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They didn't just clear the gun for use, they arrested the airmen who shot the guy and lied about it. It totally changes the framing of what happened. In a Frid

• lupusreal 1y ago
  > In this case, the whole "it want off by itself" claim was a lie. That's the Air Force's accusation.
• shepardrtc 1y ago
  Right, but that doesn't address the issues that all 320's have. In that case, the airman lied, but the guns still have those issues.
  • jibe 1y ago
    You are begging the question, in the classic meaning of the phrase. What issue specifically? I haven't seen a claim yet that ultimately didn't boil down to: "and the trigger was pulled". Maybe the issue is that the 320 is too close to a competition trigger, and it isn't appropriate for a duty gun. But the gun has been under a microscope for years now, and no one has shown a design defect that causes the gun to fire by itself.
    • stronglikedan 1y ago
      This issue: https://smokinggun.org/court-records-reveal-sig-sauer-knew-of-pistol-risks-for-years/ https://smokinggun.org/court-records-reveal-sig-sauer-knew-o...
      • jibe 1y ago
        There is nothing in there except a sensational headline. The military asked Sig to come up with every possible theoretical failure mode for the gun, and assess the risk. There is nothing about a specific flaw that would cause the gun to fire uncommanded. The document is being misrepresented here.
    • vmh1928 1y ago
      The issue is the gun goes off by itself without the trigger being pulled. Remember that all this type of gun has the firing pin under spring tension all the time. The only thing keeping it from firing is a latch mechanism that is supposed to only activate when the trigger is pulled but if the mechanism is defective and too close to the edge the latch can disengage without the trigger being pulled or touched. There are numerous YT videos of this occurring.
      • jibe 1y ago
        There is no evidence of this, no reproduction of it firing without the trigger being pulled, and not even a good theory on it. The YouTube videos are involve pulling the trigger far enough to disengage the internal safeties.
        • buckle8017 1y ago
          Yes there actually is. https://youtube.com/shorts/cOUfurKIjnI https://youtube.com/shorts/cOUfurKIjnI
          • jibe 1y ago
            I 100% agree it is concerning, but in this video you can't see whether the trigger is pulled or not. Holstering the gun creates a risk of the trigger being pulled. The gun goes off while it is being pushed in, which suggests the trigger is catching on something. If the gun was able to fire by itself, without the trigger being actuated, then someone should make it happen on video. Shake the crap out of it, bang on it. Take it in and out of a clear plastic holster 1000 times until the supposed defect happens.
            • buckle8017 1y ago
              This is pure delusion, the p320 is dangerous garbage. Here, the police officer isn't even touching his holster. https://youtu.be/V381HkJUXH4 https://youtu.be/V381HkJUXH4
    • potato3732842 1y ago
      A hair trigger is unsuitable for police security use because guns are routinely drawn on people as a threat to exact compliance. A hair trigger is unsuitable for combat use because of the "errybody be muzzle sweeping errybody up in here" nature of combat. Those two uses are 99.99% of what the air force needs its pistols to do. They could give it better tolerances so it has a "good trigger" without "hair trigger" but that will cost a lot of money. Or they could give it an absurd trigger pull like duty guns had in the "good old days" but that will cost just as much money for equivalent results because you'll need to train the force more to get the same accuracy of fire. Additionally, with the fairly sloppy nature of these guns and the fundamental nature of how handguns work, it's not unforeseeable that they do get clapped out to the point of just going off if you bump the slide right as they age since they're so close to that as is. Considering how many people need to be trained/equipped and how often the air force fires sidearms in "real" situations both of these solutions are way, way, way more expensive than a few bodies.
      • jibe 1y ago
        1: It isn't a hair trigger, it is still a 6 to 6.5 pound pull. 2: The trigger is what it is, the military and police departments chose it for what was. I agree, the police in particular, should use a gun that takes more effort to fire. But don't blame Sig for this, it isn't a design flaw.
