On Sig Sauer and the P320
Recently, I attended an industry event put on by Sig Sauer. I went in with the intent to stay as unbiased and neutral as possible, to hear their side of things. This is what I learned...
1. Sig Sauer does not care about the civilian market... at all. This is not slander These are not my words. I only wrote this down in my notebook after it had be reiterated multiple times by the presenters. According to them, even if they halted all civilian sales, it wouldn't put a dent in their profits.
2. They do not care about US Law Enforcement. Also, I did not write this down until it was explicitely stated by the reps. As we all know, LE Agencies (both local, state, and federal) are dropping the P320 left and right. When asked "do you plan on meeting with departments and academies who no longer allow the P320 in order to promote your other offerings or get feedback to help solve this problem," their response was that they do not care if agencies drop them because they just signed a contract with the Australian Defense Force. Later during the event, it was revealed that, in fact, they are beginning litigation against departments who have cut ties with them Later, I researched a bit about the Australian contract and did a little rough math.
A. The ADF has roughly 57,000 armed members.
B. The US departments that have dropped Sig in the last year total roughly 46,000 armed officers.
A-B=11,000
l, myself, would be very concerned about further departments dropping my product. Additionally, the ADF contract happened in 2022. I'm not sure how long they'll be able to milk that one for their talking points.
During a section discussing their flashlights, they once more blamed "universal holsters" for P320 discharges. When asked if their pistol lights would fit Safariland 7/6000 series holsters sized for the TLR-1/X300, they again said "don't use universal holsters," which makes little sense as those are tailor fit to specific setups. Furthermore, they said not to use aftermarket lights because it leaves too much of a gap near the trigger. Only Sig brand flashlights should be used on P320s in order to have proper fitment in Sig approved holsters.
At long last came the actual P320 discussion portion of the seminar. Here is where I was constantly being mentally pestered by the ghost of my college philosophy professor. Every defense given by the reps was either a formal (problem in the format of the argument) or informal (problem with the premise of the argument) fallacy.
First, I'll address their primary "logical" defenses:
1. According to the FBI, 80% of all NDs are caused while cleaning, most likely from needing to pull the trigger to disassemble. Because you do not need to pull the trigger for disassembly on the P320, that automatically negates 80% of NDs. Therefore the P320 cannot fire on its own. If you need to pull the trigger to disassemble, then the gun is not safe.
You don't need to pull the P320 trigger.
Therefore the gun is safe.
Denying the antecedent fallacy
2. Because there are 5,000,000 P320s in circulation, it must be safe.
Ad populum fallacy
3. The YouTuber who was able to make his P320 discharge without pulling the trigger just jammed a screwdriver in the slide and wiggled it all over.
Strawman fallacy
In reality, the YouTuber who was able to discharge his firearm was demonstrating that a stuck striker safety can allow the striker to drop if the sear loses engagement, meaning the safeties don't always work as intended.
4. The FBI investigation and report cannot be trusted because... you can't trust the government.
Inconsistency fallacy
They cited the FBI as a trusted source when talking about gun cleaning NDs and later ballistics testing on their brand of ammunition.
5. When refuting the possibility of multiple safeties failing at the same time, they stated, "that's like saying 'my Ford turned itself on, put itself in drive, and then drove through my garage door.'"
Faulty analogy fallacy
Considering the guns are loaded, chambered, and usually jostled when these incidents occur, a more proper analogy would be the unintended acceleration that was occurring in Jeeps a few years ago. They were on and in drive, then accelerating when shifting gears.
6. The officers involved in lawsuits against them were all simply ashamed and afraid to lose their jobs.
Ad hominem fallacy
7. We've won every court case we've been a part of.
8. In regards to the earlier drop safety issue, which, to their credit, was fixed with the voluntary recall, they stated that they were only able to get one discharge with a P320 dropped from twice the ANSI specified height for determining drop safe firearms. When asked if they'd seen the YouTube videos of people setting off primers from shoulder height drops, they denied that the videos were real.
Appeal to ignorance fallacy
*side note: They still denied that the drop safety issue was an actual issue. They only issued the voluntary recall because their lawyers made them. They said that there was no way, in real world use, that a pistol could ever fall from that high up. I guess they've never heard of stairs, or ladders, or hills, or cliffs, or vehicles, or general vertical displacement of the human body.
Logic problems aside, let's move on to the more mechanical aspects of their defense. We were presented with the "fact" that the Sig P320 has 5 separate mechanical safety mechanisms.
They are:
1. The trigger and trigger bar
2. The captive safety lever
3. The striker safety lock
4. The sear
5. The striker
Now, if you have a working prefrontal cortex, you might raise your hand and say "wait! Isn't only one of those actually a safety?" You're correct. Now they will tell you that the sear has a secondary safety notch, so it actually has 6 safeties (2 if you live in reality). However, that was a rolling change made sometime within the last few years. Not every P320 floating around out there has a secondary sear notch.
Remember the FBI study and the YouTube screwdriver fiddler that were dismissed earlier? The FBI noted that the spring keeping the striker safety lock in position can pop out of place leading to that safety binding. The fiddler showed that with a bound safety, dropping the sear will indeed cause the striker to move completely forward. The FBI also showed that the sear/striker engagement surfaces in their subject firearm displayed abdnormalities.
Seems pretty cut and dry. Poor quality control combined with a faulty safety design on a firearm with a single safety can lead to unintended discharges. This hypothesis is nothing new or original on my end, but to see it so vehemently and aggresively denied in person was intriguing.
Other notes and asides
1. When asked again about them doing anything to inspire trust with LE agencies, they told retailers that it is the retailers' job to convince departments that the gun is safe and to reapprove it. So Big Bob's Gun and Pawn is, in Sig's mind, responsible for writing agency policy.
2. They were very proud to have "stolen" (their word, not mine), Leupold's engineers to work for their optics department, but were outraged that Holosun would steal their MOTAC idea.
2.a. They admitted that until recently, their red dots were manufactured by Holosun.
2.b. After some further research, I discovered that Holosun had Shake Awake in their optics since late 2013, with Sig's Romeo 5 being their first MOTAC optic in 2016. Now, do I know for certain whose idea it was first? No. However, the timeline just isn't in Sig's favor.
3. They were adamant that no Sig products are "Beta tested" on the consumer and denied making rolling changes to their firearms.
In conclusion
An event meant to build confidence in industry partners ended up as one of the most uninspiring and easily defeated defenses in human history: ranked somewhere between Joe Biden's 2024 Election Debate Performnce and the 1940 defense of the Maginot Line. The only knowledge I gained that day was this...
I cannot, in good conscience, trust anything that the current Sig Sauer company has to say.
However this plays out, their leadership needs to do some deep introspection.
This didn't end today.
