The gun was in the holster, and the entire holster was removed from the belt and placed on a desk. There's nothing in that course of action that would allow a finger or anything to get into the trigger well. The gun should absolutely not have gone off.
A gun that can go off on its own even when handled properly is the opposite of idiot-proof.
The Air Force is not. (The average Air Force servicemember is older, better educated, better paid and subject to more demands than the average servicemember in the other branches.)
Given a large enough group of people you will have examples of just about anything (including idiots)
Another example, it's estimated that 1-2% of all military members are part of or connected to an illegal gang organization.
Every population has some idiots in it. My point is the Air Force is difficult to get into, has a high fraction of educated servicemembers [1], has lower turnover and higher pay than the other branches. (Back when we measured IQ, the Air Force had a higher average IQ than the other branches and population.)
I know idiots who work at Google. That doesn't it's safe to assume the average person at Google is an idiot.
[1] https://www.collegevine.com/faq/90807/most-educated-branch-o...
Historically the word "idiot" was used particularly with those with very low IQ scores but now is a pejorative term.
(Is easier to sit in.)
Obviously that's not always practical, but if you are placing a chambered firearm down on a desk, you might as well try to point it in the direction of least harm, it basically costs zero to do.
If they can prove this in the investigation, this completely sinks Sig's defense that this can't happen with the upgraded FCU that they released to supposedly fix this issue since it's in all military variants.
Or deny it, saving face and relying on FUD that the discharges (several were caught on video ) were random or somehow the fault of the owners. Sig were even using some anti-anti-gun arguments (the same retorts that 2A people use against no-gun advocates) against their own customers! Saying they weren't being responsible or something along that line. It's a terrible situation for everyone involved.
I honestly never thought I'd ever buy a modern handgun unless it was made by Sig. Until I tried the CZ. The P-10 F is my favorite full sized striker fired pistol. And that's coming from a guy that owns 30+ Sig pistols.
But I think the surprise is that a company who makes something considered highly reliable would make a similar item that the Air Force claims is killing their airmen. It'd be like Toyota making another pickup, the Bellevue, that likes to randomly explode. Sure, things happen, but Toyota? Huh, that would be unexpected.
The unusual thing here is that this is a problem in a product that managed to pass US DoD acceptance testing. But the drop safety issue was already known at the time, so one has to wonder just how much in soft bribes SIG had to spend to get it adopted regardless.
They are all interesting in their own way (especially Tesla), but certainly not quality/reliability-first organizations.
Or the Chinese in the last 5 years like they have done in Europe and rest of the world.
That doesn’t mean they’re perfect: cars are incredibly complex machines and mistakes are inevitable. But the airbag issue was a vendor (used by many companies) and IIRC the acceleration issue wasn’t that much bigger in Toyotas than other makes
They were absolutely not the only make with unintentional accretion reports/issues at that time; nor presumably today, but I haven’t seen recent numbers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehic...
Conceptually, the P365 and the P320 are very similar. Semiautomatic, striker-fired, polymer-framed, tilting-barrel centerfire pistols with replaceable serialized fire control modules. One's just bigger than the other. The guts of it are what changed, and you wouldn't think it'd be too hard to implement the P365's striker system within a larger pistol.
Now at $.25-.$30 / round, this does add up to an expensive hobby.
I’d estimate I have shot over 100K rounds of 7.62 thanks to a good amount of time as an M60/M240 Gunner
I think it’s possible for many shooters to achieve parts of a flow state when doing this. Imagine the satisfaction of throwing, catching, or hitting balls over and over in muscle memory, letting your mind and body work together to let your coordination and accuracy improve to solve the puzzle.
If ammunition didn't cost what it did, I'm sure I would shoot a lot more.
This is part of why "gun people" roll their eyes when the news talks about someone "hoarding thousands of rounds" - it's no where near as much as you might think, and people like to buy ammo when it's on sale (ammo's expensive!).
I should have clocked tens of thousands of rounds by now, at least one order of magnitude larger. Especially since micro-pistols like the P365 need the user to be more consistent with training, given that it's more difficult to be accurate with than with a full size gun. But life happens and I need to readjust my priorities before I get back to consistently visiting the range again.
While your initial drills start out using relatively few rounds at a time, more complex/difficult drills involve far more rounds, often requiring multiple magazines and multiple targets. These types of drills are generally aren't done at your basic indoor shooting galley ranges but even there there are plenty of ways to burn through a substantial amount of ammunition.
And while part of it is that in general shooting as a hobby is fun, another part is that some types of drills just require a lot of ammunition. ex: malfunction clearing drills where there are non-functional rounds mixed in to your magazines and you need to perform your drills with as little time loss compared to normal as possible. i.e. knowing how to react when things go wrong under pressure.
And so a single range day can easily put someone through tens of magazines which quickly gets into the hundreds of rounds. Then assuming you are going to the range weekly, biweekly, or monthly, that puts you into thousands or even tens of thousands of rounds per year.
The quick P250 -> P320 without really designing it properly does seem to have been a mistake, though.
I’ve heard of no issues from the P365 models. A knowledgeable firearm instructor I talked to mentioned the P320 and P365 are entirely different designs internally, and the P365 holds up to Sigs (previously) positive reputation
I'll never buy another Sig. They've burned bridges IMHO.
