Just saw this video about the latest dust up about the horrible and dangerous P320 just going off!!!! Sarcasm there. Thought some may be interested.

https://youtube.com/shorts/buR...?si=QEzRVq3jv6TUVWl2

Here's an embed of the full 6.5 minute video, which adds a little more to just that 1 minute short clip.

For those who don't know him, this is DJ Shipley, a fairly famous former SEAL Team 6/Devgru member (and son of Don Shipley, himself also a well-known SEAL). He currently is a prolific firearms and tactical team trainer with his company, GBRS Group.

He makes a good point. Preconceived notions and hype plus a deep and instinctive desire to immediately shift the blame from your own mistake could very likely be working together to fuel many of these "reported P320 failures".

It has created sort of a vicious cycle, where it's become easy to blame the gun, and as a result they don't look too closely for the actual cause, which then means there's another "documented incident" that adds further fuel to the fire, making it even that much easier to just blame the gun with the next one, and on and on.

It ends today………

Anybody remember "Glock Leg?"

Remember when Glock fixed their safety wording to include Don't keep it loaded in the case?

Or all the hubbub about Glocks going off by themselves?

Or when Glock had its own discharge when dropped problem?

Pepperidge Farm remembers...

quote:

Originally posted by FatherVic:
Pepperidge Farm remembers...

Yeah, but Reddit, Twitter, and the Youtube comments sections don't, and that's what matters these days.

The man is a respected trainer and his take on the 320 is worthy of consideration.
However, it does not erase my concerns:
The use of MIM parts in critical FCU components.
A tabbed trigger should have been part of the design from the git.

I absolutely respect the trainer in the video, his service and his company. I still hold to the opinion that a pistol that is so intolerant to minor mishandling has no place in law enforcement or military use. It wasn’t alleged that his finger was on the trigger, rather that it just wasn’t far enough away when going into the holster and allowed for slight contact. That’s unacceptable to me even if only this incident is considered.

quote:

Originally posted by Lt CHEG:
It wasn’t alleged that his finger was on the trigger, rather that it just wasn’t far enough away when going into the holster and allowed for slight contact. That’s unacceptable to me even if only this incident is considered.

That's disingenuous. He didn't merely brush the trigger with slight contact from his finger.

His attempt at rapid reholstering caused him to holster his finger alongside the pistol, with it fully entering the trigger guard and fully depressing the trigger when he tried to seat the pistol in the holster.

This is visible in the footage shown repeatedly in that YouTube video above.

Without some sort of manual safety engaged, any pistol will fire when your finger depresses the trigger. It's just a matter of intentional trigger pulls vs unintentional trigger pulls. An unintentional trigger pull is not a failure of the pistol mechanism itself. In fact, it's the pistol working as intended... (pull trigger, go bang).

This type of "holstered your finger" unintentional discharge is not unique to P320s.

^^^ What Rogue said. Pull the trigger, gun's gonna go bang. Doesn't matter how or with what. That's not the gun's fault. It's your job as the operator to make sure stupid stuff doesn't happen. Stop playing Tactical Timmy/John Wick and driving your gun into the holster...look first, make sure it's clear, and take your time. It may not look or feel as badass, but it sure beats lying on the ground crying for mommy with a hole in your leg.

There are definitely some incidents of NDs with the P320 that I find hard to explain, and I really want answers to those. But it's pretty easy to believe that the vast majority of the "issues" are the result of stuff like this.

I used to have 6 or 7 320’s. Picked most up them up fairly cheap when guys didn’t want to do the “voluntary” upgrade. I sent them all in.

If a gun “just went off” then that gun clearly has some version of the tolerance stacking or poor parts clearance or wear or whatever. Yet nothing I have ever read has indicated that any of those clearly deficient guns has been made to “just go off” under testing subsequent the event. That seems more than off.

I now have basically whittled my habit off the 320. I do wish mine had a tabbed trigger or manual safety. All that being said, if I had to carry these I fall into the above stated category. I think they are safe. I think they won’t spontaneously fire. I think the safety margins are less than the other guns in their class.

If you press a trigger it will fire. If it happened the way jones described it, finger actually inside the holster then personally, and no one besides me has to agree with me, I literally don’t give a shit how “respected” you are that ain’t “lightly brushed”. That guy is misrepresenting facts. Caveat, I didn’t watch the video I took Jones’s pov as fact because he is way more an expert than I.

