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This is a completely incorrect interpretation of a FMEA (failure-modes-and-effects-analysis) / "Risk Chart". ISO quality systems regulations / the army mandate

This is a completely incorrect interpretation of a FMEA (failure-modes-and-effects-analysis) / "Risk Chart". ISO quality systems regulations / the army mandate engineers sit in a room and dream up every way the device could fail and/or harm someone. You then classify the risk of that harm, so in all cases an unintentional discharge would be "high risk". This does not mean the pistol has a high chance of discharging, that is a separate metric for odds of occurrence. Even if the pistol was redesigned to only have a 1 in a million chance of unintentionally discharging, the "risk" category would stay "high".

roland35 1y ago
At least while I was at NASA, a high impact score (ie death) would still elevate total risk even if the likelihood was low.
alephnerd 1y ago
They don't care. "The Smoking Gun" is part of the Everytown Support Fund [0], which has been lobbying for gun abolitionism. It was created in opposition of the NRA by Michael Bloomberg [1] Just like how the NRA would skew stats against any form of gun control, an organization like Everytown would skew facts the other way around. Firearm abolitionism and unrestricted firearm access are both equally dumb. There is a middle ground that can be found, but the extremes on both sides make it impossible to compromise. Gun ownership is a 2nd amendment right and often needed in areas with limited population density and access to police or animal control services (try dealing with packs of feral hog like most rural communities in the American West - can't be done without .223 calibre ammo), but that doesn't mean we can't add safety and training requirements given that there is a real issue with gun smuggling that is exacerbating crime across the Americas as well as the inability to prevent and flag high risk individuals from purchasing weapons (especially via private sales). IMO, an Israeli style model would be best - Israelis are allowed to own a private weapon, but are required to get tested and recertified every year AND need to show that they have a gun locker. All weapons are also registered and cataloged, and all gun sales need to be notified and allowed by the Ministry of Public Safety. If Israel can do it, the US absolutely can as well. [0] - https://smokinggun.org/about/ https://smokinggun.org/about/ [1] - https://www.everytown.org/about-everytown/history/ https://www.everytown.org/about-everytown/history/
- inglor_cz 1y ago
  "If Israel can do it, the US absolutely can as well." This is not just a matter of technical ability. In practice, you cannot simply bypass current reading of the 2nd Amendment by SCOTUS, unless you have enough support to amend the Constitution again. Which, on this controversial topic, no one has.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    I know, and my argument is that the Israeli model can be safely argued as falling within the current reading of the 2nd amendment, especially after NYSRPA v. Bruen The reading of Buren allows control on concealed carry and gun ownership via objective criteria - which is what Israeli gun permitting rests on as well. Yet, I have never seen a single organization fight for an Israeli style compromise for gun control in the US - almost all lawfare is either for abolitionism or unrestricted ownership.
- multjoy 1y ago
  Yes, but then you'd have to create a database of gun purchases and that would be illegal. https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-databases/ https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-database...
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    You can drop the weapons catalog requirement that Israel has, and you would still add significant guardrails against misuse. Even without Israeli style gun cataloging, the rest of the Israeli gun control requirements should be able to pass the "objective criteria" test from Buren while also reducing the risk of misuse by tying license ownership with criterias such as mental health, training, and access to safe storage.
    - multjoy 1y ago
      Oh, I entirely agree. It just seems absolutely nuts that the US government (or rather the state governments, because ultimately they'd be dealing with it) cannot attribute a gun to a purchase because they've specifically made it illegal to do so. When you're dealing with that mindset, no wonder gun control measures as unremarkable as mandatory safes and training are anathema.
ajross 1y ago
> [Nerds] sit in a room and dream up every way the device could fail and/or harm someone Well, yeah. And as it happened they postulated the failure mode that was actually (allegedly) seen in practice. And they were right. So the "no one could have known" side of Sig's defense seems out the window here. They could have known, and they did, and relevant experts told them. I really don't get your point here. You seem to be saying that risk analysis, in the abstract, as a whole field of practice, has no value because of the lack of certainty? But... managing uncertainty is the whole point. Do you really live your life like this? "I mean, people say fentanyl is dangerous but you never really know, right?"
- dddgghhbbfblk 1y ago
  I don't understand the snark. It's plain to see that the GP is arguing that the media report is misunderstanding the document. Whether that's a correct critique or not, I don't know, but your reply is certainly misunderstanding their comment.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  "Well, we should be aware that brake failure is hypothetically possible if vanishingly unlikely, and it would be a huge deal if they did fail" is not the same as "Yeah our brakes have a known flaw that makes them exceptionally prone to failure lmao IDGAF ship it"
  - ajross 1y ago
    Clearly neither of those readings is a correct interpretation of the cited research. Look folks, I know it offends your 2A inclinations, but this is a step in a legal action. One of the arguments made by any defendant in a case like this is "This was not a foreseeable risk". And that is directly and correctly refuted by the cited report. Period. And it's right that the media report on it. Sig guns have a failure mode that is serious and impactful, and was aware of it when it sold the hardware.
dogleash 1y ago
This guy FMEAs. The harm is always a property of the failure, independent from the likelihood. The combination of the two independent values is usually a lookup in a grid to some score. I’m not gonna look at an FMEA in my leasure time, but if there was something juicy it’d be in the article text and it didn’t convince me.
orochimaaru 1y ago
I agree. FMEA has separate fields for likelihood of occurrence and severity of occurrence. I agree with this in that the severity of occurrence is high/critical. The likelihood, I don't think it described that well. To put an analogy, I've participated in FMEA's for software systems and the underlying physical installation. The severity of losing your class A data center due to flooding or complete power loss for over 48 hours is critical. The likelihood is low depending on the data centers location. Question is how likely were the unintentional discharge scenarios in this FMEA study?
phonon 1y ago
The Risk Assessment Matrix Level (right most column) takes the incidence x severity into account. Even after mitigations, there were quite a few "Medium"s, almost all of which were E-1 ("Improbable: So unlikely, it can be assumed occurrence may not be experienced in the life of an item, .0001% Occurrence per item" x "Catastrophic: Could result in one or more of the following: death....") Though millions of guns x .0001%...well... https://smokinggun.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/gov.uscourts.ctd_.150506.202.1_UNREDACTED.pdf https://smokinggun.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/gov.uscour...