I’d call it shameful behavior, but it’s increasingly SOP from a class of people who have deliberately exorcised their ability to feel any shame.
I have limited knowledge of guns. I understood that they had a physical safety switch that had to be manipulated before the firearm could be used. Is that the case? If so, is the safety left off when people are carrying with a round chambered? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of the safety?
Aside from the manual safety (which is optional on this specific model of pistol), there are a number of passive safeties that normally must be overcome for the weapon to fire. Something appears to be failing in such a manner that the pistols are firing without being commanded to -- the trigger is not being inadvertently pressed, so the manual safety does not seem to be involved.
Some additional context here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44675889
This information should be kept in mind whenever anyone, especially a gun advocate, expresses dismay at the frequency of police shootings in America. America is so awash in guns, and people willing to use them, that for the average cop it is better to shoot first and ask questions later than to risk returning home in a body bag. We’ve just been informed that in threatening situations there is no time to chamber a round, but cops are simultaneously supposed to take the time to evaluate the threat to their safety.
I think you have misunderstood the order of operations in a violent encounter. The issue of chambering a round is in light of the fact that you have already identified an immediate violent threat and you need to end that threat. The entire question of carrying chambered/empty is completely separate from threat identification and whether or not a shooting is justified.
You also simply don't appear understand the time scale in which violent altercations and legitimate responses take place. They happen quickly, and so once a threat has been identified you need to remove as many barriers to action as possible. Adding 1/2 to 2 seconds can easily be the difference between life and death after you've already made the judgement about the situation. Again, the issue here isn't whether or not someone has identified a threat but rather how quickly and effectively they can respond after they've identified the threat.
If we want to speak intelligently about use of force and police reform we should avoid conflating unrelated issues (i.e. whether or not an office acted appropriately versus the ability to act properly after a threat has been identified).
You've carefully laid out why carrying a chambered weapon is critical for minimizing the reaction time to a perceived threat. So you've explained why a suspect has his gun chambered. It's anyone's guess when that suspect decides he has "identified an immediate violent threat" in the cop near him. Now the cop, by definition, must identify and respond faster than the suspect pulling out his chambered weapon. That doesn't work well for the cop, and you've optimized away any time for his to reason and react about the situation he's in.
You haven't reasoned about anything you are saying.
This is only true in certain circumstances, though it makes a lot of people uncomfortable to discuss.
https://www.cleveland19.com/2025/07/24/3-lorain-police-offic...
https://nypost.com/2025/07/24/us-news/long-island-cop-shot-i...
https://www.wisn.com/article/milwaukee-police-officer-corder...
and on, and on...
Some handguns have manual safety switches, others don't. For example, the Sig P365 (an excellent, highly regarded sub-compact pistol often used for concealed carry), has models with or without a manual safety (you can also install a safety yourself if yours doesn't have one). Some handguns also have a "grip safety" which requires you to firmly hold the grip to disable the safety.
> If so, is the safety left off when people are carrying with a round chambered? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of the safety?
Because modern firearms have a variety of built-in safety mechanisms, separate from manual safety switches, which prevent unwanted discharges, the only thing that will cause a good firearm to go off will be the trigger being pulled. Combining this fact with modern form-fitting holsters which fully cover the trigger guard, it becomes impossible to fire the gun while it remains in the holster. This means that even without a manual safety switch you can carry safely without worrying about the gun going off until you draw and pull the trigger.
Echoing another reply to your comment, if you do have a safety on your gun you would typically toggle the safety while training to build muscle memory. This means you would practice enabling the safety, holstering the firearm, drawing the firearm, disabling the safety, and firing in a swift motion so that you always disable the safety when drawing.
Colloquially, the word is often used to describe an external safety that must be manually disengaged (otherwise there is no bang even if the trigger is pulled). However, in modern firearms, even those with external safeties also have internal safeties that mean that even with the external safety disengaged, if you dropped the firearm or hit it with a hammer or something, it would not fire.
As others commenters have said, in the case of the P320, the claim is that it would fire without the trigger being pulled; and in the specific case of the airman, it is further claimed that there wasn't even a precipitating physical shock like it being dropped or hit.
Not only that it looks callous if you say otherwise, but also the dollar cost the military put on a human life probably is higher than the typical cost of fixing a bullet hole in a nuclear weapon.
https://www.twz.com/land/army-making-no-changes-to-its-sig-p...
Sig does have a way of making every pistol feel like it was custom molded to your hand - but Glocks "Just Work".
Modern firearms have multiple internal safeties to prevent accidental discharges (unless you're Sig apparently).
A thousand of an inch isn't such a theoretical number. It's about 25 microns, and I've shimmed one of my back-focusing photography lenses for less than that much (about 10 microns, to be specific). This is something that they ought to be able to machine for, but depending on the context, it might not leave much room for error.
If it's true, that's truly terrible design.
A safe example is bike chain. If each one is 1 inch +- 0.01", if every single one is +0.01" then ten links will be long by a tenth of an inch. And might pass QC on the bike when pedaled by hand- but it'll fall off when somebodies full bodyweight and 100hrs of wear is out into it.
For those who want an example, calculator, and demo see: https://www.smlease.com/entries/tolerance/tolerance-stackup-...
NB: using disks like the site does provides a clearer example.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QusWrho19zE
And then a more recent follow up
Ian ("Gun Jesus") is amazing, even just from a history / engineering perspective.