Edit: not only did I not watch the video I also clearly can’t read. I said jones I meant rogue. Oops.

Could someone direct me to any articles/tests in which the unintentional discharge has been replicated,without resorting to tools(screw drivers, etc) actuating the striker?
If the design/manufacturing were at fault, then at least one of the “numerous” discharges could be duplicated.
Until then, I will continue using my P320s in 9/40/45. If you have a problem with your P320, I will pay for shipping to my FFL.

quote:

Originally posted by USAFA71:
Could someone direct me to any articles/tests in which the unintentional discharge has been replicated,without resorting to tools(screw drivers, etc) actuating the striker?
If the design/manufacturing were at fault, then at least one of the “numerous” discharges could be duplicated.
Until then, I will continue using my P320s in 9/40/45. If you have a problem with your P320, I will pay for shipping to my FFL.

There are none. Someone on Reddit yesterday linked a video of a Gunsmith that had an explanation for exactly how it happens. 20 minutes of him blathering on about his credentials, the controversy, etc. At about the 20 minute mark he explains how the internals of the gun work and then provides no explanation or theory whatsoever. Instead by about the 25-30 minute mark, he just says what we already know - wrong holster, worn-out holster, malfunctioning holster - but he never says user error. I also noticed that overnight he changed the title of his video to "Deep Dive..." but there is no deep dive.

No one has been able to replicate it. Pulling the gun out of battery and fiddling with the trigger mechanism is not it - especially if we can't see if the striker safety has been disabled, removed, or compromised by an adjustable trigger.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
If you press a trigger it will fire. If it happened the way jones described it, finger actually inside the holster then personally, and no one besides me has to agree with me, I literally don’t give a shit how “respected” you are that ain’t “lightly brushed”. That guy is misrepresenting facts. Caveat, I didn’t watch the video I took Jones’s pov as fact because he is way more an expert than I.

Edit: not only did I not watch the video I also clearly can’t read. I said jones I meant rogue. Oops.

It would really help to watch the video before commenting. Because you have clearly misunderstood what we're discussing, in several other ways too.

The trainer in the video is not the guy who had the unintentional discharge (it was one of his students, plus a reference to another trainer's student in a different incident), he is not the one who made the claim that the shooter's finger only lightly brushed the trigger when it went off (that was Lt. CHEG here on the forum), and the trainer is not misrepresenting facts (especially since he has high quality slow-motion video evidence of the student's finger getting holstered to back up his statements).

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
I think they are safe. I think they won’t spontaneously fire. I think the safety margins are less than the other guns in their class.

Sort of similar to the widespread spate of Glock NDs several decades ago as all the police departments were transitioning over to Glocks from DA revolvers or heavy DA semiautos, mostly as a result of the Glock having less of a safety margin for trigger finger discipline than those older designs did.

I watched the video, seems very reasonable and credible. Of course under a higher test training event, things are moving a little faster. Very helpful to have video, like a sports replay.

I’m just a casual gun guy, no ‘pro’. I will say, I kinda like the H&K LEM trigger. The little bit of weight & travel is fine at CC distances. I can also ride the hammer with the thumb on reholster.

One needs to use a manual of arms they have total confidence in. That can easily be different for different people and planned use.

It's interesting that GBRS was able to capture the ND, maybe even convenient.

They're getting jammed up online because they're paid influencers for Sig, and it's hard to ignore the appearance of impropriety here, at least for me. And I like their content, I appreciate a lot of their information. I can also see the point he's making about people fumblefucking around with their guns on the line and how shit can happen so quickly that you may not see everything in the moment as it happens.

I dont have the memory of Glock leg, was the accusation that Glocks were going off in their holsters or that folks were too used to DA/SA or SAO manual of arms?

I posted a big reply and deleted. I conflated some comments which was my mistake. I watched the video and his position and mine are pretty much the same.

It’s the comments above I assumed were his. My bad. You still have people blaming this gun for things that no one can repeat. No one.

Even the guns that supposedly fired spontaneously. Can’t repeat these events. The frame flexed, tolerance stacking, springs installed wrong. Blah blah blah. No one has repeated any of these events.

The drop safe stuff was repeatable and proven to be a problem. This stuff is user error on a gun that arguably has a too small a margin of error potentially. Bad combo for many. If I had a dollar for every guy I have watched at matches reholster with the same speed as they draw. It’s crazy.

