27 ms·

Sig Sauer citing national security to keep documents from public

291 points by eoskx 1y ago

unethical_ban 1y ago
The P320 XTEN was on my shortlist, but I am skeptical of buying any product of theirs in the future. There are too many good brands with similar price points to choose from.
- some_random 1y ago
  These days there are zero practical reasons to buy a Sig for that exact reason
giancarlostoro 1y ago
I'm assuming they're taking advantage of the fact that these models share a design spec with military models, which both have the same flaws. I would assume the only difference is that the military model is full auto. Edit: apparently not full auto, man we should have just let Glock take the contract when they started manufacturing in the US instead of Sig, their track record is much more sound.
- eoskx 1y ago
  Not even that - the only difference between the Sig M17/M18 handguns that the US Army uses and the consumer P320 is a manual safety. Otherwise, they are indistinguishable.
  - lenerdenator 1y ago
    A manual safety that does not seem to prevent uncommanded discharges. Which is, y'know, part of the point of a safety.
    - coldbrewed 1y ago
      Yep, the fact that the safety merely blocks the trigger and doesn't block the striker in case of accidental sear disengagement is horrifying.
      - jibe 1y ago
        The M17/M18/P320 has a striker block, and you have to pull the trigger to disengage it.
        some_random 1y ago
        Not really, it doesn't have a firing pin block like every other striker fired handgun, it has a weird sear block thing from a hammer fired handgun because it's a shitty hack job conversion from the P250
        jibe 1y ago
        The P320 does have a firing pin block. There is a lever that physically blocks the striker from moving. When you pull the trigger, the trigger bar lifts the lever, allowing the striker to move if the sear is also disengaged. None of this is a sear block, or has anything to do directly with the sear. It will prevent the gun from firing if the sear were to fail. You can see the lever in green in this animation: https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/dd_dev/original/3X/0/3/03ae68c348b537ede868bb7ac1c6315a6a35de8e.gif https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/dd_dev/origina...
        lazide 1y ago
        Notably, the FBI found it was entirely possible to disable the striker block without the trigger being pulled. A combination of wear, inadequate design, and loose manufacturing tolerances. They couldn’t get it to fire uncommanded however, unless they bypassed the trigger. However, they got the gun because it had gone off uncommanded in the holster - with witnesses - and no hands or anything else near it.
        1y ago
  - justin66 1y ago
    Consumer P320s, and Sig striker-fired pistols more generally, are generally available both with or without manual safeties. Consumers can buy a civilian version of the M17 that's really difficult to distinguish from the Army's version (the safety's a different color, black instead of brown, or something like that).
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago
  [dead]
- dfc 1y ago
  Does any service in the world have a standard issue full auto handgun?
  - avidiax 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_pistol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_pistol There are many that have adopted machine pistols for various uses, particularly special forces, VIP protection, and for the roles currently filled by PDWs, which means that common troops sometimes were issued them.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    what would be the point other than to just waste bullets?
    - TrippyAcidCats 1y ago
      Bullet volume is very important for suppression. Although the role of suppression usually is filled by a SAW rather than a MP.
      - dylan604 1y ago
        So once again, what would be the point for an auto handgun? You just said it's the wrong weapon for suppression. A 17 round mag fired in single rounds in quick succession would keep an opposing foe's head down longer than a 17 round mag in auto fire single trigger pull. Even pulling double tap style firing requires training/practice to keep both bullets accurate or else even that's wasteful
        bombcar 1y ago
        Full-auto anything that isn’t a chaingun is basically a meme anyway, even for rifles and friends. What is NOT a meme, and is useful, but counts as fully automatic, is three or five round burst mode.
        1y ago
- wl 1y ago
  Sig's track record was just as sound as Glock's before the P320. The P226 was the Navy SEAL's sidearm of choice for a bit and it nearly became the standard sidearm for the US armed forces in the 1980s, narrowly losing out to the Beretta 92. The P210 is widely considered to be the most accurate service pistol ever created.
  - 4MOAisgoodenuf 1y ago
    Sig Sauer Inc in Exeter, NH is a completely different company than SIG Sauer AG in Switzerland. The Swiss Sig's have a sterling reputation. The P226 that entered the XM9 trials (against the Beretta 92) was imported from Switzerland by SAKO. The US company didn't really start manufacturing until the 90s with the P229 and the Sig Pro series (where they were only tasked with making the plastic frames, not the more intricate lock work).
    - eoskx 1y ago
      That company structure is no longer quite the case. L&O Holdings (Germany-based holding company controlled by 2 German individuals) owns Sig Sauer USA, Sig Germany, and Sig Sauer AG.
    - wl 1y ago
      If we're talking about Swiss SIGs, that'd be the P210 handgun and to a lesser extent, the SG 510 assault rifle. The P226s were always German SIGs (at least until SIG US got started), the "Montage Suisse" models being assembled in Switzerland from German parts rather than being the product of the Neuhausen factory.
- justin66 1y ago
  > man we should have just let Glock take the contract when they started manufacturing in the US One of the stated requirements for the updated pistol was a thumb-operated external safety. Glock's never been willing to manufacture a pistol with that feature, so they effectively excluded themselves from the competition.
spacephysics 1y ago
Ah yes, the secret design of pistols which go off at the slightest bump (its a lottery, only 1 in 1,000 chance!) Revoke contracts, investigate the leadership who accepted the contract, and hold Sig criminally liable given they have internal documents from years ago acknowledging the fact.
- souterrain 1y ago
  Agree. The remedy for this is federal disbarment.
- skeezyboy 1y ago
  its funny how we only have a problem when the gun shoots us lol why wasnt one of the universal human rights the right to not being shot?
  - chrisco255 1y ago
    Universal human rights only exist so far as men with guns are willing to defend them.