I like it far better than more Michael Bay leaning content in that space, though there's good fun in a "Can this 50 cal go thru X ?" videos haha.
The real statement is "every unintended discharge on a known-safe gun is due to user error." I would believe that all unintended discharges on, say, a Glock 17 are user error. I no longer can believe that of Sigs.
And it's like brakes on a car. If it fails for even one person one time and causes one accident, that's too much. The stakes are way too high when you're dealing with something that can take lives if it malfunctions.
correct handling requires the use of a holster which completely covers the trigger. a properly-designed firearm is safe in a properly-designed holster.
the handgun that effectively established this concept (the glock) does not contain enough potential in the fire control at rest to discharge a round, but notably, the p320 does.
One claim is that the gun can fire when dropped at a certain angle from a certain height. The voluntary "recall" lets you send it back to Sig and they replace some parts. I think the cause was because the trigger itself was bulky enough for a drop to give it enough inertia to fire, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
The other claim is that the P320 can fire without being dropped, and while holstered, seemingly on it's own. That's all I really know about it.
I own a P320, and I consider it an unsafe weapon at this point. I have not had the self-recall fix done and I'll never chamber a round in it again, so I guess it's a paperweight now.
What I'm not as familiar with is why hasn't Sig done this? It really feels like they've been doing ad-hoc patch design adjustments to a fundamentally unsafe design at this point. But I'm also not very knowledgeable about firearms yet.
They've been saying it was a political witchunt and avoiding dealing with it. This, hopefully, breaks the dam.
This is not a political issue. This is a discussion about whether a product is defective.
Well, except specifically for Sig Sauer on the topic of an external safety in New Hampshire[0]. Which, given that's the thing people have been filing lawsuits in New Hampshire about, is a bit of a political issue, no?
[0] https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-05-28/sig-sauer-p320-pisto...
I think the new law preventing the suing of manufacturers for not including external safeties is a good thing.
I also think Sig Sauer are intentionally gas-lighting the public on the safety of the P320/M17/M18 and should withdraw it from the market.
Edit: I have nothing against Sig Sauer in general. I've shot a P228; it's a beautiful weapon, and I would buy one in a heartbeat. You couldn't pay me enough to have a P320.
If the consumer protection bureau of a state wants to make an external safety a requirement for pistols sold in the state, I think that is a legitimate use of government authority and is used all the time with other kinds of products. Personally I think such a proposal evinces a complete lack of understanding of modern handguns and I would be opposed to it, but it is a legitimate use of government powers, and is not just a back door way to sue a disfavored company out of existence.
For this particular case I think that discussing external safeties is a distraction. In my opinion a handgun should not discharge under any circumstance where no one and nothing pulled the trigger. As a firearm owner I have that expectation of every firearm I own. I deliberately chose not to buy an Sig 320 because of the large number of reports of accidental drop related discharges; it makes me think that there might be a design defect.
They should very quickly pivot to a "It [100% Safety] Starts Today" remedial campaign admitting there's a problem, following-up with full transparency about how they plan to reorient their organization to make the situation better, then providing frequent proof of progress towards the safety goal. There's a critical window for them to turn this from a crisis that might sink the US division of the company to one that serves as the basis for why they were compelled to adopt safety-first design processes for their guns.
This is their version of the [1982 Tylenol Crisis](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/tylenol-murders-1982) but they've really fumbled the ball so far.
What was particularly beneficial/unique is the P320 was kept in the holster when given to the FBI to investigate, and only removed after their forensic team X-rayed it, giving us pretty solid case study of how it happens
This guy does a great job going through the report: https://youtu.be/LfnhTYeVHHE
[0]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L7RXrneHlzfjrewMFIeeyc-nel3...
From your tone I assume that you would expect Sig to come forward, analyze, discuss and hopefully solve these problems as soon as possible.
But that would be utterly stupid from their point of view. Public opinion cares very little about the details-- anytime you get associated with issues like this is simply bad for your brand/stockpric: downplaying, denying and gaslighting is absolutely the way to go here for the company.
IMO to fix this you would need to strongly increase personal liability specifically for misinformation and delays in cases like this, and we would need to reward good behavior (proactive fixes, honest communication).
But just look at the whole tetraethyl lead debacle: This cost at least a million years of human lifes (!!), after the lead industry denied known problems and purposefully obstructed/discredited critical researchers (e.g. R. Buyers and H. Needleman) for decades. I strongly believe that a number of decisionmakers should have ended up with a dead penalty or lifelone imprisonment, but there were ZERO consequences for anyone involved, and current rethoric around "deregulation" makes it obvious to me that zero lessons were learned.
If you want to make boatloads of cash and don’t care about lives, you follow the rules and the same playbook as Remington did when their rifles suffered a similar self-firing phenomenon that killed customers.
Delay, deny, defend yourself and take in as much cash as possible until you are legally boxed in. Hope at that point your profits are greater than your penalties, such that they are just another cost of doing business.
What amazes me are the Sig Sauer fanatics I see online in the gun communities defending them endlessly as if they can do no harm.
Seems opposed to the values of an arms manufacturer.
But at this point, given how Sig has responded (the article has a nice summary), the cover-up is bigger than the crime, almost. The trust is broken at an organizational level.
