We’ve written a number of times about the lawsuits concerning the SIG SAUER P320 pistol. Yes, that’s the gun that’s the sidearm of the US military. And there are a couple of million more that are owned by the American gun-buying public.
It’s true that the original design of the P320 could discharge if dropped in a specific way on its slide. We demonstrated that for ourselves back in 2017 and wrote about it at that other website. Our test along with a those of number of others prompted SIG to offer a voluntary upgrade to the owners of the original pistols that were sold. They diagnosed the issue and instituted a design change to address the problem in new production guns.
Since that design change almost eight years ago, no one has been able to demonstrate that a P320 pistol can fire without a pull of the trigger, despite plaintiffs attorneys spending a great deal of time and money trying to do exactly that. But that fact hasn’t stopped some P320 owners from claiming that it’s happened to them. And lately, a couple of plaintiffs have won judgements against SIG SAUER in court.
While defending against the lawsuits, SIG has maintained that the P320 has been rigorously tested and is one of the safest handgun designs in the world. And, as you’d expect the target of high dollar lawsuits to do, they’ve stayed mostly closed-mouthed while their attorneys have done the talking for them in court.
As of today, however, that strategy has changed. SIG SAUER has announced this afternoon that they will no longer remain quiet and will more vocally be stating their case for the public. Here’s their press release announcing just that . . .
The P320 CANNOT, under any circumstances, discharge without a trigger pull – that is a fact. The allegations against the P320 are nothing more than individuals seeking to profit or avoid personal responsibility.
Recently, anti-gun groups, members of the mainstream media, trial attorneys, and other uninformed and agenda-driven parties have launched attacks on one of SIG SAUER’s most trusted, most tested, and most popular products – the P320 pistol. In all cases, these individuals have an ulterior motive behind their baseless allegations that the P320 can fire without a trigger pull; they have no evidence, no data and no empirical testing to support any of their claims. They instead choose to misrepresent clear, negligent discharges as a “design problem.”
In the decade since its introduction, the P320 has undergone the most rigorous testing and evaluation of any firearm, by military and law enforcement agencies around the world. It consistently delivers a proven record of performance and reliability through state-of-the-art engineering, and documented quality control at every stage of its production. Claims that unintended discharges are anything more than negligent handling and/or manufactured lies to support an anti-gun, anti-SIG agenda are false. Furthermore, lawsuits claiming that the P320 is capable of firing without the trigger being pulled have been dismissed in courtrooms around the country. In addition, multiple plaintiffs’ so-called experts have conceded, it is not possible for the P320 to discharge unless the trigger is fully actuated.
The rhetoric is high, and we can no longer stay silent while lawsuits run their course, and clickbait farming, engagement hacking grifters continue their campaign to highjack the truth for profit. Enough is enough. From the courts of law to the court of public opinion we will combat the lies and misinformation with the truth. SIG SAUER stands behind the quality, safety, and design of all our products – especially the P320.
Industry, take notice; what’s happening today to SIG SAUER with the anti-gun mob and their lawfare tactics will happen tomorrow at another firearms manufacturer, and then another. Today, for SIG SAUER – it ends.
All I’ve said to any company is “fix it, fix mine”. If that’s done in good faith, I’m good.
I agreed on the anti-gun politicos waging lawfare. So: do it right and fix it if it wasn’t and it’s the right thing to do to be right. Anything else is wrong.
At some point, paying the Danegeld winds up costing more than resisting the demand.
I do get the incentive for a company to take the faster and individually less-expensive road and settle a claim out of court. (Or, perhaps in the case of an individual, the analogy might be take a plea deal.) In the short term it looks better on the balance sheet. But in the long term? Perhaps not.
Remington did that, well actually their insurance did. Had that case gone on Remington would have eventually won but it would be very expensive, so their insurance decided to just settle as the cost of continuing to a win would have been tremendous.
The prime directive of every insurance company is to protect the company’s treasury. Remember, when you hire an insurance company to protect you against loss, the insurance company is the insurance company’s real client.
Can’t really be any other way.
So very true. When dealing with insurance adjusters I tell them, “I know it is your job to deny this claim”. It changes the tone of the conversation immediately.
Unfortunately, it has been my own insurance company due to uninsured drivers.
One is never made whole.
