Just last week I was training a relatively novice shooter whose only handgun experience was with a Glock. After a few hours of drills he was doing fine with a SIG P220, and he was only the most recent example of the same thing with other shooters.

Although it might seem like a joke that a movie character could influence such things, I have seen several instances over the years of decisions being made on nothing much more than that even if it's not admitted out loud.

I had a friend with Sig P226 duty weapon discharge out of battery. Impossible you say, it happened, and he wasn't the only one in his department that had the issue.

He had just come off duty and was in the locker room changing. Policy was to clear and safe weapons. He dropped the magazine. Wrapped his weak hand fist around the grip, finger nowhere near the trigger. Cupped his strong hand over the slide, slowly pulled it rearward so the live round would eject into is hand and fall into his lap and BANG!

The front sight cut a nice groove in his palm, bisecting the ejection port shaped burn mark. You could see exactly how far out of battery it was when it discharged, a beautiful image really. The case was damaged but there was sufficient force to eject the round, which struck the drywall fascia over the brick wall.

The weapon was sent to SIG for analysis with others (4-5) that had a similar experience over the last few months. Baffled all as it was far enough out of battery to prevent the hammer from falling.

Official Cause: Equipment malfunction


The result of the investigation was a policy change. All stations had a sand bucket installed, and the slide had to be forcibly racked to clear, not slowly pulled back to catch the round.

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
I had a friend with Sig P226 duty weapon discharge out of battery.

What you describe isn’t the usual definition of an out of battery discharge. An OOB discharge occurs when the slide doesn’t move fully forward into battery—hence the term—and the shooter pulls the trigger. Because the cartridge case isn’t fully supported by the barrel, it will then rupture.
As for the P226, though, if the slide moves only a short distance to the rear, and even before the cartridge is no longer fully supported by the barrel, the disconnector will push the trigger bar out of contact with the pistol’s hammer and prevent its being released when the trigger is pulled.

It has long been a common warning for shooters not to eject a chambered round as you describe. If, as the cartridge is extracted from the chamber, its primer contacts some part of the gun like the ejector, that could cause it to discharge. Such an event has always seemed unlikely to me because it would require a very sensitive primer, but there have been enough reports over the years for me to believe it can happen.

For a handgun to discharge while being carried in a holster and not manipulated in some way seems even less likely. If I were the investigator of this incident, I’d be examining the holster very carefully to try to confirm that the gun was fully seated when it fired.

I hope this doesn’t take off and become the next excuse for unintentional discharges with the P320.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by Doc H.:
Any reason for the love of striker-fired weapons in LE?

Schwarzenegger loved Glocks.
What more reason is necessary?

There are advantages to shooting and teaching people to shoot striker fired pistols with a single, often light trigger pull. They do, however, have their drawbacks.
Guns like Glocks and the P320 also require a bit more care in handling, and especially holstering to ensure nothing contacts the trigger during the process. So, being forced to do that is probably a point of snobbish pride. We’re told that red dot optics on handguns “force” us to do things differently than using iron sights, and for some reason that’s supposed to be a good thing: sort of like saying, “Driving a stick shift car forces me to use the clutch pedal and shift on my own, rather than letting the car decide when it’s necessary.”

If I had to guess these might be some of the reasons on the list:

Cheaper (yeah I know there are comparably priced hammer fired guns now, but that wasn’t always the case.

(Cheaper). It may be easier to teach non-gun-guy officers to effectively handle and qualify with a single trigger press. One can certainly learn to successfully run a DA/SA gun. Heck, some enthusiasts may look at it the same way some folks look at driving a manual transmission. It is probably cheaper to train to pass quals with a striker fired gun than either a DA/SA or SA with a safety system.

What I’ll call bureaucratic inertia, or the “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” syndrome. A lot of other folks are doing it, many of them big agencies (FBI for instance), and the bureaucrat worried about fallout for problems arising with the pistol he chose can take some comfort in the fact that he isn’t blazing any trails.

Me, I like DA/SA. Carry & shoot a P228 or P226. Carried a P7M8 for a while, which is striker fired, but with the squeeze cocker. If it is cocked the striker is sticking out the back of the slide. If the striker isn’t sticking out the back of the slide, you can press the trigger until your finger falls off and it still isn’t going to go bang. It is just as comforting putting one’s thumb on the back of a P7 slide as it is putting it behind a P22x’s hammer when holstering. The most concerned/cautious I’ve ever been was when I unexpectedly ended up running a P320 at the inaugural MOAC. Don’t get be wrong, the P320 is a fine pistol, I just like that “safety blanket” going back to the holster.