I don't feel like all manufacturers would respond like this, and it isn't the response I expect from somebody reputable.
Why? Also, isn't that only an issue in early P320s? (at least according to Sig)
> and I'll never chamber a round in it again
Isn't this good enough for most uses? Heck, a long time ago I was trained to only chamber after unholstering AND entering a situation requiring quick response. The extra round not being worth the risk. 17 instead of 17+1 for the 9mm P320, right?
Honestly, this all smells like an overblown hysteria campaign to pump American brands. I would like to see the accidental discharge rate per units in use. This is one of the most popular handguns.
Sig Sauer, Inc is an American company, and M17/M18 are manufactured solely in US. Afaik the design is also from US.
It appears to be the American half of a German-owned transnational company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIG_Sauer
The German company and American company are clearly related, given the German company is alleged to have manufactured and shipped firearms to the American company with falsified end-user certificates, which the American company then resold to Colombia in violation of German law: https://www.nhpr.org/post/ceo-nh-gun-maker-facing-five-years...
Heck, even if we believe Boeing, it's the pilots' problem who are not retrained for the new plane which doesn't need training.
Honestly, also this Boeing thing smells like an overblown hysteria campaign to pump American planes.
The brand damage has been significant, but for the most part isolated to this pistol. Now, if another Sig model has a similar issue in the future and a similar response comes from Sig, the loss in trust will be immense and potentially unrecoverable.
As far as not keeping a round in the chamber, yeah, some people still do that, though that method has fallen into disfavor amongst the CCW types. But even when not ready to fire, there is a lot of time when that pistol could be loaded and go off, I.E. holding the pistol at low ready. Pistol on the bench facing down range as you check something or take a pause, unloading and reloading etc.
Pistols are already incredibly easy to accidentally hurt oneself and others that adding in this variable is just intolerable for most I think.
The gun community wants that gun to work reliably, that means it must fire when intended to fire, and only then.
The only time my gun has went off was when I pulled the trigger. Has your gun ever went off without pulling the trigger?
Most of the videos I see on YouTube are people who were fiddling with the gun, in some kind of physical altercation, or carry some sort of back on the side they carry. I didn't get the fix from Sig either.
I mean, that’s quite literally survivorship bias…
All that being said, I'm not trying to say there is definitely an issue with the P320, but there is enough out there to give me some doubt. Perhaps there will be a fix at some point, but until then it's just not worth it to me.
This also isn't happening with other guns. If you google any other gun brand and the words unintentional discharge, you will still only get results for the P320.
If you make new-design firearms in any significant volume, you will have safety recalls. I don't know how many times I've gone to another gunmaker's website to see a banner announcing a safety recall. The important thing is that you stand behind your product 100%, and Sig's not doing that, even with arguably the most prestigious military contract in the world that one can hope to get for their pistol.
I wouldn't purchase any new Sigs after seeing how they've doubled-down on denial here. This is a life-taking/life-saving tool. It cannot be wrong; it cannot fail.
Although, a short grip is a feature for conceal carry, in my opinion. Even with nicer "winged" appendix holsters, the grip can still print fairly easily on fuller-sized handguns.
The first time my partner used it, she gave herself a blood blister on the palm of her hand.
Additionally, the trigger is super mushy, with like 4 different sticky break points, where only the last one is actually for firing. I hated everything about it; we bought it only because it fit her hand.
It was my first and last Sig. I have no idea why people buy pistols that aren’t Glocks.
Jam halfway through a magazine? I'll stick with my Ruger from the 80s, thanks.
Re: your partner's hand and the blood blister, did you ever find something for that?
Eh, that glock grip never felt right to me. The moment I picked up a PPQ it felt like someone had designed a grip specifically for my hand.
I learned something new today.
On top of that you have to add in the important historical contexts weapons are involved in which garners peoples interest. And then there is the engineering ingenuity and craft involved in all the mechanics of how they operate and the {hopefully) fine machining and techniques used in creating them, the same way someone might marvel at the internals of different clocks or watches.
There's really 2 different things here:
Firstly, there's "How many things are between my finger on the trigger and shooting the gun". The furthest you get is not having a round in the chamber, where you have to pull back and release the slide to chamber a round. In that state, basically nothing you do to the trigger or any other part of the gun will result in a discharge. You could use the gun to hammer a nail into a board and it would be really inefficient but also not result in you shooting anybody. From there, you can have a round in the chamber but the safety on. Some guns have no safety. Some guns have more than one (a common combination is a toggle safety and then a bar built into the trigger that must be pulled first before the trigger can be pulled). The safety's job is to stop the gun from slamming the firing pin into the back of the round. All of this matters a lot for the kind of issues that were common with Serpa holsters, where users tended to slide their finger along near the trigger and were accidentally pulling it as part of their draw from the holster.
Secondly, there's "is there anything stopping the firing pin from just smacking the round and firing it w/o the trigger or anything else being involved". In some guns, the firing pin is physically blocked from striking the round until the trigger is pulled back: there's a piece of metal or other impediment that's in the way, and when you pull the trigger it slides out of the way and then the mechanism pushes the firing pin forward. But in other guns, that isn't the case: the firing pin is held away from the round by some style of tension, but isn't physically blocked. On those guns, if you have a round in the chamber and you whack the gun in the wrong direction, the firing pin can push into the round and fire it. Sig's prior claims were that this was not possible on the P320. Evidence suggests that they are incorrect.