roland35 1y ago

At least while I was at NASA, a high impact score (ie death) would still elevate total risk even if the likelihood was low.

alephnerd 1y ago

They don't care. "The Smoking Gun" is part of the Everytown Support Fund [0], which has been lobbying for gun abolitionism. It was created in opposition of the NRA by Michael Bloomberg [1] Just like how the NRA would skew stats against any form of gun control, an organization like Everytown would skew facts the other way around. Firearm abolitionism and unrestricted firearm access are both equally dumb. There is a middle ground that can be found, but the extremes on both sides make it impossible to compromise. Gun ownership is a 2nd amendment right and often needed in areas with limited population density and access to police or animal control services (try dealing with packs of feral hog like most rural communities in the American West - can't be done without .223 calibre ammo), but that doesn't mean we can't add safety and training requirements given that there is a real issue with gun smuggling that is exacerbating crime across the Americas as well as the inability to prevent and flag high risk individuals from purchasing weapons (especially via private sales). IMO, an Israeli style model would be best - Israelis are allowed to own a private weapon, but are required to get tested and recertified every year AND need to show that they have a gun locker. All weapons are also registered and cataloged, and all gun sales need to be notified and allowed by the Ministry of Public Safety. If Israel can do it, the US absolutely can as well. [0] - https://smokinggun.org/about/ https://smokinggun.org/about/ [1] - https://www.everytown.org/about-everytown/history/ https://www.everytown.org/about-everytown/history/