    - const_cast 1y ago
      Universal human rights violations only exist so far as men with guns are willing to threaten them. If we had to choose a world with guns or a world without, then a world without is the obvious choice. Its the SUV problem. SUVs are safe! From what? ... other SUVs. Of course we can't have a world without guns, so it's all theoretical.
- dole 1y ago
  Absolutely none of this shit is gonna get close to happening. The recent week long pause in the Air Force seems like some brass made a decision that Sig or DoD forced them to walk back.
firesteelrain 1y ago
Unless the Army is invoking CTI/CUI this will be hard to defend
IlikeKitties 1y ago
It's so weird that SIG didn't just mandate a recall on this issue and dealt with it. So many other gun manufacturers had recalls for less serious issues than this and just dealt with it. How does SIG somehow deal worse with this situation than fucking taurus? This has got to be some kind of fucking ego trip by someone inside, this kind of response just doesn't make any rational sense otherwise.
- andrewmcwatters 1y ago
  The reputation cost will be higher than not recalling for sure.
  - pensatoio 1y ago
    Their reputation is absolutely shot. It's not just the P320 either, the XM7 and XM5 were also poor choices.
    - andrewmcwatters 1y ago
      Yeah, I had at least a couple of standard issue Sig Sauer civilian equivalents on my wish list, and now I would never buy anything from them ever.
      - shepardrtc 1y ago
        I had a 365 and traded it in. Wasn't even a good pistol, just small and light. Got a S&W CSX and it's fantastic.
      - esseph 1y ago
        P226 P365 are still excellent
        pensatoio 1y ago
        Love my P365, but I'm not buying another product from Sig after the P320. I can't trust them to make a dangerous tool in a safe and reliable manner.
chuckadams 1y ago
Fine, seems then that there's pretty good grounds for cancelling every one of Sig's contracts for national security reasons.
msarrel 1y ago
These comments are hysterical to me. Why yes, every government contract with a company that tries to obscure the truth should be canceled. I don't know what country you live in. We don't do things like that here. You get the government contract because you obscured the truth.
A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
I don't like linking to YouTube videos, but this one is a must-see if you're interested in the Sig debacle: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOMQOtOQoPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOMQOtOQoPk Handgun design doesn't really get any worse than that.
- 4MOAisgoodenuf 1y ago
  This particular video doesn't quite show anything out of the ordinary. If you pull the trigger past the wall then force it into firing with sympathetic movement of different parts of the pistol. The P320 has had many reported issues but having it go off when you pull the trigger is actually intended behavior. More information available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1KoSBcn2bY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1KoSBcn2bY
  - A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
    I disagree. The comment below the video actually gets it right, emphasis added: > "The shear amount of movement in the trigger it takes on the Glock PLUS the fact the trigger safety has to depressed lends it self to make this scenario extremely extremely unlikely to happen from jostling. Which is the exact opposite for the 320. Tiny amount of movement needed, way more slop in the gun as a whole and no trigger safety all lends itself to be way more likely to happen from jostling. Thats the argument."
    - WillPostForFood 1y ago
      way more likely to happen from jostling. Thats the argument. The above claim is most likely true: it is easy to pull the trigger accidentally on the Sig. But that isn't the argument. People are claiming it will fire uncommanded. The video is misleading because he is partially pulling the trigger, which deactivates the internal safety mechanisms. It is the clickbait equivalent of a video claiming Rust is not memory safe, that starts by showing a Rust program running and causing a BSOD. Then deep in the video, what they show is he wrote a bunch of explicit unsafe code.
lenerdenator 1y ago
Not clicking on that at work, but, if it's related to the P320, there's no reason that Congress hasn't ordered an investigation into this. There's a decent chance that the handgun our men and women are issued is a danger. When the M16 had problems early in Vietnam there was an investigation and they found out it was a powder issue in the cartridges. No (good) reason that there's not something similar for this issue here. And Sig can dig their heels in all they want, but when you've got ranges banning P320s and they're in the bargain bin at the local gun shop, well, the market has spoken. You can't unring that bell. Stop production of the P320, fire the executives, and do what it takes to repair this issue.
- michaelcampbell 1y ago
  > there's no reason that Congress hasn't ordered an investigation into this Cynically, there's a very good reason they haven't. Embarrassment, money, entitlement... lots of reasons, actually.
  - lenerdenator 1y ago
    Well, I should have specified, there's no good reason for no investigation. Personally my money's on corruption but I have no proof.
    - jakogut 1y ago
      Sig secured contracts for the Modular Handgun System (MHS) competition, with an objectively inferior design compared to every other entry, as well as the Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program with the Sig MCX Spear firing an objectively worse proprietary cartridge with higher pressure (lower parts lifespan), more recoil and weight, and less capacity. This design takes the firepower and weight of light arms design back to the sixties when battle rifles were still issued. We've forgotten what we already learned decades ago, standardized intermediate cartridges have a plethora of benefits in combat and logistics. Sig also won contracts for suppressors, optics, and probably more I'm unaware of or can't remember. Unit cost of the M7 is several times higher than the M4, it's heavier, has more recoil, carries less ammo, and the cartridge it fires is still stopped by commonly available body armor that's manufactured today. Corruption is obvious in my mind, it's shocking Congress seems either oblivious or so complacent.
netbioserror 1y ago
Has anyone tested if the manual safety on the M17/18 has any effect on the interaction chain that leads to uncommanded discharge?
gigatexal 1y ago
Given this administration, this DOJ, and the Supreme Court. They shouldn’t be sweating bullets (hehe). though they should if we weren’t living in a simulation. They’re all culpable.
