It would be easy to say from behind a keyboard that the P320 is a piece of junk. The reality is that we don’t have enough information to say something like that. But here’s what we can say:
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- The original version of the Sig P320 was not drop safe, and Sig continues to this day to deny that the gun was ever uniquely dangerous. In 2017, they started a “Voluntary Upgrade Program” (emphatically not a recall) that they describe as “refin[ing] functionality for the pistol and improv[ing] both its ergonomics and performance” and “improv[ing] the trigger-pull experience”. That is technically true, because if gravity pulls the trigger for you and shoots you with your own gun, that is definitely a trigger-pull experience that could use improvement.
- The original version of the P365 had widely reported issues with the firing pin breaking, which Sig silently fixed and never publicly acknowledged.
- The P320 continues to be dogged by rumors that it goes off on its own. The most detailed video of one such instance is from the Montville, CT police department, where a P320 went off while in an officer’s holster. English Al at World’s Best Guns wrote a persuasive breakdown of how this was caused by a design flaw in the gun. There’s a very long thread at pistol-forum.com detailing rolling design changes in the P320 that Sig has never acknowledged but which strongly suggest that Sig has been aware of (and then simply silently fixed) P320 safety flaws.
- Sig’s other major ground-up designs from the past ten years, the MCX (a short-stroke gas piston gun based on the AR lower) and the Cross (a bolt-action rifle) both had safety problems in their first generation designs — unintentional firing and delayed firing, respectively. Sig, to their credit, issued formal recalls for both guns.
Those are all real issues. And with the exception of the MCX and the Cross, Sig minimized or ignored them and hoped customers wouldn’t notice. Maybe there’s something to that, because so far customers haven’t noticed — the top two best-selling handguns in the US are Sigs. But at this point the issue isn’t whether there is still a problem in the latest generation of the P320. The issue is whether Sig can be taken at its word as a company. Unfortunately, their actions since 2017 have not earned them that level of trust. Hopefully their actions in the future will.
— Open Source Defense in Sig Sour?
“The Issue is Whether SIG SAUER Can Be Take At Its Word”
The Issue is Whether SIG SAUER Can Be 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗻 At 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 Word
FIFY
All you can go by is the track record. Sig has some nice products if you avoid the beta testing.
Don’t buy any newly designed product. Even if it’s under warranty, you might have to bother to get it fixed, and the depreciation will be worse for a product with known issues.
The P938 took a bit of tweaking to fix a couple parts that failed or badly needed improvement.
That model always seemed to stretch the margin of safety for the caliber involved farther than it’s size/thickness would suggest being prudent. With that said they do seem to work great when they do.