Did read where another airman was arrested for the recent UD death. Sounds like there is a lot more to the story but the train may be too far down the tracks to stop.
Sig P320 "Uncommanded Discharges" (Merged Threads)
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Air Force Announces Arrest Related to Firearm Death of Airman That Prompted M18 Probe
The news marks a major development in the ongoing investigation into the circumstances behind Lovan's death and the scrutiny of Sig Sauer's P320 handgun.
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Have you seen the follow-up video yet? He does explains the mistake he (and many others, myself included) have made when putting the slide assembly back on the FCU after cleaning.
If you do not follow the manual instructions and skip locking the slide back using the slide stop, you get a pistol that has the sear locked partway down. Fortunately, most of the pistols in this condition will block the magazine well.
Mine would accept a magazine in this condition from the very first day I bought it at ACE Sporting Goods in Washington PA. The fellow behind the sales counter demonstrated the process of stripping off the slide for cleaning and made the same assembly mistake. I have learned since that day that some FCU assemblies had the wrong take-down safety bar installed at the factory. My factory made 9mm was one of them. It should have had the take-down safety bar (pn: 1302166-R ) but came from the factory with the 45-ACP take-down safety bar (pn: 1302197-R). It got swapped later on while I was building my first MUP-1 using parts from the factory made FCU and the parts kit I purchased from Mid-West Gun Works.
So, in sum: All P320's post-upgrade can fail sear engagement if you put the slide on the frame and do not use the slide lock lever to hold the slide back before rotating the take-down lever. Most P320's assembled this way will block the magazine well so you can't chamber a round from the magazine. However, some P320's came from the factory with the wrong bar and will chamber a round with the sear not fully engaging the striker. Also, if you carry a P320 in mag capacity +1 by loading a loose round directly into the chamber, you can set the pistol up to fire a round on its own regardless of having the correct take-down safety bar install on the FCU.
I suspect this is what happened to the Michigan State Police P320 that was the subject of the FBI report. Due to the defects and damage visible in the primary sear surface, secondary sear notch, and striker's hook, that pistol had attempted to fire on it's own on more than one occasion before it succeeded to fire in the holster. It was a dud from the factory and nobody noticed its quirks prior to the complete failure happening.
I'm giving some thought to simply removing the take-down safety completely. That would mean that you would have to take down the pistol more like a Glock (i.e. clear it , point it in a safe direction, then dry-fire it to release the striker so the slide will come off the FCU.)
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Looking back, I'm glad I did not see enough value in the 320 platform. The prices were high if you bought the whole gun and the parts were high on doing an 80% frame and FCU as well as the slide and upper parts, so I never built one. Sometimes being a cheapskate is a good thing and I'm glad I stayed away from this platform. Unless someone comes out with a fix which I read a previous Sig employee has, the platform is basically dead and may even be dead with a fix due to public perception.
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Yeah, but look at all the neat things you didn't learn in the process
Looking back on this, if it weren't for JSD offering the MUP-1 for sale, and my natural curiosity to try something unique, I too would be blissfully unaware. I would have never purchased the one factory made P320 I own, never built two more copies using the MUP-1's, and never built a P250 off of one of them. Yeah, I spent more money on this than the average consumer. But, I did learn a lot along the way. So I am still not bitching about the price tag, I consider it a tuition fee for the class.
Yikes. None of that is good, nor should any of it be possible. If the owner reassembles the gun incorrectly, the gun shouldn't work AT ALL.... not be turned into a time-bomb. In other words, it should be "idiot-proof."
Without knowing (at all) how the Sig mechanism works, it was obvious to me that the sear engagement must be QUITE precarious, based on the reports and the videos.
In ANY case, the RIGHT thing for Sig to do is what Tylenol did... BRING THEM ALL BACK. A 100% total recall. A warning to all purchasers to immediately unload the guns and bring them back to a local authorized retailer or FFL to ship back to the factory. Either a 100% refund or "credit" for a different pistol.