        • jakogut 1y ago
          The P320 absolutely has design and manufacturing flaws. The P250 fire control unit was shoehorned into a striker fired pistol when they should've gone back to the drawing board like they did with the P365, which doesn't have these issues. There are also manufacturing issues with intermingling parts with different geometries intended for different calibers and building guns with the wrong parts, such as installing a 10mm Auto/.45 ACP takedown safety level in a 9mm gun, or installing a metal injection molded firing pin safety that's out of spec, worn, or contributes to tolerance stacking in such a way that the gun becomes unsafe.
          • 1y ago
    • lazide 1y ago
      I’ve seen multiple security videos of P320’s going off in holsters in the field with no plausible way anyone or anything could have pulled the trigger.
      • jibe 1y ago
        I understand what it looks like, but we have the guns from those incidents, and no one has looked at them an pointed to a defect, or reproduced them firing without the trigger being actuated. A gun in a holster can fire when it is moved and the holster is poorly fit, incorrectly configured, or there anything caught in it like tail of a shirt, drawstring. Also, many police have a flashlight on their pistol, which opens up space quite a bit making it easier for things to get caught inside.
        • lazide 1y ago
          The gun the FBI saw from one of the incidents definitely had defects from manufacture. And at least one of the safety devices didn’t work correctly.
        • deleted 1y ago
          [deleted]
        • sarlalian 1y ago
          Whether it’s an explicit design flaw that allows the gun to fire with no interaction with the trigger at all, or one where the gun is prone to fire unintended when circumstances are less that ideal, and an interaction that shouldn’t cause it to fire does. Who cares. It’s perfectly reasonable for law enforcement and the military to want a higher level of safety than what is apparently possible with this handgun.
      • pnw 1y ago
        The police video where two officers are wrestling with a suspect, one officer has a large hanging key fob on the front of his belt which enters the other officers Safariland holster as they wrestle, and pulls the trigger. The range video where they are standing on the line was allegedly a modified gun with non-Sig upper and trigger.
    • sleepybrett 1y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOMQOtOQoPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOMQOtOQoPk
      • jibe 1y ago
        There is a giant screw jammed in the trigger. That disengages the internal safeties. That's not showing the gun is not safe, that is intentionally making it unsafe. That provides no insight as to whether the gun can fire uncommanded, without moving the trigger, which is the claim.
        • jakogut 1y ago
          Right, a Glock will do this too. IvanPrintsGuns on YouTube demonstrated this. https://youtu.be/r1KoSBcn2bY https://youtu.be/r1KoSBcn2bY
        • lenerdenator 1y ago
          It sort of provides insight. The argument is that there exists a combination of states and tolerances when a P320 is loaded and cocked that could, theoretically, allow the striker to impact the primer forcefully without a complete and full trigger pull, one where you don't feel the break. This could either be while the finger is on the trigger (maybe a police officer pointing it at someone who has a weapon while commanding them to drop the weapon, for example) or not (in a holster). Inserting that screw is meant to simulate a tolerance stacking issue wherein the pistol's components don't line up together in such a way as to prevent the striker from slipping past the sear. Is it wonky? Of course. Could you probably do it with other pistols? Probably. Are there police officers and servicemen/women who need a convenient excuse for their negligent discharges? Yes. Should a real investigation occur? Also yes.
        • sleepybrett 1y ago
          no if the trigger pull is near the sear line. that screw is pushing back the trigger very lightly. Friend has a p320, we replicated this test. I'd sat that unintended discharge could occur any time you finger is resting on the trigger.
• runjake 1y ago
  > In this case, the whole "it want off by itself" claim was a lie. I think we need to await the facts of the case and the judgement. The only public information I've seen strikes me as unusual. The accused airman is being charged with involuntary manslaughter, which coupled with the extensive issues with the P320 brings up more questions than it answers. I could come up with my own conjecture based on that information, but there's enough people doing that already. The fact remains that the P320 malfunctions. There's been countless documented cases, and numerous recorded demonstrations of the issue on YouTube and elsewhere.
  • _mlbt 1y ago
    Even if the Airman’s firearm did fire on its own without them pulling the trigger, it begs the question, why was this loaded handgun pointed at anyone that they didn’t intend to kill. It can be both Sig and this Airman’s fault at the same time.
    • runjake 1y ago
      Right. But we don't know any of those details, so it's just conjecture at this point. We shouldn't form opinions based on very limited information.
