It seems to me that when the policeman approaches the arrested boy and bends down to grab his legs, the grip of his pistol makes contact with the body of the colleague on his right. If you look at his holster after the bang, the pistol (or the holster itself) appears to be in a strange position as if it had some force applied to it. In any case what happened is totally unacceptable. I don't think such a thing could have happened with a striker fired pistol equipped with the usual safety lever in the middle of the trigger and it certainly could not have happened with a DA/SA pistol.
Sig P320 Issue
- Thread starter wayneinFL
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For that statement to be true, you'd have to first know what (inside the holster) pushed the trigger.
There have been many striker fired and DA/SA pistols which have gone off when something inside their holsters activated the trigger. The advantage of a DA/SA pistol is that you can have your thumb riding the hammer when holstering, which would let you know if anything was pushing against the trigger
Seems like the reputation being even a tiny bit true would be enough reason to go with another option. It's not as if the P320 does anything that much better than the alternatives. Even if an organization/department got a slightly better deal on them, a single negative incident could very easily put them far beyond price wise. How much cheaper than a Glock or M&P are they? It can't be that much.
From that statement, I'm going to believe that you aren't familiar with the issues that Glock had when they came on the market. It got so bad that Glock had to send out teams to departments that adopted Glocks to train departmental trainers who would in turn train officers to prevent the rash on ND they were all having.
They also survived the slide stops wearing out the slide notches, the magazine not dropping free, and WML causing failures to function. Glock addressed all these function issues without ever admitting that anything was wrong...they did admit to the BTF issue, but it was more irritating than safety related
I guess it depends on what you think decided the US Military adoption of it over the other submissions
I am familiar with that. You've helped shed more light on my question regarding why some organizations still choose the P320. Thanks.
sevt_chevelle
Member
It's Washington, am sure back door politics $$$$ had nothing to do with it.
I have no dog in this fight, but if it's a holster issue, where are all recent reports of Glocks and M&P going off?
WrongHanded
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Here's a very detailed video on how the striker safety on the P320 works.
InTheSwamp
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That's the question. No doubt modularity played a big role on the decision, but was it the big factor?
The Sig P320 (P250) was a relatively new comer in the market, with a rather limited amount of exposure in the "real world", as Ken Hackathorn would say; yet it was the chosen one. One suspects savings was another deciding factor. The US Army IS on a budget as everyone else, but how much, or what percentage is spent on a sidearm? In the great scheme of things, not much. In my non-expert opinion, they chose a system, not a gun.
The Sig failures-
Usually, the simplest explanation is the correct one, that's how the world works. I tend to agree that the video -likely- depicts a user error, but that's not 100% clear. An inspection of the gun and the holster would shed more light into the ND.
Sig P320s NDs have been documented for a few years now. Even when no-one has been able to replicate them, they do and continue to happen. The user-error-poor-holster mentality will go nowhere. That would be equivalent to say P320 users are a bunch of woke snowflakes, and that's not a reality. A simple explanation requires to focus on the pistol, not just the so-many users and holsters.
I agree that Glock had their fare share of issues when they came out. Back in those days the internet was limited to .gov and universities, so those issues did not get the YouTube hammering the Sig have had. Yet, every one of those problems - the 40S&W Kaboom, being the big one were fairly - and satisfactorily - remedied.
Glock kept everyone in the dark, so to speak, but the problems quickly disappeared. Today no-one but internet commandos have come forward with a reasonable failure complaint. You hear b*#&ing about the grip angle, the block feel, the capacity, etc., but safety is not a bug in the mindset of Glock users. That's a fact backed by a 40 years reality. In his own strange way, Glock listens to his customers. A simple fact missed by the Army.
Any volunteers to AIWB carry the Sig P320? I do my Glocks!
Disclaimer: I like Glocks, but I do like HK better...that's a fact
Once again, it isn't a holster issue, it's an operator issue...see post #16. Rather than accept the responsibility for improper use of equipment, the popular rejoinder is, "It went off in the holster without my touching it"...which is obviously incorrect when viewing the video
The SIG 320 is the new popular dog to beat down...everyone is jumping on the band wagon.
WrongHanded
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Fortunately the US Military was smart enough to realize that a fully cocked striker fired pistol which also has a light and short trigger pull, needs a manual safety.
InTheSwamp
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And that will stop when Sig addresses the issue...responsibly.
WrongHanded
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Here's another on going into more detail about pre vs post voluntary upgrade.
InTheSwamp
Member
Thank you for that video...I almost fell asleep. Makes you appreciate the simplicity and ingenuity of the Glock engineering.