There are no external safeties for the operator to engage with these handguns. They will only go off the trigger is pulled - so drops should not set it off, nor the actions in the video. You have to intentionally pull the trigger for the gun to go off, which is the ultimate last word in safeties.
There are still semiautos with external safeties hammers, the most famous being the 1911. These are what's called single actions. The trigger weight (amount of pull on the trigger) is relatively light, so they have an external safety for the operator to engage/disengage.
I personally prefer single actions, hammer cocked, safety engaged, but this is always a very, very personal preference by people that carry. I own Glocks, but I would not carry one because of the lack of external safety, however, I would never criticize anyone that does. This is 100% strictly boils down to what the person is comfortable doing.
Two built in safeties, plus a half-cocked striker instead of fully cocked like Sig. Another big difference is that one of the safeties is a physical thing sitting in between the striker and the primer. The equivalent on a sig 320 is a physical thing sitting in front of a lug attached to the striker, not actually in between the striker and the primer. That makes it a single point of failure, because if the lug shears off of the striker, the gun immediately discharges.
The big failure case for a Glock is something (drawstring, etc) getting into the holster and pulling the trigger. If you commit to never holstering without going really slow and shining a light down in there to verify nothing is getting at the trigger, it's safe. Which works if you just never take it out of the holster except at the range. Remove the holster and gun as a unit, stick holster and gun together in a safe, etc.
The reason manual safeties are going away is that for side arms, time matters A LOT. Gun fights are typically over within just a few seconds and the person who fires first has a huge advantage. A long time ago there were quite a few major incidents involving police and manual safeties which resulted in most departments changing their policies such that they carry with the safety off or, typically these days, glocks which have no manual safety.
Regarding the p320. For one, the 320 does not have a trigger safety. In fact, there are numerous "innovations" on this firearm which were made to cut costs, improve trigger feel, and various other things. This rose a lot of suspicion when the gun first came out actually - especially the lack of a trigger safety which many consider essential for striker fire guns intended for carrying on your person. On top of that, sig did end up making a p320 with a safety as this was a military requirement. The thing is, it is possible that the "innovative" sear mechanism within the p320 may allow the gun to fire even when the safety is engaged. In fact, there have been reports of just that happening.
The gun that was being carried in Air Force incident is the military version of the p320 which does in fact have a manual safety. Also, the leaked reports state the incident happened whenever the gun was in the holster and the holster was removed and placed on a desk facing the victim. This is when the gun misfired striking the victim in the chest. There is speculation that the gun may have in fact had the safety engaged whenever this happened. If so, this would explain the prompt response by the AirForce.
Regardless, the purpose of manual safeties are not to prevent guns from discharging on their own (aka. "uncommanded"). Manual safeties are intended to protect against "accidental" discharges where the trigger gets pulled "accidentally." That's not what happened in the above video or the AirForce incident.
One more thing to note. The officer in this video was using a Sig Sauer holster so there should be no risk of the holster itself being the problem.
I know there are a lot of people who share this opinion, but speaking as ex-military, I think it's quite disingenuous and dangerous. Real life isn't some old-fashioned Western film where draw speed matters. If an adversary is malicious, carrying a round in the chamber, and decides to pull on you, he has the element of surprise. There is no real-world situation where you are really just that much better at drawing and firing accurately that you will out-draw an adversary who drew on you first, with the possible exception of Special Forces / Navy SEAL types who drill it ad-nauseum and had 99th-percentile reaction speed to begin with. But thinking that ordinary people can do it is sheer hubris. Thinking you can do it from concealed carry is utterly laughable.
In a real world firefight you're either close enough where martial arts is relevant or you're not. If martial arts are relevant, then the guns are irrelevant. If you're further away, what matters is whether you can get behind cover, which will give you time to unholster your weapon, disengage the safety, and chamber a round.
You don't decide to carry a gun in public because you think it will save you if someone walks up to you from behind and decides to shoot you in the back. You do it for the times when gunfights are not resolved with the first shot. Responsible citizens carry their guns in such a way that prioritizes the safety of those around them before their own personal safety.
Unfortunately, public perceptions are mostly driven by:
(1) Mass media portrayals - which are carefully scripted to maximize market share, clicks, and sales
(2) Rule of Cool - or whatever "feels right", to emotionally-driven humans living in a society where guns are a major point of contention in a bitter culture war
I get what you say, but if folks are smart they should be concerned by any firearm, legal or not. Its trivial in US to obtain one if your record is still clean, you can be a proper psycho weirdo and still get it.
The people afraid of doing psychotests to get a gun which can kill tens of people easily in skilled hands... I'd say they are afraid for a good reason. Its like being afraid of driving test to get the license to drive.
Criminals shoot eachother and occasionally they shoot law enforcement if they are really dumb. Normal people when there is a shoot out just hide until the incident is over. You'd have to be stupid to get involved. More guns do not equal more safety- especially not because your average wannabe Rambo can't shoot for shit.
Even despite the prevalence of legal firearms the US busts illegal gun factories every week, there is no feasible way to disarm the US population except through them wanting to be disarmed and willingly destroying their guns. And until US police stop shooting people with impunity, courts stop imprisoning people for being poor, the government stops deploying armed US troops on US soil and running a gestapo squad, and until crime rates drop to something not resembling countries without functioning governments, I don't see why the US population should want to disarm themselves.