tracker1 1y ago
It's a slide action handgun... hard to imagine any part of the design deserving "military secrets" protections when the devices themselves are the most widely available side arm in the US. Anyone can measure, 3D scan, weigh or otherwise capture the design to thousandths of an inch. For that matter, there are thousands of metal and gun smiths that could re-manufacture the design. I could see the argument in the early 1900's, but today that's absolutely ridiculous on its face.
- CodeWriter23 1y ago
  If there's a known vulnerability (which is the case to the best of my knowledge) that can be exploited by an enemy to bring harm to American forces, that would be the very nature of protected National Security Information.
  - tracker1 1y ago
    Yeah, you push someone over, their side arm might fire. Any such weakness on a side arm is not something widely or likely remotely exploitable.
    - cosmicgadget 1y ago
      Unless you have an earthquake machine.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    I disagree, for the same reasons I support open vulnerability disclosures. Any other military could buy one of these pistols, analyze it, and put the vulnerability on Wikipedia or similar. These aren’t rare or hard to acquire.
    - otterley 1y ago
      Perhaps so, but there is a difference between an enemy independently discovering a weakness and telling them what it is. The first is strategy, the second is treason.
3eb7988a1663 1y ago
Somewhat related - are military supplies required to give manufacturing design/specifications to the DoD? Some kind of intellectual property escrow should the company ever go out of business, stop making the item, such that the the defense department could recreate the item if required?
- lazide 1y ago
  Typically the design becomes the property of the US Gov’t, and is then licensed out to the original company - or sometimes others - to manufacture for the exact reasons you state.
- gwwolf 1y ago
  Great question. It depends. This is something the program office would consider as part of its acquisition strategy, and then this would be part of the competitive bid process and contract negotiations. There is such a thing as Government Purpose Rights (GPR) that might, for example, allow the government to subcontract with third parties for replacement parts which would enable competition to keep costs down. This is really important because most of the costs in an acquisition come from the long tail of sustainment, not the initial purchase. For something like the M17/M18, the Army wouldn’t necessarily want or need to buy the complete intellectual property behind the weapon. What they care about is having enough rights to ensure lifecycle support, competition for parts or sustainment contracts, etc. Your example of a company going out of business is a perfect example of where GPR would be relevant.
- aerostable_slug 1y ago
  To add to the other answers, if you're doing research on the subject the search term you want to use is Technical Data Package (a level 3 TDP has sufficient detail to manufacture the item).
Hasz 1y ago
Sig's response to this clusterfuck will be studied in PR classes for years to come. They started with a wildly overagressive social media campaign and have generally refused to admit there is a problem, and are banning, suing and generally trying to cover the whole thing up. Independent testing at the local, state and federal level acknowledge you can fire a P320 without pulling the trigger. Making sure the gun only fires when the trigger is pulled is requirement #1, #2 and #3 for any gun.
- jjani 1y ago
  > Making sure the gun only fires when the trigger is pulled is requirement #1, #2 and #3 for any gun. If this isn't satisfied you haven't made a gun, you've made a really shitty grenade.
  - buildbot 1y ago
    More like just a bad, open ended pipe bomb! A grenade is supposed to be more safe than this gun too!
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
      Grenades have three manual safeties: thumb clip, pin, and spoon.
  - slongfield 1y ago
    Only going off when you want it to actually happens to also be requirements #1, #2, and #3 for grenades
- martin-t 1y ago
  And you know what? I still doubt they're gonna face any serious penalties, both to the company and to the execs. We need laws to actually protect normal working people, not corporations and execs. Trying to silence people with lawsuits should be punished according to the severity of what they're trying to hide. Since their shitty gun literally kills people randomly, this harassment campaign should be treated as cover up for murder and punished accordingly.
JodieBenitez 1y ago
Part of the problem is "the market" wanting duty pistols with match/sport triggers. Anyway the p320 is dead and will taint SIG reputation for years to come.
- aerostable_slug 1y ago
  P320/M17/M18 trigger weight is not the problem. Glocks have roughly similar weights (except for the NYPD horror show), so do S&W, Walthers, and any number of other pistols. Trying to equipment-ify your way out of a training problem resulted in NYPD equipping its pistols with a trigger so heavy that their already-easy qualification course became a problem for many recruits. Their hit percentage in actual shootings is awful, and that ~12 pound NYPD-spec trigger didn't help it any. They finally saw the error of their ways after making their officers suffer needlessly for years. https://www.police1.com/patrol-issues/articles/nypd-should-issue-glocks-with-a-standard-5-pound-trigger-to-all-officers-not-just-new-recruits-5iC32Rg8arabmUgV/ https://www.police1.com/patrol-issues/articles/nypd-should-i...
  - seanw444 1y ago
    12-pound duty trigger is absolutely wild. I wonder how many cases of collateral injuries there were because of it.
some_random 1y ago
Worth mentioning that there are ~3 companies called Sig with many name changes over the years: SIG Switzerland, the original who mainly services the Swiss government and domestic market. They created the original P210, SG 550 series, etc SIG Sauer Germany, the now-defunct company SIG Switzerland created when it bought German firearms company JP Sauer and Sons in order to develop, market, and sell firearms in a legally easier jurisdiction. They are most famous for the P220 series of handguns. SIG Sauer USA, the New Hampshire based company that was initially created to make importing easier that is now by far the largest and most well known SIG. They created the P250, P320, P365, SG556, MCX series, etc. They are very well Overall, SIG Switzerland and Germany have very good reputations for making high quality products (Sig Sauer Germany almost won the competition with the P226 to become the M9, they lost because they were more expensive than the Beretta 92, very similar to what happened between Glock and Sig Sauer USA for the M17...), SIG USA on the other hand does not.