“The P320 CANNOT, under any circumstances, discharge without a trigger pull – that is a fact. The allegations against the P320 are nothing more than individuals seeking to profit or avoid personal responsibility.”
Sounds like a challenge, will the fine people at SNW repeat the test done in 2017 again, this time in Dan’s garage?
Dan???
‘
Ouch!
Sig rep: *ahem* “The voluntary upgraded P320 CANNOT…”
Earlier quote : “Our test along with a those of number of others prompted SIG to offer a voluntary upgrade to the owners of the original pistols that were sold. They diagnosed the issue and instituted a design change to address the problem in new production guns.”
They said NOTHING about early-generation guns now sitting for sale as used, and one of them damn sure COULD fire if dropped.
Their pithy screed (from Sig) aside, that declarative statement from Sig could cost them dearly…
choosing to not have the transfer bar installed on your super blackhawk is not ruger’s fault.
The 320 is dangerous, a dangerous weapon of war, prone to being misused by the person weilding it. The 320 shoots bullets. Bullets are harmful to children and other living things. Give peace a chance. Peace, Any Peace but Katie’s piece. Why can’t we all get along. Killing for safety is like screwing for virginity. Imagine.
“Killing for safety is like screwing for virginity.”
Good a reason as any!
There’s reason involved in screwing?
yup. it’s called “act right.”
“Killing for safety is like screwing for virginity.”
I need to give someone a jingle, see if she needs a good tongue-lashing… *wink*
Why is it only one statement in my rant has gathered attention?
Well Sam not just the one for this one is also of interest:
“Any Peace but Katie’s piece.”
I don’t know how to do emojis or I’d add a smiley face; but emojis aren’t the only thing I can’t do these days, if you get my drift. Yes, age does take a toll, if you live long enough and I hope all here do.
I own a P320C in 45, it has is a Massachusetts compliant pistol. I bought it from a former resident of MA. I agree with posters who say that SIG never issued a recall, it was an voluntary upgrade. There are possibly thousands of non-upgraded pistols that could have issues. I also own an Honor Defense HG9SC, it too was said to be non-drop safe. Perhaps that is because the Honor Defense was a literal copy of the P320 fire control system. Honor Guard was sued into bankruptcy and there is NO product support. I know SIG has big $ and I own several of their products. Will they choose to issue a recall of their P320’s that have not been upgraded, or will they choose to wait and go to court and pay lawyers for each and every claim?
One of my many guns is a P320. When this controversy started I put the gun away and didn’t use it in my firing range rotation any more until I saw how this developed. Had a few different conversations with Sig employees I know, about the P320. Had discussions with other P320 owners. Saw the ‘videos’ and the ‘claims’ about it. Mine wasn’t an earlier model that was subject to recall, but I wanted to make sure.
Now, I’m not one of these types of guys you see sometimes on youtube videos that get brand new guns and just abuse the heck out of them for the youtube clicks. I mean, guns can be expensive so ya gotta wonder how much money these guys are making from youtube clicks and advertisers to be able to afford either paying out of their own pocket for guns and gun stuff (i.e. optics) to try to destroy or how well connected they are with the manufacturers or companies they get these things from to get paid by them to do this. So anyway, I’m not one of those types of guys that just destroys guns and gun stuff on a whim like that, but, in this case I made an exception. Now granted, I have on occasion put some gun related stuff through their paces and abused them greatly in doing so but I’m in a fortunate situation where I get a lot of stuff for free so it didn’t cost me anything to do that to some things – but I did it because I wanted to know for myself.
So, I decided to check out the P-320 controversy with a couple of friends using my P-320. No matter what we did – no matter how it was dropped (even on the spots indicated by Sig for the early models prior up-grade fix) – no matter how hard we banged on it with a mallet at the back of the slide (there is a video of a guy doing this to get his P320 to fire on its own without a trigger pull, this is where we got this idea, his did fire after being beat on for a while but it was an early model that had not been fixed in the recall), we actually ruined the slide doing this as had beat on it so hard and aggressively trying to get it to fire but replaced the slide and continued with testing – we vibrated it and shook it, dropped it from 30 feet onto a concrete pad about 50 times – in the end it was beat up pretty badly to the point where the frame and slide needed to be replaced but no matter what we did, no matter the state it was in, clean or dirty, no matter the conditions we exposed it to, no matter what we did we could not get it to fire without a trigger pull.