Good day all. A few weeks ago I wrote a post regarding the Sig Sauer P320 and it’s military variants, the M17/18. The P320 has developed a reputation of having what are called “Uncommanded Discharges.” Basically, the gun goes off without the trigger being pulled.
At the time of the original post, a member of the United States Air Force had allegedly been killed by his own gun when it was sitting on his desk. Since then, a report has come out of another airman being charged with accidentally causing the death of the first airman. There is a lot that isn’t known about that case of course. Now another story has come out that indicates that Sig Sauer and the Military knew there were problems with the P320 design and went into production anyway. Here are the details from the Smoking Gun, (Seriously. That’s the name of the site):
A court exhibit recently published online summarizes Sig Sauer’s internal P320 testing and shows that the gun maker and U.S. Army were both aware of serious safety risks with the pistol since at least 2017, years before it was fielded to soldiers as the full-size M17 and compact M18. The document — prepared as a part of Sig Sauer’s contracting process with the U.S. Army — outlines multiple ways the pistol could fire without an intentional trigger pull.
Now, the document in question appears to be from a court case involving Sig Sauer.
A redacted version of the court document was originally filed on May 14 in a case between attorney Jeffrey Bagnell and Sig Sauer. On July 24, a gun blogger was able to delete the purported redactions and post an unredacted version of the document. On July 28, Sig Sauer filed a motion requesting the court to remove the exhibit from public access,1 but guntubers and social media users reposted it before the court ruled.
As the old saying goes, what’s on the internet, stays on the internet. It doesn’t matter what the judge orders, there is no way the document can be pulled back once it “Gets into the wild.”
In an August 6 interview, Sig Sauer’s senior vice president of consumer affairs, Phil Strader, acknowledged that the company created the document in response to a request by the U.S. military, and claimed that is being used to “confuse the issue.”2 Strader also described the contents of the document and the various risks analyzed by Sig Sauer engineers. With respect to its confidentiality, Strader stated, “Now that it is out there, we don’t mind. We’ll discuss exactly…I’ll go line by line if you wanted me to.”3
I glanced at the document and I’m not going to claim I understand everything in it. If this had been a document indicating issues to be resolved, which were then fixed, this whole thing would be a nonissue. However, it doesn’t appear that the problems identified were wholly or completely resolved.
Sig Sauer’s own analysis identified 13 different situations where P320s could fire unintentionally, but many were left unresolved. While seven were “eliminated” according to Sig Sauer, six were still designated as posing a “medium” risk to users. Notably, many of the “recommended actions” to address the issues, either partially or fully, involved user training — not a design modification.
These days, when a firearms manufacturer designs a new firearm, they test it extensively to make sure that it only goes BANG when the trigger is pulled. This is something that has been understood for well over a century. Now the original Colt .45 Single Action Army is a case in point.
These are single action pistols. The hammer has to be cocked in order for it to fire. In the normal course of events, the hammer is actually down and due to the design at the time, that hammer was resting just on or slightly off the primer in the cartridge. A good whack on the hammer and the gun could and did go off. The “Training” involved was to only load 5 cartridges and let the hammer rest on an empty chamber in the cylinder. Every gun designer learned from that and today you don’t need to have an empty chamber on a revolver.
In total, the FMECA identified 17 hazards that could result in a person being killed unintentionally by a P320. Even after Sig Sauer’s proposed mitigations, nine of those remained at a “medium” risk level. Of the eight initially rated as “high” risk, only three were fully eliminated, leaving five at a “medium” risk. Four of the six hazards initially classified as “serious” also remained at a “medium” risk.
Sig Sauer also stated that the manual safeties on M17 and M18 pistols would resolve some of the issues, but the vast majority of P320s sold to civilians do not feature such safeties.
A lot of striker fired pistol, such as the Sig P320, the Sig P365, (Which doesn’t appear to have the 320’s issues), and the Glock generally don’t come with external safeties. The military, however, wanted an external safety added to the M17/18 pistols as an additional safety measure. All semiautomatic pistols that United States Military has deployed have had an external safety.
The first semiautomatic pistol fielded by the U.S. Military, the Colt M1911, actually has two safety systems. One is the external safety that you flick off when preparing to fire. The other is a grip safety. If this isn’t depressed, the pistol will not fire. The military doesn’t believe in taking chances with uncommanded discharges. Now how effective that external safety is on the P320, I can’t say.
The FMECA, combined with a fiscal year 2017 Department of Defense report referencing failed drop tests, demonstrates that Army officials were aware of the dangers yet moved forward in issuing the M17 and M18 to soldiers, and subsequently other branches of the military.
There have been a number of people who were wondering why and how Sig Sauer actually got the contract. Beretta, which was offering an upgraded version of the M9, was thought to have an inside track. As I understand it, it was the modularity of the M17 that pushed it over the finish line. Being able to take the FCU, (Fire Control Group or Trigger Group), and putting it into different frames with different calibers was seen as a game changer. (Which it actually is)
Despite these findings — and dozens of lawsuits filed by plaintiffs alleging that their P320s fired without intentional trigger pulls — Sig Sauer has repeatedly denied that the P320 is defective. On July 29, 2025, the company published a blog post promising customers “full, complete, and accurate information” regarding the P320, but reiterated that the gun “is one of the safest, most advanced pistols in the world -meeting and exceeding all industry safety standards.”
The company also said that the P320 “CANNOT, under any circumstances, discharge without the trigger first being moved to the rear.”
This phrasing is slightly different from what Sig Sauer said in March after the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission (WSCJTC) banned the gun from its properties and courses, stating that the P320 “CANNOT, under any circumstances, discharge without a trigger pull.” In that statement, the company also blamed the “anti-gun mob” for attacks on the P320.
That is an interesting change in the wording. Notice that they don’t specify the trigger being pulled, only that it can’t be fired without being moved to the rear. The video by Wyoming Gun Project and replicated by others showed that if the trigger was moved backwards by less then a millimeter and then the frame manipulated, the firing pin would drop and the gun would go off. Wyoming Gun Project used a screw to push the trigger back about half a millimeter and he documented everything very carefully.
The original remarks by Sig Sauer back in March basically insulted anyone who questioned the safety of the P320. Anyone who did question Sig Sauer was antigun and anti-Second Amendment. The response to that by people in the firearms community was “Are you smoking crack?”
The people criticizing Sig Sauer are extremely pro-Second Amendment. They were saying “Hey, there looks like there might be a design flaw here and you need to look into it.” Sig’s response is probably going down with other marketing ideas such as Bud Light’s thinking that Dylan Mulvaney would improve sales or Jaguar’s recent rebranding fiasco. What Sig should have done was simply say, “We don’t believe there is an issue, however we will do a detailed review.”
Now I can’t make any assertions to the accuracy of the article by the Smoking Gun, but I can’t see them not being very careful in vetting everything in this story. I also don’t think that Sig Sauer are helping themselves by attacking anyone who says “Hey, I think there might be a problem here.”
This is a shame too. Sig has a long history of making some really nice firearms. The Sig P220, the P226 and the P229 come to mind. These all have a long history of safety, reliability and accuracy.
As to where this will all end? I have no clue. I won’t be surprised if the P320 is pulled from the market eventually. Sales are collapsing. No one wants to take the risk with it. I won’t be surprised if some oversight committee starts looking into the entire procurement process, especially if this document from the Smoking Gun is correct. Needless to say, I won’t be holding my breath.
Thatisall
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...
~The Angry Webmaster~