- eoskx 1y ago
  Please stop repeating this incorrect corporate structure. While there are still 3 entities, they are all now owned by the same German holding corporation, L&O Holdings, which is owned by 2 German individuals. The holding company now includes Sig Sauer USA, Sig Sauer AG (Swiss), and Sig Germany. I do agree with your assessment of quality between the companies, though.
  - some_random 1y ago
    It's unclear to me how much L&O Holdings actually does to bring the two remaining Sigs together (Sig Germany is defunct as of 2020). They do not sell each others products, do development cooperatively, produce cooperatively, etc as far as I've seen. Sig Switzerland issued that foot-in-mouth memo backing the P320, so there's clearly something happening between the two, but I think presenting them as separate is more accurate than claiming they have a close relationship because the same holdco owns them both.
    - eoskx 1y ago
      That's not correct. Sig Sauer USA's VP of Engineering Adrian Thomele was originally an Sig Sauer AG employee, who owned a company that was acquired by Sig Sauer AG. There are other examples of engineering management propagating from the German/Swiss entities and sharing IP between one another. Secondly, Sig Swiss AG recently announced that they would be manufacturing the P320. The German entity was shuddered to decrease manufacturing costs and effectively offshore to Sig Sauer USA, who is now also offshoring more manufacturing operations to India. I think there is much less independence than you might think between the entities.
Night_Thastus 1y ago
It's a frustrating situation. The reality is there may be no real mechanical flaw that leads to an uncommanded discharge. So far, no one has been able to produce evidence of anything specific. However, if they had addressed the drop safety and added a trigger safety from the get-go, chances are even if there IS something, it would be so rare it would fade into the background. But now the P320 is going to be remembered forever as "that gun that goes off on its own" and it'll be hard to even give them away. And Sig's response to this whole debacle has been terrible. Making the drop safety fix a 'voluntary upgrade' instead of a recall, and now crap like this just makes everyone view Sig in a bad light. Reputation can be everything for some industries - and for safety especially. (See: Boeing) Guns, and pistols in particular is a wiiiiiide market with a lot of players. If one reputation goes down the toilet, people will just buy from someone else. They have 0 reason to stick with Sig in particular. IMO these companies do the bog standard math of (chance of accident * legal cost) vs (cost to recall and repair guns). They don't consider a critical aspect - reputation. Once lost it is very hard to regain and hurts future sales of ALL products, not just this one.
- AirStreamer27 1y ago
  I’m pretty sure the discharge issues are entirely repeatable now. Someone made a video about it: https://youtu.be/jOMQOtOQoPk https://youtu.be/jOMQOtOQoPk
Animats 1y ago
In the military, pistols are carried by people who don't expect to use them. They're carried by MPs, who are cops. Officers, tankers, and flyers carry them, but they're only for emergencies. Those headed into ground combat carry something bigger than a pistol. Col. David Hackworth was involved in picking the next Army handgun, back in the Beretta era. He remarked that over the history of the M1911A, it had been responsible for more friendly casualties than enemy casualties. They hoped to do better with the Beretta. The main criteria was that it should reliably fire when wanted, and reliably not fire when not wanted. Even with poor maintenance. Accuracy is secondary. Most handgun engagements are in the 3-7 meter range.
- int_19h 1y ago
  Indeed, and if you ask the sergeants they can tell plenty of modern horror stories. If anything, what the military needs is a hammer-fired DA handgun with a manual safety. Just so that discharging it would take considerable and intentional effort. If I remember correctly, FN FNX was in the running in that competition, and would probably be just the perfect gun for this (it has a combination safety/decocker, and unlike many other similar arrangements you can put it on safe after decocking).
- justin66 1y ago
  > In the military, pistols are carried by people who don't expect to use them. On the other hand, the units that issue something other than the M17 (special operations groups use Glock 19s, can use suppressed HKs, or presumably even some of the old P226s or 1911s that are still in the inventory) expect to fight with them. > They hoped to do better with the Beretta. The main criteria was that it should reliably fire when wanted, and reliably not fire when not wanted. That design was rather a failure in that regard. Great pistols in a lot of ways, it's not difficult to be accurate with them, but there's a slide-mounted safety on it that is easy to accidentally actuate in the heat of the moment when racking the slide. (it's less user friendly than the much older 1911's safety, and weirdly, Beretta will sell you one today with a 1911-style frame mounted safety. I'm not sure when they created that.) When that happens the gun does not fire when the trigger is pulled. Perhaps someone somewhere has estimated how many people died that way over the gun's lifetime. A modern, striker-fired pistol like a Glock or the M17 is undeniably more reliable when it's dirty, so there's also that. That Beretta safety was always a bit of a misfeature and the civilian versions of the pistol are available with a simple de-cocker in its place. The safety feature of the Beretta (and of the P226, the pistol the military should have chosen for its standard over the Beretta if we're being honest) which is useful for avoiding accidental discharges is the heavy double-action trigger pull on the first shot.
jMyles 1y ago
Just found another guy doing some interesting tests - he compares the amount of trigger pull required in order for input on the slide to cause a discharge across the P320, G19, G26, and CZ P10. https://www.youtube.com/@Thinkingman615 https://www.youtube.com/@Thinkingman615 He's ostensibly defending Sig here, but it's obvious that the P10 in particular has a dramatically more robust construction and stands up to this scenario much better. Obviously all of this comes in the context of nonzero input on the trigger, which is already a violation of basic gun safety. But it's interesting nonetheless.
mathiaspoint 1y ago
The state should have no secrets during peace time. Secrets in the state when there's no official declaration of war should be considered corruption and ideally result in formal punishment.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