There is no way they're going to reason / weasel their way out of this. The cause for the problems is, at this point, IRRELEVANT. It doesn't matter anymore. And if they don't issue a recall SOON, I'm afraid Sig is truly done as a firearms manufacturer and supplier. Pretty amazing when you think about it. One of the arguably PREMIER gun manufacturers stepped on their own dick and then kept doing it while disparaging their target market. A remarkable case of corporate suicide.
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Thousands of P320 owners wiggled-twisted-banged on-shoved-messed with the pistol in a thousand ways SIG engineers never thought about. Collectively, they tested this pistol in ways never imagined. Some serious issues have been discovered. Thousands of village idiots vs. a handful of engineers. I'm reminded of a line from the movie Body Heat. "There are a hundred ways to screw up a crime, If you can think of 20 of them, you are a genius." The collective found a bunch of things the engineers never thought of.
Just looking at the parts and assembly, my red neck engineering tells me that there are too many moving parts.
SIG can be arrogant and take the stance that owners need to follow instructions. Or they can own up to the reality that most users are idiots and they need to make their pistol more idiot proof.
The P320 is not the first pistol that requires very specific tear down and reassembly procedures. I have a Ruger Mk3 .22 that is a pain in the ass to field strip. One wrong step and it will be locked up and unusable. At least it won't operate if done incorrectly.
Just looking at the parts and assembly, my red neck engineering tells me that there are too many moving parts.
SIG can be arrogant and take the stance that owners need to follow instructions. Or they can own up to the reality that most users are idiots and they need to make their pistol more idiot proof.
The P320 is not the first pistol that requires very specific tear down and reassembly procedures. I have a Ruger Mk3 .22 that is a pain in the ass to field strip. One wrong step and it will be locked up and unusable. At least it won't operate if done incorrectly.
Bingo.
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Yeah, I've read that too. I hope Sig doesn't start taking victory laps over this, because none of the details have been made public yet beyond the death of an airman and the involvement of a holstered M18 pistol.
The arrest of a airman for lying to investigators indicates that there is more to the story, but it doesn't exonerate Sig. It could be as simple as the pistol wasn't the deceased airmans, but somebody else took their holstered M18 off, set it down, and it went off... then lied about who did what. I'll wait for the courts-martial proceeding to decide what actually went down in this incident.
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From other comments it seems they weren't concerned with the civilian/police market, they had big military contracts that were the cash cow. If DOD does indeed have a clause making SIG take them all back, and/or there is a mass recall of all of them, chalk up another gun company to fall to the black thumb of Ron Cohen.
I find it curious in that the whole purpose of the striker fired design was to make a pistol that was never in a fully cocked state and thus "safer" than conventional hammer fired designs. And here SIG managed to come up with a striker gun with a cocked striker and extra parts to complicate the design.
And they used to have a problem with C&L with the 1911. At least with the 1911, if it went bang, there had to be a booger hook on the trigger.
That good ole 1911 and Glock doesn't look so bad after all now, does it?
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This was why they introduced the Mk. IV.
The fix for the Mk. III is to replace the internals with Mk. II parts and then you have a gun that strips like a Mk. I or Mk. II.
My Mk. III has had this done to it.
I also have a Mk. I that I upgraded to Mk. II to get LRHO and a safety that can be "on" and the bolt cycle.
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I think of it as a puzzle to solve. If it bothered me enough, I would get a Mk4. It is what it is.
I used it as an example of a simple but complex design that requires exacting procedures to work on. One wrong step and nothing works. Something handed to an 18 yo enlisted kid should not sort of work if done wrong. The 1911 is not intuitive to field strip but can be done easily if you follow the steps. The M1 Garand results in a huge pile of parts when disassembled but somehow my ancestors managed.
The latest generation grew up on Glock field strips. 3 steps-done. They don't have the attention span to pay attention for more than 3 steps.
