I have been shooting monthly for the last 10 years with the same group of 25 or so shooters. About 70% of the shooters are using some variety of P320. We have one shooter with a documented 75k rounds through one of his pistols. Some of these P320's are unmodified 1st generation pistols. Do the math and that's about 180k rounds through various P320's. We have had zero negligent discharges.

quote:

Originally posted by tiptone:
You could probably heat it up until a chambered round cooked off, right?

Finally!

Now I have something to offer up in a discussion about the subject that can allow me to seem to be fair-minded about the issue:
“Could it happen?”
“Sure. Throw it in a fire and wait long enough, then it will almost certainly fire on its own without pulling the trigger.” “See: I’m not as close-minded as you think.”

And now that you mention it, perhaps the people who claim it went off while carrying the gun in their pants could be telling the truth for that reason. People who make the “It went off by itself” claim are likely to have pants on fire at times, so SIG should probably make note of that possibility and request an examination of the claimant’s pants to check for scorch marks.

I admit, though, that I’m still waiting for a mechanical explanation. One would think that based on the number of lawsuits, someone would have puzzled it out by now and it would no longer be questioned.

There is an adage in the law: Nothing is foolproof due to the ingenuity of fools.

quote:

Originally posted by DTREND75:
At this point, is it worth buying one?

If I wanted one, I’d be carrying one.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Question: Would you shoot yourself in the ass for 11 million bucks?

Nothing serious, you know. Just a glancing shot on one cheek.

if your offering tell me when and where.

A few years back I tried out a P320 at a LGS factory shoot.

Loved shooting it as it was very easy to be accurate with but I did not like how the trigger broke so far forward with almost no take up simply because I was not used to that and my other pistols did not fire until the trigger was much farther back so I passed.

Personally I don't believe there is anything wrong with the design of the P320 that is causing it to fire all by itself.

What I do believe is the P320 is not a good choice for those who are less than fastidious with safe gun handling and choice of holsters or in general are not careful and are clumsy.

Without the "trigger tab safety" it is possible for the trigger to be moved enough, which isn't much with the P320, to cause a discharge by enough pressure applied to the very outside edge of the trigger. Poorly designed or worn holsters of even a new holster could possibly flex and cause a discharge in certain conditions. Personally I would not want to carry a P320 without safety over such concerns. Even someone running and then falling or hitting a wall hard could create tremendous pressure on a holster if the holster hit the ground or wall just right.

As mentioned all reports of these P320 pistols discharging involve some sort of human interaction.

Then there are those who have an obvious AD with a P320 that is there fault. Knowing the history of these lawsuits and the potential liability and job loss from an AD a fair percentage will probably claim it "just went off by itself".

quote:

Originally posted by XLT:

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Question: Would you shoot yourself in the ass for 11 million bucks?

Nothing serious, you know. Just a glancing shot on one cheek.

if your offering tell me when and where.

That was in an episode of the Sopranos- a rapper looking to boost his street cred.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
My EDC for years now, pretty & post recall/upgrade. IWB & OWB.
Haven't shot myself in the ass yet

The question was not “have you” its would you for $11 million.
And if you couldn’t, you could always invite Dick Cheney with you. He would have no issues with shooting you in the hiney.

One of the cases involving a 320 ND mentioned the striker block lever did not have a spring and could upward, unblocking the striker under inertia. All of my P320's - the oldest a 2018 M17 Bravo (in black) have a spring on the striker block lever. Was this a change that was made during the "recall"?

That's the whole rub, for the gun to fire, the striker has to be released by the sear AND the striker block lever has other be raised out of the way. The odds of both of these things happening on their own through some kind inertial forces is very remote.

I'm going to assume that all of these incidents are the result of actual trigger pulls by clothing, bad holster design, or operator negligence.

That said, I like the 1911-esque safety on my M17's and P320c MS and prefer them to the non-safety versions, which I also have several of.

quote:

Originally posted by cslinger:
I do believe a lot of it is this. I do think the pistol is less forgiving. That said I do think there is some truth to them accidentally discharging and I surmise it has to do with bad QC and some kind of movement, stress/bending/vibration/
Whatever that may be causing some kind of failure.

I thought early on that there could be something to the theory of some kind of mechanical issue with the P320 design, but it doesn’t play out in the way you’re describing. You never hear reports of a P320 discharging when a police officer set it on the top shelf of a locker, or hung their pistol belt on a hook in their locker and it banged against something, or they set their holstered pistol down on a table. You never hear that someone set their loaded pistol down on a table at the range, and it fired on its own. You never hear that someone set it on a shelf in their safe, and it fired and ricocheted back at them. It’s always (99% of the time at least) happening when someone was wearing a holstered pistol. That just doesn’t make sense from an engineering / mechanical failure standpoint. There are lots of opportunities for a pistol to be jostled/ bumped / banged into something during routine handling, but it’s only being reported when worn in a holster.

Having said that, I’m willing to accept that it may be more prone to negligent discharges. All my P320s are M17/M18-based pistols with manual safeties. I like the modular design, I shoot it fairly well, and I find the manual safety very intuitive and easy to use.

The P320 being easy to shoot is a gift ... and a curse.

We are all guessing on what happened w/ some of these discharges. With Sig paying out and putting ND agreements out there as part of the settlements we may never know for sure.