291 points by eoskx 1y ago

The P320 XTEN was on my shortlist, but I am skeptical of buying any product of theirs in the future. There are too many good brands with similar price points to choose from.

some_random 1y ago
These days there are zero practical reasons to buy a Sig for that exact reason

giancarlostoro 1y ago

I'm assuming they're taking advantage of the fact that these models share a design spec with military models, which both have the same flaws. I would assume the only difference is that the military model is full auto. Edit: apparently not full auto, man we should have just let Glock take the contract when they started manufacturing in the US instead of Sig, their track record is much more sound.

eoskx 1y ago
Not even that - the only difference between the Sig M17/M18 handguns that the US Army uses and the consumer P320 is a manual safety. Otherwise, they are indistinguishable.
- lenerdenator 1y ago
  A manual safety that does not seem to prevent uncommanded discharges. Which is, y'know, part of the point of a safety.
  - coldbrewed 1y ago
    Yep, the fact that the safety merely blocks the trigger and doesn't block the striker in case of accidental sear disengagement is horrifying.
    - jibe 1y ago
      The M17/M18/P320 has a striker block, and you have to pull the trigger to disengage it.
      - some_random 1y ago
        Not really, it doesn't have a firing pin block like every other striker fired handgun, it has a weird sear block thing from a hammer fired handgun because it's a shitty hack job conversion from the P250
        jibe 1y ago
        The P320 does have a firing pin block. There is a lever that physically blocks the striker from moving. When you pull the trigger, the trigger bar lifts the lever, allowing the striker to move if the sear is also disengaged. None of this is a sear block, or has anything to do directly with the sear. It will prevent the gun from firing if the sear were to fail. You can see the lever in green in this animation: https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/dd_dev/original/3X/0/3/03ae68c348b537ede868bb7ac1c6315a6a35de8e.gif https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/dd_dev/origina...
      - lazide 1y ago
        Notably, the FBI found it was entirely possible to disable the striker block without the trigger being pulled. A combination of wear, inadequate design, and loose manufacturing tolerances. They couldn’t get it to fire uncommanded however, unless they bypassed the trigger. However, they got the gun because it had gone off uncommanded in the holster - with witnesses - and no hands or anything else near it.
        1y ago
- justin66 1y ago
  Consumer P320s, and Sig striker-fired pistols more generally, are generally available both with or without manual safeties. Consumers can buy a civilian version of the M17 that's really difficult to distinguish from the Army's version (the safety's a different color, black instead of brown, or something like that).
oldpersonintx2 1y ago
[dead]
dfc 1y ago
Does any service in the world have a standard issue full auto handgun?
- avidiax 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_pistol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_pistol There are many that have adopted machine pistols for various uses, particularly special forces, VIP protection, and for the roles currently filled by PDWs, which means that common troops sometimes were issued them.
- dylan604 1y ago
  what would be the point other than to just waste bullets?
  - TrippyAcidCats 1y ago
    Bullet volume is very important for suppression. Although the role of suppression usually is filled by a SAW rather than a MP.
    - dylan604 1y ago
      So once again, what would be the point for an auto handgun? You just said it's the wrong weapon for suppression. A 17 round mag fired in single rounds in quick succession would keep an opposing foe's head down longer than a 17 round mag in auto fire single trigger pull. Even pulling double tap style firing requires training/practice to keep both bullets accurate or else even that's wasteful
      - bombcar 1y ago
        Full-auto anything that isn’t a chaingun is basically a meme anyway, even for rifles and friends. What is NOT a meme, and is useful, but counts as fully automatic, is three or five round burst mode.
        1y ago
wl 1y ago
Sig's track record was just as sound as Glock's before the P320. The P226 was the Navy SEAL's sidearm of choice for a bit and it nearly became the standard sidearm for the US armed forces in the 1980s, narrowly losing out to the Beretta 92. The P210 is widely considered to be the most accurate service pistol ever created.
- 4MOAisgoodenuf 1y ago
  Sig Sauer Inc in Exeter, NH is a completely different company than SIG Sauer AG in Switzerland. The Swiss Sig's have a sterling reputation. The P226 that entered the XM9 trials (against the Beretta 92) was imported from Switzerland by SAKO. The US company didn't really start manufacturing until the 90s with the P229 and the Sig Pro series (where they were only tasked with making the plastic frames, not the more intricate lock work).
  - eoskx 1y ago
    That company structure is no longer quite the case. L&O Holdings (Germany-based holding company controlled by 2 German individuals) owns Sig Sauer USA, Sig Germany, and Sig Sauer AG.
  - wl 1y ago
    If we're talking about Swiss SIGs, that'd be the P210 handgun and to a lesser extent, the SG 510 assault rifle. The P226s were always German SIGs (at least until SIG US got started), the "Montage Suisse" models being assembled in Switzerland from German parts rather than being the product of the Neuhausen factory.
justin66 1y ago
> man we should have just let Glock take the contract when they started manufacturing in the US One of the stated requirements for the updated pistol was a thumb-operated external safety. Glock's never been willing to manufacture a pistol with that feature, so they effectively excluded themselves from the competition.

spacephysics 1y ago

Ah yes, the secret design of pistols which go off at the slightest bump (its a lottery, only 1 in 1,000 chance!) Revoke contracts, investigate the leadership who accepted the contract, and hold Sig criminally liable given they have internal documents from years ago acknowledging the fact.