Seems like Sig engineers followed the wrong Chess players. They should have studied Capablanca, Fischer and Kasparov instead.
WrongHanded
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You said a mouthful there.
Old Dog
Member
There were plenty. And I worked for.one of the first departments in the country issued the M&P. But it's not strictly a holster issue though there were a lot of inexplicable "unintended discharges" subsequent to rigid kydex holsters became standard issue in LE. Mostly seemingly due to things such as plastic toggles on clothing drawstrings migrating down inside of holsters or other foreign objects or detritus.
Yes, we have to know what holster was, we have to know if the gun was sitting full in the holster when the accident happened, we have to know if there was something extraneous inside the holster. I'm curious to read the investigation report when it will be public.
The only thing I can accept to not blame the pistol is that something extraneous was in the holster. Everything else is unacceptable otherwise we are just saying that it is normal that a pistol goes bang if it wasn't fully hostered in the first place. So, we push down the pistol in the holster with some force or not straight to complete the holstering and it is considered normal that the pistol goes bang.
It seems to me that the beavertale of the pistol was held by a holster band both before and after the accident so it seems strange to me that the pistol was not fully holstered.
It is said that when Glocks were adopted there were a lot of accidents. First, we are talking about at least thirty years ago when there wasn't the same safety training as there is today, second, I'm sure that many accidents with Glocks were not caused by holstering but by the disassembly procedure which involves pulling the trigger . In fact, this type of Glock incident continues to happen and will continue to happen. But why is it that now we hear almost exclusively about accidents with the P320? In my opinion because a fully cocked striker fired pistol with a short light trigger that has virtually no takeup, without the safety dingus in the middle of the trigger pad, with a trigger pad that is large and fat, it's a problem just waiting to happen. Bad, bad, bad ideas to put all together in the same design.
Not to mention the unnecessarily complicated and bizarre firing mechanism and internal safeties which I am convinced is (finally?) drop safe but which certainly don't inspire much confidence considering the simplicity and functionality of competing designs.
There are two reasons I don't like Sig. One is the overcomplicated, too many parts to do the same job, engineering. Problems should always be simplified and number of parts should be reduced unless the product can be made better than the competition. Sig is no better or cheaper and so far, probably less reliable.
The second reason I don't like Sig is how they handled this. Rush, implement, deny, quietly change, deny, keep quiet, repeat. Just like big tabaco, big oil, big pharma, big government.
There are probably some really smart, real world guys at Sig who could test their guns and get to the actual bottom of this issue. I'll bet those guys don't get a say in anything meaningful.
ArchAngelCD
Member.
I have not heard about any problems with the military guns.
Have there been reports about their guns "going off all on their own with no one touching them?"
Have there been reports about their guns "going off all on their own with no one touching them?"
InTheSwamp
Member
The manual safety renders the problem irrelevant, same as with a 1911.I have not heard about any problems with the military guns.
Have there been reports about their guns "going off all on their own with no one touching them?"
I know a lot of competitors that are using 320s (X5 Legions primarily) and I haven’t heard of any problems from the competition world. I know that there are many more in the hands of cops, but competitors draw, load, holster, draw, fire, clear and reholster many more times a week than a cop ever does. Competitors also lighten the trigger pull, shorten the take up & reset, change recoil springs, handload ammo, use non standard holsters and magazines, all things that should result in “guns going off by themselves”, but it isn’t happening.
upptick
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Your argument would be more persuasive if the competition guns were unmodified but the fact that they are suggests that the modifications might be somehow curing the problem that seems to be affecting the stock p320.
The manual safety on the Sig 320 prevents movement of the trigger and solves the holstering issue. However I don't believe it prevents the release of the striker in the slide.
I watched both videos. The Yankee Marshal is making a lot of guesses based on blurry video. Until we know what holster was used we're all guessing on what happened. Body cam footage might help clear it up if we can see the footage from all the officers involved.
There was another report of a shooter having his Sig P320 go off in his holster on it's own.
Re the military - they still carry guns chamber empty when not engaged in combat.
JEBruns
Member
Why are you assuming that?
I do think Sig should have made that a mandatory recall instead of a voluntary thing. I've read of more than a few guys that didn't sent their 320's in for the fix.
I should have said "I would hope...".
I see the floor plate of the mag clear about .2 second before the gun goes off, which made me think it was clear of the officer next to him. Looking again, the video isn't that clear.
The officer has a wide stance and his right foot is very close to the officer next to him. Maybe the gun did get pushed into the holster and the trigger pushed against the obstruction. It still doesn't look like it to me.
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