You may choose to call one group of people "normal", just as I could about the other, but it is plain to see how silly that is.
It’s certainly not the norm for gun violence in public but it’s certainly not a nonexistent risk either.
Those who wish to disarm us women are doing so from a position of luxury. Where you’re never felt what it’s like to be completely at the mercy of those drastically bigger and stronger than you. Or perhaps you come from the luxurious position where rapes don’t occur by large unarmed men.
Either way you’re not a friend of women’s rights.
There are plenty of videos where the store owner shoots a robber who pulled out a gun before the robber could fire.
A shop owner's actual best strategy, in states without firm stand-your-ground or castle doctrine laws that also apply to businesses, is probably an under-the-counter button that calls for police as a silent alarm while responding slowly to stall for time (and consider closing up shop and moving if local police are not quick and reliable to respond). Even in states with more friendly legal environments, risking your life by drawing to defend your inventory or cash register is practically the definition of penny-wise, pound-foolish. You are risking your life over, what, several hundred or a few thousand dollars? And even if you do walk away from the gunfight, how much would it cost to repair all the damage from the gunfight; if you get injured, how much are the hospital bills and subsequent increase in your medical insurance premiums?
No, while the Second Amendment may still be alive on paper, I think its protections don't do much for shop owners these days. A more effective defense would be if that police-alarm button also released a quick-acting sleeping gas, but those aren't really available in real-world contexts and carry lots of unintentional risks.
Rapid fog generators seem ridiculous at first glance, but they're remarkably effective in many circumstances.
Data has shown that if you have a need to carry a firearm on your person, it is prudent to carry with one in the chamber and the safety off. For this reason, firearm manufacturers have been using this as a design criteria. It's not impossible to design safe firearms which meet this criteria. See Gaston Glock.
Back on topic, the Sig P320 was designed to not have a safety. The military version has one, but that's only because military requirements hardly ever change. The P320 and it's military counterpart, the M17, are designed to be carried loaded with no safety. The fact that they randomly go off when doing this is not a failure of the operator or some systemic societal problem. It's a failure of Sig to meet design requirements.
Stop victim blaming.
Because I can show examples of store clerks being executed despite fully complying with the armed robbers.
A tank wouldn’t ride around empty. You wouldn’t search a house with an empty rifle. You wouldn’t go on patrol with an empty rifle.
> There is no real-world situation where you are really just that much better at drawing and firing accurately that you will out-draw an adversary who drew on you first
There is, and it is called training. Get a timer, hit the range, and get your shots on target from concealment in under a second - while getting off the "x" - this is a standard I have trained many people to meet first-hand. And it doesn't take a specialist to get this level of training, either; it takes a few years, several thousands rounds of ammunition, and periodic maintenance, just like any craft.
> In a real world firefight you're either close enough where martial arts is relevant or you're not. If martial arts are relevant, then the guns are irrelevant.
Disparity of force - another well known concept you ought to familiarize yourself, especially as it is one of the most critical elements of legal defense in a shooting.
> Responsible citizens carry their guns in such a way that prioritizes the safety of those around them before their own personal safety.
Smart people legally carry a firearm to defend themselves and their family only from unexpected deadly threats. They would never intervene, get involved with, or otherwise "rescue" anyone else with lethal force. The "sheepdog" mentality you've put on display is honestly offensive and gives a bad name to firearms owners.
I thought most law enforcement and military agencies use the Glock as standard issue. Isn't it?
Glocks are the most common among law enforcement in the US these days. The FBI's service pistol is a Glock 19M. Glock claims that the Glock 22 is, "by far the most popular police service pistol in the United States," which surprises me because the 17 and 19 are the service handguns at most big cities, AFAIK.
Also: Glock-specific safety checks: https://youtu.be/LFk_nq0HcEc
Apparently judging by the information at the end of the text, Sig Sauer is the “Boeing” of firearms.
This could be considered gun tech. Note that HN doesn't require posts to be tech related, although this post might be a little borderline regarding the "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." guideline.
If you want to know how we arrived at this particular moment in American history and society, this is a fine place to start.
1. The P320 had a real issue with firing when dropped. Although it had passed all drop tests, when dropped at a 25-degree angle onto the rear sight, the weight of the trigger was enough to fire the gun. There is a voluntary fix available for older weapons, but no recall has seen necessary.
Now, we have many videos and widespread discussion about this. Millions of people and police officers own P320s, and sometimes they make errors. It's natural to blame the gun when freak accidents occur, especially when they result in injury. The narrative of a big, greedy company trying to hide issues is always present and can be applied to almost anything.
2. Cases where the gun fired without the trigger being touched are very questionable. From lawsuits, examples include: carrying a round in the chamber and wrapping the P320 in cloth to move it; or carrying a round in the chamber and placing the P320 into a handbag. The case where a police officer's P320 fired while holstered (and there's a video of it) was studied by the FBI. The report notes that the officer had keys in his hand when he moved it near the holster. In most such cases, it's very easy to see how something could have touched the trigger. If the P320 had a genuine systemic issue, it would show up in statistics as an above-average number of accidents.
