surprised if a car drove forward when on, in gear, and the gas pedal is depressed.
When a specific make/model has a nasty habit of driving through the sides of garages when off and no one is touching them, and eventually runs someone over and kills them? People get concerned.
Especially when the manufacturer knew this could (and was!) happening and insisted on gaslighting everyone about it for years.
That cars can be used to run people over (and sometimes are even designed to do so effectively!) doesn’t change that. Especially since most miles driven never run anyone over at all.
I find the car = gun analogy so tired. A car's purpose is to transport, and sometimes it accidentally kills. A gun's purpose is to kill. People always say "it's a tool"... yeah, to kill. Anytime you have a device like that, unexpected killings can happen. People shoot themselves and other people accidentally all the time; not because it was not "used as intended", but because it's a killing device.
I find this argument tired and poorly thought out. As a hunter there are many times kill is my goal. I also use my guns for target practice where kill is not the goal. Just because a gun's purpose is to kill does not mean it has to kill anything, or that car drivers should get off for their killing. A death is a death, it needs to be intentional killing only with either a gun or a car.
Most gun owners are very aware of how deadly their tool is, and are careful with it. Most car owners do not put anywhere near the safety thought into how they drive (it is rare to see someone maintain a 3 second following distance even though that along could save a lot of lives)
The P320 is a service pistol used by various US military branches, police forces and other people with an obvious need to carry a gun. The design is unsafe compared to other designs. People who's job requires carrying a gun are made less safe by this pistol. How would "guns are made to kill people, so who cares" justify an unsafe design?
Devices are supposed to work as intended, implied is WHEN intended. If you have a circular saw that randomly cuts when not asked, is a mature response "oh no our cutty thing cuts" ?
That is why your post was flagged. A snarky, snide response like your detracts from meaningful discussion.
> Devices are supposed to work as intended, implied is WHEN intended. If you have a circular saw that randomly cuts when not asked, is a mature response "oh no our cutty thing cuts" ?
Yes, always assume that you will get cut and treat it as such.
> That is why your post was flagged.
I don't care. I knew it was gonna get downvoted to hell. I'm not trolling, I'm trying to point out that people shouldn't be surprised when something like this happens. That's why you're "never supposed to point a gun at something you don't want to shoot", right? The logic there is that it could always go off unintentionally. In this case, it goes off unintentionally a little more often.
> That's why you're "never supposed to point a gun at something you don't want to shoot", right? The logic there is that it could always go off unintentionally.
I'm going to take you at your word that you're not trolling and treat this as a legitimate good faith question/argument.
The logic of that is emphatically not that guns randomly go off on their own so you do that for safety. They're not supposed to (obviously), and if you're looking at modern firearms it really only happens due to damage or massive design flaws (which would cover the 320).
The logic is that it's a Swiss cheese threat model that is designed to reduce the odds of a negligent discharge and reduce the damage should one happen (which in 99.99999% of cases is someone pulling the trigger unintentionally).
1. Treat all guns as though they are loaded - if you're ever handling a gun, the first thing you're supposed to do is visually and physically check the chamber and the magazine well that there is no magazine and an empty chamber.
2. Don't point the firearm at anything you don't want to destroy - even immediately after checking a firearm if you flag someone with it a lot of gun stores will kick you out. Even with no magazine and the slide locked back it's incredibly poor form to point it anywhere close to another person.
3. Be sure of your target and what's behind it - pretty self-explanatory and a borderline repeat of #2. In a self-defense type of scenario this also means "don't shoot at unidentified things."
4. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot - the only purpose of the trigger is to send a round downrange so there's zero reason to be messing with the trigger otherwise (one notable exception not really worth discussing here).
So it's really not "don't point the firearm at stuff you don't want to shoot" because guns occasionally go off on their own, magically, it's really "people make mistakes, the Swiss cheese model of accident causation is real, and this is one more thing to mitigate the impact of accidents when they inevitably happen."
The problem in that case is that it kills unintentionally when it's used in a way that shouldn't end up in a discharge at all.
If you put your gun in your pants pocket and shoot your balls while running around it's on you, if you safely put your gun in a safe holster and it shoots your balls while your walking it's the gun's problem.
A nuke is a killing device, we never made one go boom unintentionally despite abusing some of them way past what's reasonable.
A car's primary purpose isn't to kill or maim humans. If you think handguns are made for anything else then you're fooling yourself.
Crafted by Rajat
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