So to restate, that video guy was spot on. My response was directed to the follow on posters who still want to blame the gun. How you can literally holster your trigger finger and use “lightly brushed” in the same sentence eludes my sensibilities. I apologize to the SEAL instructor guy.

This gun has very little margin for user error compared to its peers.

Always love Ben's take.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

That's disingenuous. He didn't merely brush the trigger with slight contact from his finger.

His attempt at rapid reholstering caused him to holster his finger alongside the pistol, with it fully entering the trigger guard and fully depressing the trigger when he tried to seat the pistol in the holster.

This is visible in the footage shown repeatedly in that YouTube video above.

In reviewing the video again, I can see where I merged two different stories or at least parts of stories, in my head. Yes, the ND that they spoke of that occurred in one of their own classes unquestionably occurred when someone’s finger full entered the holster. However, they also spoke about how they teach holstering with the finger away from the pistol, etc, etc while suggesting an inserted finger as the likely cause of the Achilles Heel class unintended discharge. The reality is that there is no publicly available footage of the Achilles Heel incident that would allow such a conclusion to be made. I guess, in my head, the two stories were conflated more than they actually were. When I was just loosely watching the video while shaving, it sounded to me like they were suggesting more than they actually were.

Having said that, I still feel like, at least in rare circumstances, what is going on with these P320s is a gun problem and not an operator problem. These folks lost it with me when they stated that they would still support P320s in their classes because they like to shoot the best, and implying that the P320 is the best. I’m sorry but there just isn’t any objective basis from which to draw the conclusion that the P320 is objectively better than a number of high quality pistols in the same market segment. One cannot even point to a completed military testing and selection process as a sort of objective measurement because the P320 never underwent a comprehensive testing and selection process like the M9 did. This video just came off to me as a couple shills promoting the company that they are compensated for endorsing. Again, that doesn’t make them bad guys, or in any way diminish their accomplishments, it just removed most of the weight of their opinions on this particular product to my eyes.

quote:

Originally posted by Lt CHEG:
However, they also spoke about how they teach holstering with the finger away from the pistol, etc, etc while suggesting an inserted finger as the likely cause of the Achilles Heel class unintended discharge. The reality is that there is no publicly available footage of the Achilles Heel incident that would allow such a conclusion to be made

I don't recall them concluding that the Achilles discharge was due to a holstered finger.

Rather, they were calling out that Achilles instructor's immediate, reactive assumption that because it was a P320 that discharged, it had to have been the gun, not the user, that caused it.

Basically as soon as the shot rang out, that Achilles instructor had already decided that it had to have been the P320 firing on its own. He immediately says something like "That was that damn P320, wasn't it!"

Whereas it very well could have also been a user error, like the GBRS discharge.

We won't know for sure because the Achilles instructor didn't have the video footage to fall back on like GBRS did with theirs. But their point was that this potential user error shouldn't have been immediately discounted by the Achilles instructor simply because it was a P320 and the easy out was to blame the gun and ban it from his range.

Plus pointing out how even very experienced and skilled shooters like their SWAT guy may not even realize it (or at least admit it) when they holster their finger and cause a discharge that way. So even if it was user error, how many shooters would know and/or admit it? Had to have been that damn unsafe P320's fault, right? Until you check the video...

quote:

Originally posted by Chris17404:
Always love Ben's take.

[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hbMfzLbU_Xg" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

I've spent a lot of time watching Ben's videos on the issue over the past several months, and it's been mostly a waste of time. "Ben's take" has been purely shit-stirring, with little to no actual substance. He spends a lot of time speculating and reading people's comments on his videos, but he's not offering any more proof than anybody else. A few times he's mentioned guns blowing up, and in one video claimed to have been "hit in the face with exploding Sig", but despite being in the presence of an actual weapon that was supposedly defective, we didn't get any technical details or evaluation as to why it "exploded." That's the kind of info I'm after, not conjecture. And reading back the comments section from YouTube just makes us all dumber.

This whole issue is starting to feel like the COVID vaccine all over again for me. Everybody has an opinion, everyone involved has self-serving motives, nobody has any hard facts, and the average guy is left to make potentially life-altering decisions without the necessary info. My gut says the issue is way overblown, but even though I understand how the gun works and know that all mine pass the function checks, there's always that tiny nagging voice at the back of my mind saying "but what if..."

It's frustrating as hell.