inglor_cz 1y ago
"If Israel can do it, the US absolutely can as well." This is not just a matter of technical ability. In practice, you cannot simply bypass current reading of the 2nd Amendment by SCOTUS, unless you have enough support to amend the Constitution again. Which, on this controversial topic, no one has.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  I know, and my argument is that the Israeli model can be safely argued as falling within the current reading of the 2nd amendment, especially after NYSRPA v. Bruen The reading of Buren allows control on concealed carry and gun ownership via objective criteria - which is what Israeli gun permitting rests on as well. Yet, I have never seen a single organization fight for an Israeli style compromise for gun control in the US - almost all lawfare is either for abolitionism or unrestricted ownership.
multjoy 1y ago
Yes, but then you'd have to create a database of gun purchases and that would be illegal. https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-databases/ https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-database...
- alephnerd 1y ago
  You can drop the weapons catalog requirement that Israel has, and you would still add significant guardrails against misuse. Even without Israeli style gun cataloging, the rest of the Israeli gun control requirements should be able to pass the "objective criteria" test from Buren while also reducing the risk of misuse by tying license ownership with criterias such as mental health, training, and access to safe storage.
  - multjoy 1y ago
    Oh, I entirely agree. It just seems absolutely nuts that the US government (or rather the state governments, because ultimately they'd be dealing with it) cannot attribute a gun to a purchase because they've specifically made it illegal to do so. When you're dealing with that mindset, no wonder gun control measures as unremarkable as mandatory safes and training are anathema.

ajross 1y ago

> [Nerds] sit in a room and dream up every way the device could fail and/or harm someone Well, yeah. And as it happened they postulated the failure mode that was actually (allegedly) seen in practice. And they were right. So the "no one could have known" side of Sig's defense seems out the window here. They could have known, and they did, and relevant experts told them. I really don't get your point here. You seem to be saying that risk analysis, in the abstract, as a whole field of practice, has no value because of the lack of certainty? But... managing uncertainty is the whole point. Do you really live your life like this? "I mean, people say fentanyl is dangerous but you never really know, right?"

dddgghhbbfblk 1y ago
I don't understand the snark. It's plain to see that the GP is arguing that the media report is misunderstanding the document. Whether that's a correct critique or not, I don't know, but your reply is certainly misunderstanding their comment.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
BobaFloutist 1y ago
"Well, we should be aware that brake failure is hypothetically possible if vanishingly unlikely, and it would be a huge deal if they did fail" is not the same as "Yeah our brakes have a known flaw that makes them exceptionally prone to failure lmao IDGAF ship it"
- ajross 1y ago
  Clearly neither of those readings is a correct interpretation of the cited research. Look folks, I know it offends your 2A inclinations, but this is a step in a legal action. One of the arguments made by any defendant in a case like this is "This was not a foreseeable risk". And that is directly and correctly refuted by the cited report. Period. And it's right that the media report on it. Sig guns have a failure mode that is serious and impactful, and was aware of it when it sold the hardware.

dogleash 1y ago

This guy FMEAs. The harm is always a property of the failure, independent from the likelihood. The combination of the two independent values is usually a lookup in a grid to some score. I’m not gonna look at an FMEA in my leasure time, but if there was something juicy it’d be in the article text and it didn’t convince me.

orochimaaru 1y ago

I agree. FMEA has separate fields for likelihood of occurrence and severity of occurrence. I agree with this in that the severity of occurrence is high/critical. The likelihood, I don't think it described that well. To put an analogy, I've participated in FMEA's for software systems and the underlying physical installation. The severity of losing your class A data center due to flooding or complete power loss for over 48 hours is critical. The likelihood is low depending on the data centers location. Question is how likely were the unintentional discharge scenarios in this FMEA study?

phonon 1y ago

The Risk Assessment Matrix Level (right most column) takes the incidence x severity into account. Even after mitigations, there were quite a few "Medium"s, almost all of which were E-1 ("Improbable: So unlikely, it can be assumed occurrence may not be experienced in the life of an item, .0001% Occurrence per item" x "Catastrophic: Could result in one or more of the following: death....") Though millions of guns x .0001%...well... https://smokinggun.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/gov.uscourts.ctd_.150506.202.1_UNREDACTED.pdf https://smokinggun.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/gov.uscour...