Don’t know what to think of this. I own a 320C and 320 M17 and a few 365 variants. I have dedicated holsters for all of them with some being for appendix carry. Sig has always made very accurate pistols with the P series being some of the best pistols ever made. I feel safe carrying the P320 and P365. My concerns about them have less to do with their design and more their manufacture. I think Sig has fixed any reliability issues that were related to poorly made parts. It’s a shame their customer base had to beta test their platforms for those issues to come to light but that’s another matter.

I get the feeling that this particular lawsuit has user error at the center of it, and the verdict is the result of someone thinking that Sig’s design allowed for a scenario in which the trigger could be pulled too easily. I’m very careful handling any gun but especially striker fired pistols with a short trigger pull. The HK VP9 and CC9 are two others that have a light, crisp pull where the trigger doesn’t travel very far before it breaks. I’m extremely cautious with those, as well.

As far as I can tell, no one has been able to recreate the problem in one of the pistols in question. I figure that if a gun went off by itself, some reputable body like HP White or such would have been able to find a way to make it happen again.

quote:

Originally posted by 4sigman:
As far as I can tell, no one has been able to recreate the problem in one of the pistols in question. I figure that if a gun went off by itself, some reputable body like HP White or such would have been able to find a way to make it happen again.

That's a good data point. I have a P365XL and a P320 M18. I've carried them AIWB. But they do have manual safeties; it's my preference. I've been considering an M18X for the optics and am okay with it not having a manual safety. I figure I can allow myself to "graduate" from the "training wheel" of having a manual safety.

But to your point, with so many cases, you are right to think people would have been trying to recreate the auto-firing of the gun. And I have seen drop tests done of different guns with just primed cartridges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1rZFIfcK38

This happened recently in Texas.

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
We are all guessing on what happened w/ some of these discharges. With Sig paying out and putting ND agreements out there as part of the settlements we may never know for sure.

One negative news story after another (valid or not) is going to have a huge impact on future adoption of the P320. ND agreements don't exactly give the public a warm and fuzzy feeling.

quote:

Originally posted by Blackwater:
This happened recently in Texas.

I saw a different YouTube offering of that video some time ago.

In that video it’s very briefly but clearly shown that the one officer has his finger on the trigger and while holding the pistol in an awkward manner before the discharge. I can only wonder why I can’t find it in the video you linked.

As for the other officer there is nothing in the video I can see that shows the pistol discharged without being touched. What is clear, though, is that part of the retention mechanism of the holster is loose and was pulled out along the with pistol after the incident. Also, it seems that the optical sight on that pistol is mounted far forward of where such sights are usually located. Neither proves that the discharge occurred because there was something defective with the holster or sight setup, but neither is normal—and has proved to be the case in other discharges with the pistol. In one incident I’m familiar with the pistol didn’t have a mounted light but was used in a holster designed for use with a light.

quote:

Originally posted by Blackwater:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1rZFIfcK38

This happened recently in Texas.

That video concerns me somewhat. While I agree with Sigfreund that it doesn't definitively prove that the gun discharged without being touched, there's a lot there to support the claim in both cases.


In the first video, the responding officer removes the gun and clears it....I'd be interested to know if the round that was ejected was live or just a fired case. I'm assuming the latter. That holster appears to be an Aliengear duty holster, and the gun is equipped with a light.


In the second video I don't believe the optic is super far forward...it looks to me like a Romeo2 or RomeoX mounted in the traditional position. As to the retention system exiting the holster with the gun...I'm not sure what to make of that. Was it broken before the gun discharged and possibly a contributor, or did it break as a result of the gun discharging in the holster? IMO that's a question that needs answered.

While I'm still going to be skeptical until somebody can demonstrate an actual mechanical cause for this sort of failure, these two stories are a bit different than some of the others because there are witnesses as well as video that at least lend credibility to the officers' version of events, even though they don't prove them outright . We're also talking about uniformed patrol cops with duty holsters in both cases, not some detective with an IWB rig and a loose shirttail.

If there really is a problem I wish somebody would identify it so it can be fixed.

What concerns me the most about that video is it happened earlier this month. We are far far past the original problem with the P320, and the original upgrades that gave us the current pistol. Why now are we seeing these AD\ND's, and what's causing them?

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:

quote:

Originally posted by Blackwater:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1rZFIfcK38

This happened recently in Texas.

That video concerns me somewhat. While I agree with Sigfreund that it doesn't definitively prove that the gun discharged without being touched, there's a lot there to support the claim in both cases.


In the first video, the responding officer removes the gun and clears it....I'd be interested to know if the round that was ejected was live or just a fired case. I'm assuming the latter. That holster appears to be an Aliengear duty holster, and the gun is equipped with a light.


In the second video I don't believe the optic is super far forward...it looks to me like a Romeo2 or RomeoX mounted in the traditional position. As to the retention system exiting the holster with the gun...I'm not sure what to make of that. Was it broken before the gun discharged and possibly a contributor, or did it break as a result of the gun discharging in the holster? IMO that's a question that needs answered.

While I'm still going to be skeptical until somebody can demonstrate an actual mechanical cause for this sort of failure, these two stories are a bit different than some of the others because there are witnesses as well as video that at least lend credibility to the officers' version of events, even though they don't prove them outright . We're also talking about uniformed patrol cops with duty holsters in both cases, not some detective with an IWB rig and a loose shirttail.

If there really is a problem I wish somebody would identify it so it can be fixed.