3. Now a separate P320 "out-of-battery fire" issue that's gaining traction online. This is clearly a typical hand-loading or questionable ammunition source issue, which is relatively common with all firearm models.
Summary: Starting with real issue, social media attention attached to some thing can have it's own life. making a typical number of incidents, with a variety of causes, look like a huge trend.
In this situation, the FBI was able to duplicate the ‘spontaneous firing of a chambered round’ by pressing down slightly on the slide with nothing else going on.
SIG needs to get their head out of their ass, or they are going to burn the whole company to the ground.
They were not able to duplicate the firing the way you think BRF was able to replicate firing in holster with keys in hand.
---
From the document:
"The MSP motor officer had objects in his hands at the time of the event, including keys."
then
"BRF was successful in using keys, both flat and serrated profiles, to press the trigger while the M18 was holstered. The keys were approximately 1.7” and 1.0” respectively. The trigger could be fully pressed to the rear with sufficient pressure against the side of the trigger only, or by using the holster as a fulcrum. During this test it was observed that the keys caused an abrasion on the trigger guard near the area of the abrasion seen on the weapon when it arrived (Figure 13)."
There was abrasion from the keys in the gun, BRF was able to replicate firing in holster with keys in hand.
From the conclusion: "examination of the subject weapon did not independently provide evidence of an uncommanded discharge it does indicate that it may be possible if sear engagement is lost. The disabling of the striker safety lock through movement and friction creates a condition which merits further exploration to fully assess potential risk."*
Do you work for SIG or something?
Of course someone could reach into the holster with keys and hit the trigger, but there is no conceivable way it could be that in this situation. And this isn’t the only time - I’ve seen several videos of Sig P320’s doing this that are completely unrelated to this situation.
They were not able to duplicate physical malfunction.
That means they were able to individual safety mechanism fail, but not all of them. The intact gun would not fire all by itself if it was hammered in the test.
And there were clear manufacturing defects found when looking at the gun.
And we end with perfect social media claim: "I believe it did happen in reality".
I rest my case.
Did you mean firing when dropped?
I'll probably switch to a Glock 19 at this point.
jleyank•1d ago
colingauvin•1d ago
nowandlater•1d ago
arrowsmith•1d ago
hollywood_court•1d ago
I’m a huge Sig collector and I’ve been a fan of theirs since the 90s.
I’ve carried a Sig daily for 20+ years. I only carried a P320 for a few months until I finally downsized to the P365.
But I’ve got to admit that their PR and response to these incidents is not a good look.
But I am a bit confused as to what is causing these unintentional discharges. I know they had a problem that was addressed years ago so I’m not sure if the current problem guns are ones that were never sent back for modification or if there is some kind of unrelated problem.
Regardless, I’ll still carry a Sig until CZ makes something comparable to a P365. But it’s unlikely that I’ll ever buy a new Sig again.
tshaddox•1d ago
Why is that your opinion? Surely there's a wide variety of plausible scenarios where carrying a concealed weapon without a round chambered is much better than not carrying a concealed weapon.
TheAmazingRace•1d ago
mywittyname•1d ago
I've been in my fair share of sus situations in my life and they've been either telegraphed (people starting with yelling, then intimidation, then getting into personal space) or ambiguous. I was recently at a block party with a loud DJ, and some guys fired several rounds and it took minutes to figure out what was going on. Even the first responders were amazingly sluggish in their response.
Hell, I had a guy sneak up behind me while I was parked in my car, bang on my window and tried to start shit with me. I had enough time to shoot off a text to my wife to stay put while defusing him.
So I personally think people with good situational awareness have plenty of time to act appropriately in a variety of common dangerous situations.
sugarplant•23h ago
if you google around for "Ring camera video appears to show man shoot assailant in self-defense" you can find one.
some people do live in legitimately very dangerous places. whether one should carry chambered is a function of that.
TheFreim•23h ago
The problem is that in a "sus situation" you would not be able to chamber a round without brandishing the firearm, which in many situation would be illegal in a merely "sus" situation where you don't have a clear threat (brandishing laws, intimidation, etc). This is why many self-defense advocates encourage people to carry with a round chambered while also carrying something like pepper spray for situations where lethal force is not necessary.
> So I personally think people with good situational awareness have plenty of time to act appropriately in a variety of common dangerous situations.
Most people I've encountered who carry concealed would agree that you should try to keep yourself from being in common dangerous situations. The reason they carry is not for the avoidable situations, since they'd obviously just avoid them, but for the unavoidable situation. The vast majority of people who carry concealed never need to use their firearms, the point is to be ready to defend oneself and others if the situation should arise.
AceyMan•17h ago
BeetleB•18h ago
As another commenter pointed out, drawing your gun in those situations is usually a pretty serious crime (supposedly even showing that you're carrying a concealed gun to ward people off is a crime in some jurisdictions - I haven't verified).
So not sure what the point of your comment is. You're describing scenarios that are irrelevant to the thread.