souterrain 1y ago
Agree. The remedy for this is federal disbarment.
skeezyboy 1y ago
its funny how we only have a problem when the gun shoots us lol why wasnt one of the universal human rights the right to not being shot?
- chrisco255 1y ago
  Universal human rights only exist so far as men with guns are willing to defend them.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Universal human rights violations only exist so far as men with guns are willing to threaten them. If we had to choose a world with guns or a world without, then a world without is the obvious choice. Its the SUV problem. SUVs are safe! From what? ... other SUVs. Of course we can't have a world without guns, so it's all theoretical.
dole 1y ago
Absolutely none of this shit is gonna get close to happening. The recent week long pause in the Air Force seems like some brass made a decision that Sig or DoD forced them to walk back.

firesteelrain 1y ago

Unless the Army is invoking CTI/CUI this will be hard to defend

IlikeKitties 1y ago

It's so weird that SIG didn't just mandate a recall on this issue and dealt with it. So many other gun manufacturers had recalls for less serious issues than this and just dealt with it. How does SIG somehow deal worse with this situation than fucking taurus? This has got to be some kind of fucking ego trip by someone inside, this kind of response just doesn't make any rational sense otherwise.

andrewmcwatters 1y ago
The reputation cost will be higher than not recalling for sure.
- pensatoio 1y ago
  Their reputation is absolutely shot. It's not just the P320 either, the XM7 and XM5 were also poor choices.
  - andrewmcwatters 1y ago
    Yeah, I had at least a couple of standard issue Sig Sauer civilian equivalents on my wish list, and now I would never buy anything from them ever.
    - shepardrtc 1y ago
      I had a 365 and traded it in. Wasn't even a good pistol, just small and light. Got a S&W CSX and it's fantastic.
    - esseph 1y ago
      P226 P365 are still excellent
      - pensatoio 1y ago
        Love my P365, but I'm not buying another product from Sig after the P320. I can't trust them to make a dangerous tool in a safe and reliable manner.

chuckadams 1y ago

Fine, seems then that there's pretty good grounds for cancelling every one of Sig's contracts for national security reasons.

msarrel 1y ago

These comments are hysterical to me. Why yes, every government contract with a company that tries to obscure the truth should be canceled. I don't know what country you live in. We don't do things like that here. You get the government contract because you obscured the truth.

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago

I don't like linking to YouTube videos, but this one is a must-see if you're interested in the Sig debacle: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOMQOtOQoPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOMQOtOQoPk Handgun design doesn't really get any worse than that.

4MOAisgoodenuf 1y ago
This particular video doesn't quite show anything out of the ordinary. If you pull the trigger past the wall then force it into firing with sympathetic movement of different parts of the pistol. The P320 has had many reported issues but having it go off when you pull the trigger is actually intended behavior. More information available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1KoSBcn2bY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1KoSBcn2bY
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
  I disagree. The comment below the video actually gets it right, emphasis added: > "The shear amount of movement in the trigger it takes on the Glock PLUS the fact the trigger safety has to depressed lends it self to make this scenario extremely extremely unlikely to happen from jostling. Which is the exact opposite for the 320. Tiny amount of movement needed, way more slop in the gun as a whole and no trigger safety all lends itself to be way more likely to happen from jostling. Thats the argument."
  - WillPostForFood 1y ago
    way more likely to happen from jostling. Thats the argument. The above claim is most likely true: it is easy to pull the trigger accidentally on the Sig. But that isn't the argument. People are claiming it will fire uncommanded. The video is misleading because he is partially pulling the trigger, which deactivates the internal safety mechanisms. It is the clickbait equivalent of a video claiming Rust is not memory safe, that starts by showing a Rust program running and causing a BSOD. Then deep in the video, what they show is he wrote a bunch of explicit unsafe code.

lenerdenator 1y ago

Not clicking on that at work, but, if it's related to the P320, there's no reason that Congress hasn't ordered an investigation into this. There's a decent chance that the handgun our men and women are issued is a danger. When the M16 had problems early in Vietnam there was an investigation and they found out it was a powder issue in the cartridges. No (good) reason that there's not something similar for this issue here. And Sig can dig their heels in all they want, but when you've got ranges banning P320s and they're in the bargain bin at the local gun shop, well, the market has spoken. You can't unring that bell. Stop production of the P320, fire the executives, and do what it takes to repair this issue.

michaelcampbell 1y ago
> there's no reason that Congress hasn't ordered an investigation into this Cynically, there's a very good reason they haven't. Embarrassment, money, entitlement... lots of reasons, actually.
- lenerdenator 1y ago
  Well, I should have specified, there's no good reason for no investigation. Personally my money's on corruption but I have no proof.
  - jakogut 1y ago
    Sig secured contracts for the Modular Handgun System (MHS) competition, with an objectively inferior design compared to every other entry, as well as the Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program with the Sig MCX Spear firing an objectively worse proprietary cartridge with higher pressure (lower parts lifespan), more recoil and weight, and less capacity. This design takes the firepower and weight of light arms design back to the sixties when battle rifles were still issued. We've forgotten what we already learned decades ago, standardized intermediate cartridges have a plethora of benefits in combat and logistics. Sig also won contracts for suppressors, optics, and probably more I'm unaware of or can't remember. Unit cost of the M7 is several times higher than the M4, it's heavier, has more recoil, carries less ammo, and the cartridge it fires is still stopped by commonly available body armor that's manufactured today. Corruption is obvious in my mind, it's shocking Congress seems either oblivious or so complacent.

netbioserror 1y ago

Has anyone tested if the manual safety on the M17/18 has any effect on the interaction chain that leads to uncommanded discharge?

gigatexal 1y ago

Given this administration, this DOJ, and the Supreme Court. They shouldn’t be sweating bullets (hehe). though they should if we weren’t living in a simulation. They’re all culpable.

tracker1 1y ago

It's a slide action handgun... hard to imagine any part of the design deserving "military secrets" protections when the devices themselves are the most widely available side arm in the US. Anyone can measure, 3D scan, weigh or otherwise capture the design to thousandths of an inch. For that matter, there are thousands of metal and gun smiths that could re-manufacture the design. I could see the argument in the early 1900's, but today that's absolutely ridiculous on its face.