I dunno what a red dot makes you do different, other than maybe forcing you to keep both eyes open if the dot is visually large relative to the target. I’ve been trying to train myself to keep both eyes open when shooting anyway, so I consider that a feature rather than a bug. Other than that, I can drive the dot a whole lot faster than I can drive the iron sights. I dunno if it is my eyes getting old and stiff of my brain getting old and stiff, but for me at least it is harder to process “Are the sights are lined up relative to each other and the target” than it is to process “Is the dot on the target?” Oh, the really big win of the red dot (for me at least) is that if there is any “trigger finger stupidity” (mash, flinch, any disturbing the gun) the dot SCREAMS at me “Hey dummy...”. Sure, I sometimes get the same sort of feedback from the irons, but it is much louder and more obvious (for me at least) with the red dot.

This is just my experience, and it may be because of my limitations or lack of ability (I still need to suck a lot less). I still shoot irons and I don’t think the red dot hurts me a bit there, but I do like shooting the red dot. YMMV.

Public school system? Video available?

Not really related, but I have asked three county deputies about their guns. Not a single one could name what it was even after asking them if it was a 320. Two of them said they just switched from something to something else and they like the new one better. One had retired from adjacent county before coming to Loudoun and knew what he carried for them, a 226 which they let him buy for a buck at retirement!

I'm convinced that most police have no clue about guns.

I just can’t be comfortable with a striker trigger needing only about 1/4” movement to fire.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
I'm convinced that most police have no clue about guns.

I had a CBP guy in my reserve unit who was convinced that his HK P2000 in 40S&W was really a "Smith & Wesson" for HK, because it was marked "S&W".

And no, he wasn't kidding.

a bit of a local update:

Pasco SO: SRO's Sig Sauer was 'upgraded' for known issue before it misfired in school

By Josh Casio, FOX 13 News
Posted May 01 2019 04:58PM EDT


WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. (FOX 13) - Attached to the hips of Pasco County deputies are Sig Sauer P320 semi-automatic pistols.

On its website, Sig Sauer touts the firearm as innovative, modular and safe. But Tuesday’s unintended discharge of a school resource officer's holstered Sig Sauer service weapon at Weightman Middle School is raising new concerns.

According to multiple published reports, and confirmed by Sig Sauer, the P320 has been known to fire, in rare cases, when dropped on its rear. The company has even offered to "upgrade" anyone's P320 to correct the issue. The Pasco County Sheriff's Office says all of its deputies' Sig Sauer P320 weapons were upgraded - including the one that accidentally fired inside the middle school.

While the company says the gun meets and exceeds all U.S. safety standards, the company said it offered the voluntary upgrade program because:

“At certain angles and conditions, a potential discharge of the firearm may result when dropped.”

Pasco County says the SRO was leaning against a wall when his holstered gun went off. They say the gun had been upgraded.

They’re calling an expert to see if it may have malfunctioned.

“It’s an outstanding firearm, it’s very similar in design to the Glock,” said Mark Rutan, who specializes in guns at Bill Jackson’s in Pinellas County.

On the issue of unintended discharges, he says: “[It's] extremely difficult. A holster is designed to cover up the trigger mechanism so your finger can’t get in there and accidentally discharge.”

The Pasco County Sheriff's Office says the cause of the miss-fire is still under investigation. The deputy has been placed on paid administrative leave.


http://www.fox13news.com/news/...t-misfired-in-school

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quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
I had a CBP guy in my reserve unit who was convinced that his HK P2000 in 40S&W was really a "Smith & Wesson" for HK, because it was marked "S&W".

And no, he wasn't kidding.

Yeah, not all cops are "gun guys". In fact, most aren't.

I had a conversation recently with one who was convinced that a .460 Magnum round is over 10x larger than a .40 round, because four hundred and sixty is 11.5 times forty.

I mean, it's a larger caliber, but not 11.5x larger. That's not how caliber (or math) works, buddy.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Yeah, not all cops are gun guys. In fact, most aren't.

That’s been noted many times, and is actually one of the reasons why firearms choices are very often made without much thought or evidence. Unless an agency is unusually attuned to the value of objective evaluation processes, it can be very susceptible to the pressures of a few strong advocates of a particular weapon. And that can be enhanced if the gun is something the others have at least heard of when a pitch is made.