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Agreed. The reputation damage is already done. In fact, I think it is already far too late.
I would point out that Sig-Sauer, Inc. (formerly known as SigArms) is a separate entity from Sig-Sauer GmbH, the original German company. So, regardless of what happens to the US based Sig-Sauer, Inc, the German company has zero liability beyond sharing the same unfortunate name. The models made by the German Sig-Sauer GmbH and imported by Sig-Sauer, Inc. into the US market will continue if the US based Sig-Sauer, Inc. is financially wrecked by the P320. The only question will be if the consumers in the US recognize that there were two Sig-Sauer companies and only one of them screwed the pooch.
This is another anomaly about Sig-Sauer, Inc. They make firearms that the other Sig-Sauer in Germany does not. Usually the opposite is true, like Beretta USA making the model 92 at the same time the Italian Pietro Beretta S.p.A. made the same pistol. The US based Glock, Inc. is a true subsidiary of the Austrian Glock GmbH and manufactures the same firearms as the parent company. But in the case of the P320.... it's a USA only problem. The US based Sig-Sauer, Inc. owns the problem in its entirety.
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Good luck with convincing the American public that they are separate companies. LOL!
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Again, I agree. Most people, even gun-savvy ones, probably don't know the difference. So, when Sig-Sauer Inc. get dragged into bankruptcy court and carved up on settlements, they will not know that the Other Sig is still doing business in Europe. It will take decades to rebuild the trust that has been lost. Sig-Sauer GmbH only has about 200 employees and limited production capacity. So, it can go on making small runs of their hammer-fired pistols and other products for a much smaller market. If I were in the management of that company, I would be doing everything possible to convince my European customers that the P320 was that foolish American's folly and they don't have anything to do with it. Which is, basically true.
Ron Cohen has dragged the Sig name through the mud already and burned both the US Sig and the German Sig in 2019. The Germans arrested him due to a scheme where German made SP2022 pistols were exported out of Germany under false pretenses, winding up in Columbia instead of being sold in the US market... a condition on which Germany had agreed to the export. Cohen got a 18 month suspended prison sentence, a fine, and the German Sig got a 12 million dollar fine. All because Cohen went after a $300 million dollar contract with the Columbian Police and didn't have the manufacturing capacity to make all the guns.
TomR2
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At the Action Steel shoot today in Orlando (CFRPC), during the pre-match announcements it was noted that while P320s would be allowed today, the further usage would be determined at the club meeting later this coming week. Sig fanbois were directed to go to the website to see if there would a ban for later matches.
Later, one of the members theorized/quipped about creating "Glock"-branded grip modules and slides and offering them for sale...
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My range sent this out
Effective immediately, any member choosing to fire any Sig 320 at the range is required to enter and leave the range with the 320 UNLOADED and secured in a case or holster. The pistol is to be loaded only when it is inside the confines of the shooting lane and while safely pointed down range. Once firing is completed for the session, please secure the UNLOADED pistol in its case or holster as you leave the property.
Effective immediately, any member choosing to fire any Sig 320 at the range is required to enter and leave the range with the 320 UNLOADED and secured in a case or holster. The pistol is to be loaded only when it is inside the confines of the shooting lane and while safely pointed down range. Once firing is completed for the session, please secure the UNLOADED pistol in its case or holster as you leave the property.
In other words.... treat it exactly like all other firearms at any typical range??
What a stupid memo. It's a rehash of normal range rules.
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Well, We can carry anything else in loaded.
This is THE only safety rule
SAFETY FIRST – the safe handling of firearms will be performed at all times. Use Common sense. Be considerate of other shooters. Eye and Hearing protection is REQUIRED.
This is THE only safety rule
SAFETY FIRST – the safe handling of firearms will be performed at all times. Use Common sense. Be considerate of other shooters. Eye and Hearing protection is REQUIRED.
Private range?