    • mothballed 1y ago
      Try conceal carrying or outside the waistband without ever pointing a loaded handgun at something you don't want to kill. It is pretty much impossible, unless you're using a pretty unusual holster. A waistband holster will pretty much always end up pointing it towards some part of your body at some point, and even a shoulder holster it is pointing at someone else. Carrying a handgun relies on that rule not being followed and instead the holster preventing anyone from pulling the trigger, but if the gun can go off without a trigger pull all bets are off.
      • _mlbt 1y ago
        Holstered guns shouldn't have a round in the chamber. That's also very negligent.
• 0xffff2 1y ago
  IANAL and the article is light on details, but charging involuntary manslaughter seems significant here? If the arrested airman negligently caused the trigger to be pulled with no confounding factors (e.g. poor firearm design or poor holster design), surely that would be regular manslaughter at least?
  • dghlsakjg 1y ago
    It depends on jurisdiction, but involuntary manslaughter can just mean that someone died and you didn’t intend to kill them. You can still be negligent (playing with a loaded gun) and have it be involuntary.
  • dragonwriter 1y ago
    No, criminal negligence or even recklessness would be involuntary manslaughter. “Regular”, voluntary, manslaughter requires intent to kill (but differs from murder in that it does not require malice aforethought). The textbook example is heat-of-passion killing.
    • devilbunny 1y ago
      Really? I thought heat-of-passion killing was indeed murder. Whereas voluntary manslaughter is more like when you punch someone in the face and they crack their head on a curb and die. You intended to hurt them, but you had absolutely no intent to kill. But IANAL, and to the extent I pay attention to the law, that kind of basic criminal law isn't it.
      • 0xffff2 1y ago
        I linked the UCMJ articles in a sibling comment. I think gp's description is correct for the UCMJ. Part of the problem IMO is that there are ~52 definitions of manslaughter/murder in the US (one for every state, civilian federal law and the UCMJ) so that answer is always highly context specific.
        • devilbunny 1y ago
• _mlbt 1y ago
  Even if the gun went off by itself the Airman is still most likely negligent. The first rule of firearms is that you only point it at things you intend to destroy.
  • jakogut 1y ago
    I agree and disagree. A holstered pistol is intended to be treated, for all intents and purposes, as deactivated and "on safe" for practicality reasons, even when loaded. Plenty of people carry loaded guns pointed at their bodies daily in holsters, safely at that.
    • mothballed 1y ago
      Absolutely no one who carries holster relies on the rule of it not pointing at anyone. Surely they don't disarm every time they go up a second story, separated by the first only by 3/8" bit of plywood and sheetrock.
• lazide 1y ago
  Eh, or that’s a coverup. As is classifying all the documents about the pistol and its issues. There is nothing even remotely credibly related to national security about the P320 or issues related to it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the military has a very long history of covering up issues with corruptly procured weapons.
  • lupusreal 1y ago
    Yes, the US military has been known to throw people under the bus to cover up their own fuck ups. Just one particularly notorious example of many: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_turret_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_turret_explosion > The first investigation into the explosion, conducted by the U.S. Navy, concluded that one of the gun turret crew members, Clayton Hartwig, who died in the explosion, had deliberately caused it. During the investigation, numerous leaks to the media, later attributed to U.S. Navy officers and investigators, implied that Hartwig and another sailor, Kendall Truitt, had engaged in a romantic relationship and that Hartwig had caused the explosion after their relationship had soured. However, in its report, the U.S. Navy concluded that the evidence did not show that Hartwig was homosexual but that he was suicidal and had caused the explosion with either an electronic or chemical detonator.
    • lazide 1y ago
      Even worse, the Navy knew many of these powder bags were getting increasingly unstable as they were near/over their intended lifespan (many were made in WW2 and had not been treated gently), so what Sandia concluded was a likely accidental overram setting them off was likely a consequence of the Navy’s policies. Policies that people had objected to at the time, but had been pushed through regardless due to ‘stop being a worry wart’/no one wanting to spend the money. They still have the accident down as ‘Unknown causes’.
• albedoa 1y ago
  > In this case, the whole "it want off by itself" claim was a lie. This might be true, but nowhere in the article you posted does it say that.