CodeWriter23 1y ago
If there's a known vulnerability (which is the case to the best of my knowledge) that can be exploited by an enemy to bring harm to American forces, that would be the very nature of protected National Security Information.
- tracker1 1y ago
  Yeah, you push someone over, their side arm might fire. Any such weakness on a side arm is not something widely or likely remotely exploitable.
  - cosmicgadget 1y ago
    Unless you have an earthquake machine.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  I disagree, for the same reasons I support open vulnerability disclosures. Any other military could buy one of these pistols, analyze it, and put the vulnerability on Wikipedia or similar. These aren’t rare or hard to acquire.
  - otterley 1y ago
    Perhaps so, but there is a difference between an enemy independently discovering a weakness and telling them what it is. The first is strategy, the second is treason.

3eb7988a1663 1y ago

Somewhat related - are military supplies required to give manufacturing design/specifications to the DoD? Some kind of intellectual property escrow should the company ever go out of business, stop making the item, such that the the defense department could recreate the item if required?

lazide 1y ago
Typically the design becomes the property of the US Gov’t, and is then licensed out to the original company - or sometimes others - to manufacture for the exact reasons you state.
gwwolf 1y ago
Great question. It depends. This is something the program office would consider as part of its acquisition strategy, and then this would be part of the competitive bid process and contract negotiations. There is such a thing as Government Purpose Rights (GPR) that might, for example, allow the government to subcontract with third parties for replacement parts which would enable competition to keep costs down. This is really important because most of the costs in an acquisition come from the long tail of sustainment, not the initial purchase. For something like the M17/M18, the Army wouldn’t necessarily want or need to buy the complete intellectual property behind the weapon. What they care about is having enough rights to ensure lifecycle support, competition for parts or sustainment contracts, etc. Your example of a company going out of business is a perfect example of where GPR would be relevant.
aerostable_slug 1y ago
To add to the other answers, if you're doing research on the subject the search term you want to use is Technical Data Package (a level 3 TDP has sufficient detail to manufacture the item).

Hasz 1y ago

Sig's response to this clusterfuck will be studied in PR classes for years to come. They started with a wildly overagressive social media campaign and have generally refused to admit there is a problem, and are banning, suing and generally trying to cover the whole thing up. Independent testing at the local, state and federal level acknowledge you can fire a P320 without pulling the trigger. Making sure the gun only fires when the trigger is pulled is requirement #1, #2 and #3 for any gun.

jjani 1y ago
> Making sure the gun only fires when the trigger is pulled is requirement #1, #2 and #3 for any gun. If this isn't satisfied you haven't made a gun, you've made a really shitty grenade.
- buildbot 1y ago
  More like just a bad, open ended pipe bomb! A grenade is supposed to be more safe than this gun too!
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
    Grenades have three manual safeties: thumb clip, pin, and spoon.
- slongfield 1y ago
  Only going off when you want it to actually happens to also be requirements #1, #2, and #3 for grenades
martin-t 1y ago
And you know what? I still doubt they're gonna face any serious penalties, both to the company and to the execs. We need laws to actually protect normal working people, not corporations and execs. Trying to silence people with lawsuits should be punished according to the severity of what they're trying to hide. Since their shitty gun literally kills people randomly, this harassment campaign should be treated as cover up for murder and punished accordingly.

JodieBenitez 1y ago

Part of the problem is "the market" wanting duty pistols with match/sport triggers. Anyway the p320 is dead and will taint SIG reputation for years to come.

aerostable_slug 1y ago
P320/M17/M18 trigger weight is not the problem. Glocks have roughly similar weights (except for the NYPD horror show), so do S&W, Walthers, and any number of other pistols. Trying to equipment-ify your way out of a training problem resulted in NYPD equipping its pistols with a trigger so heavy that their already-easy qualification course became a problem for many recruits. Their hit percentage in actual shootings is awful, and that ~12 pound NYPD-spec trigger didn't help it any. They finally saw the error of their ways after making their officers suffer needlessly for years. https://www.police1.com/patrol-issues/articles/nypd-should-issue-glocks-with-a-standard-5-pound-trigger-to-all-officers-not-just-new-recruits-5iC32Rg8arabmUgV/ https://www.police1.com/patrol-issues/articles/nypd-should-i...
- seanw444 1y ago
  12-pound duty trigger is absolutely wild. I wonder how many cases of collateral injuries there were because of it.

some_random 1y ago

Worth mentioning that there are ~3 companies called Sig with many name changes over the years: SIG Switzerland, the original who mainly services the Swiss government and domestic market. They created the original P210, SG 550 series, etc SIG Sauer Germany, the now-defunct company SIG Switzerland created when it bought German firearms company JP Sauer and Sons in order to develop, market, and sell firearms in a legally easier jurisdiction. They are most famous for the P220 series of handguns. SIG Sauer USA, the New Hampshire based company that was initially created to make importing easier that is now by far the largest and most well known SIG. They created the P250, P320, P365, SG556, MCX series, etc. They are very well Overall, SIG Switzerland and Germany have very good reputations for making high quality products (Sig Sauer Germany almost won the competition with the P226 to become the M9, they lost because they were more expensive than the Beretta 92, very similar to what happened between Glock and Sig Sauer USA for the M17...), SIG USA on the other hand does not.

eoskx 1y ago
Please stop repeating this incorrect corporate structure. While there are still 3 entities, they are all now owned by the same German holding corporation, L&O Holdings, which is owned by 2 German individuals. The holding company now includes Sig Sauer USA, Sig Sauer AG (Swiss), and Sig Germany. I do agree with your assessment of quality between the companies, though.
- some_random 1y ago
  It's unclear to me how much L&O Holdings actually does to bring the two remaining Sigs together (Sig Germany is defunct as of 2020). They do not sell each others products, do development cooperatively, produce cooperatively, etc as far as I've seen. Sig Switzerland issued that foot-in-mouth memo backing the P320, so there's clearly something happening between the two, but I think presenting them as separate is more accurate than claiming they have a close relationship because the same holdco owns them both.
  - eoskx 1y ago
    That's not correct. Sig Sauer USA's VP of Engineering Adrian Thomele was originally an Sig Sauer AG employee, who owned a company that was acquired by Sig Sauer AG. There are other examples of engineering management propagating from the German/Swiss entities and sharing IP between one another. Secondly, Sig Swiss AG recently announced that they would be manufacturing the P320. The German entity was shuddered to decrease manufacturing costs and effectively offshore to Sig Sauer USA, who is now also offshoring more manufacturing operations to India. I think there is much less independence than you might think between the entities.

Night_Thastus 1y ago

It's a frustrating situation. The reality is there may be no real mechanical flaw that leads to an uncommanded discharge. So far, no one has been able to produce evidence of anything specific. However, if they had addressed the drop safety and added a trigger safety from the get-go, chances are even if there IS something, it would be so rare it would fade into the background. But now the P320 is going to be remembered forever as "that gun that goes off on its own" and it'll be hard to even give them away. And Sig's response to this whole debacle has been terrible. Making the drop safety fix a 'voluntary upgrade' instead of a recall, and now crap like this just makes everyone view Sig in a bad light. Reputation can be everything for some industries - and for safety especially. (See: Boeing) Guns, and pistols in particular is a wiiiiiide market with a lot of players. If one reputation goes down the toilet, people will just buy from someone else. They have 0 reason to stick with Sig in particular. IMO these companies do the bog standard math of (chance of accident * legal cost) vs (cost to recall and repair guns). They don't consider a critical aspect - reputation. Once lost it is very hard to regain and hurts future sales of ALL products, not just this one.

AirStreamer27 1y ago
I’m pretty sure the discharge issues are entirely repeatable now. Someone made a video about it: https://youtu.be/jOMQOtOQoPk https://youtu.be/jOMQOtOQoPk

Animats 1y ago

In the military, pistols are carried by people who don't expect to use them. They're carried by MPs, who are cops. Officers, tankers, and flyers carry them, but they're only for emergencies. Those headed into ground combat carry something bigger than a pistol. Col. David Hackworth was involved in picking the next Army handgun, back in the Beretta era. He remarked that over the history of the M1911A, it had been responsible for more friendly casualties than enemy casualties. They hoped to do better with the Beretta. The main criteria was that it should reliably fire when wanted, and reliably not fire when not wanted. Even with poor maintenance. Accuracy is secondary. Most handgun engagements are in the 3-7 meter range.

int_19h 1y ago
Indeed, and if you ask the sergeants they can tell plenty of modern horror stories. If anything, what the military needs is a hammer-fired DA handgun with a manual safety. Just so that discharging it would take considerable and intentional effort. If I remember correctly, FN FNX was in the running in that competition, and would probably be just the perfect gun for this (it has a combination safety/decocker, and unlike many other similar arrangements you can put it on safe after decocking).
justin66 1y ago
> In the military, pistols are carried by people who don't expect to use them. On the other hand, the units that issue something other than the M17 (special operations groups use Glock 19s, can use suppressed HKs, or presumably even some of the old P226s or 1911s that are still in the inventory) expect to fight with them. > They hoped to do better with the Beretta. The main criteria was that it should reliably fire when wanted, and reliably not fire when not wanted. That design was rather a failure in that regard. Great pistols in a lot of ways, it's not difficult to be accurate with them, but there's a slide-mounted safety on it that is easy to accidentally actuate in the heat of the moment when racking the slide. (it's less user friendly than the much older 1911's safety, and weirdly, Beretta will sell you one today with a 1911-style frame mounted safety. I'm not sure when they created that.) When that happens the gun does not fire when the trigger is pulled. Perhaps someone somewhere has estimated how many people died that way over the gun's lifetime. A modern, striker-fired pistol like a Glock or the M17 is undeniably more reliable when it's dirty, so there's also that. That Beretta safety was always a bit of a misfeature and the civilian versions of the pistol are available with a simple de-cocker in its place. The safety feature of the Beretta (and of the P226, the pistol the military should have chosen for its standard over the Beretta if we're being honest) which is useful for avoiding accidental discharges is the heavy double-action trigger pull on the first shot.

jMyles 1y ago

Just found another guy doing some interesting tests - he compares the amount of trigger pull required in order for input on the slide to cause a discharge across the P320, G19, G26, and CZ P10. https://www.youtube.com/@Thinkingman615 https://www.youtube.com/@Thinkingman615 He's ostensibly defending Sig here, but it's obvious that the P10 in particular has a dramatically more robust construction and stands up to this scenario much better. Obviously all of this comes in the context of nonzero input on the trigger, which is already a violation of basic gun safety. But it's interesting nonetheless.

mathiaspoint 1y ago

The state should have no secrets during peace time. Secrets in the state when there's no official declaration of war should be considered corruption and ideally result in formal punishment.

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