Oh, and just BTW, lots and lots of cases of people acting like you ending up dead. Acting appropriately in dangerous situations doesn't mean you will come out on the better end.
katmannthree•1d ago
arrowsmith•1d ago
Tangential: if you enjoy watching that kind of content, I highly recommend the YouTube channel "Active Self Protection"
tshaddox•1d ago
I would be surprised if this is true for the majority of situations. I'm sure there are situations where you have very little time, but also many situations where the additional time it would take to chamber a round is negligible.
eYrKEC2•1d ago
After watching thousands of violent encounters on John Correia's "Active Self Protection" channel, I agree that round-in-the-chamber is absolutely necessary if you're carrying for self protection.
https://www.youtube.com/@ActiveSelfProtection
esseph•23h ago
So you either draw and fire and call the police and tell them what happened, or you don't and just... deal with the consequences of whatever happened instead.
why_at•23h ago
If someone is going to attack me with a knife, but then I draw a gun and they run away, surely that's not illegal because I didn't shoot them.
esseph•22h ago
why_at•22h ago
It seems like then it would be legal to draw a gun without firing if it was in self defense? I have a hard time believing that there are any cases where shooting someone in self defense would be legal, but scaring them away wouldn't.
esseph•21h ago
Source: https://www.dischleylaw.com/blog/2024/june/understanding-the...
asa400•21h ago
And this is the crucial bit, quoting the article: “The court decided the principle also applies to people who merely use the threat of force — meaning one cannot pull a weapon in self-defense if there are other means to escape, even if the person is threatening them with death or bodily harm.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/minnesota/news/minnesota-supreme...
BeetleB•18h ago
The whole point of "stand your ground" is that you do not have the responsibility to escape.
tshaddox•6h ago
BeetleB•18h ago
1. Could you have reasonably escaped?
2. Could you have reasonably de-escalated (or were you the one who escalated to get here)?
3. Can you convince a jury (and the cops) that your life was in danger? If there are no witnesses, this is tough. Typically you're allowed to use deadly force only if you fear loss of life/limb. Yes, yes, plenty of cases where juries ruled in favor of the shooter when there was clearly no risk of loss of life/limb.
4. Do you have the relevant insurance to cover your legal defense costs? If not, you'll likely make a plea deal with the prosecutor even if you were clearly in the right.
I would say if the guy lunged at you with a knife and you drew your gun and he ran away, you'll be fine if there are witnesses.
eurleif•22h ago
I'm not sure how many other states work this way, but in Florida, brandishing is considered non-deadly force as a matter of law[0]. So the standard for self-defense is different between brandishing and firing: deadly force like firing requires a higher degree of threat to be considered justified self-defense[1].
[0] https://reason.com/volokh/2023/05/24/loading-and-openly-carr...
[1] http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Displ...
sneak•14h ago
I would take almost any criminal charge over being forced to kill somebody.
If I hadn’t been willing to brandish at least once, I would have had to shoot to kill, and that sucks bad. Being in a gunfight is the last thing that I want besides being dead or severely injured.
tshaddox•6h ago
AceyMan•17h ago
That's like saying "I only wear seat belts on the freeway" or something equivalently vapid.
nosignono•1d ago
If you don't have a round chambered, you need to draw, rack and release the slide, hope a round is properly chambered (in a panicked situation you might not rack the slide properly), then get into a firing position. This is a much more complex movement and evaluation of state. You are pulling the gun up, manipulating it with two hands, then moving it forward and finding your grip. In an emergency, that time loss and complexity of motion is considerably more difficult to train.
Even experienced shooters will draw from a holster and immediately present their gun and try to fire, and then realize they don't have a round chambered, have to bring the gun back to rack the slide, and then present the gun again.
You conceal carry because you want to be prepared at an emergency to deal with an imminent threat. Adding complex manipulations to that erodes your ability to do that, and any modern pistol should not fire unless you pull the trigger. They should be safe from drops, shakes, or manipulations.
If your threat isn't "I need to have a firearm ready asap", then you should consider not conceal carrying, in which case you may want your pistol unloaded or unchambered.
fmbb•1d ago
If you cannot even chamber a round who’s to say you can hit what you want to hit?
eYrKEC2•1d ago
0x457•1d ago
avalys•1d ago
nosignono•7h ago
chasd00•1d ago
impossiblefork•1d ago
If an attacker doesn't have a firearm you probably have time to chamber a round, if the attacker misses a shot at you you have time to chamber a round, if you have time to take cover you may have time to chamber a round and then be in an approximately 50-50 situation, etc.
klaussilveira•1d ago
Is that based on recorded personal times, or are you just assuming?
Because I can shoot the mozambique in 1.9 seconds. Chambering a round is much slower than that.
impossiblefork•15h ago
TheFreim•23h ago
Most defensive uses of a firearms occur at a short distance, less than five yards. It takes very little time to cover the distance. For those who are interested, here is a video covering what it looks like when someone with a knife runs straight at someone at 21 feet, you will see why the idea that people have time to rack the slide is absurd (https://youtu.be/_2zfw_4DYdQ?t=79).
sugarplant•23h ago
people posting talking about combat rolling and chambering after their assailant misses a shot. what the fuck lmao
TheFreim•23h ago
I generally try to show them a little bit of grace. For many people their sole exposure to firearms is through video games, movies, and television shows. They have a strong "knowledge" of how things work and genuinely have no idea that their ideas are at odds with reality. Its similar to how non-tech people think "hacking" works.
impossiblefork•15h ago
If you're rooted as a tree, of course you'll be killed. You must make use of your own movement to create time, just as Nadal does when he step diagonally back from the ball 'sal y entra'.
not_a_bot_4sho•1d ago
This is only true for Usain Bolt. Chambering on draw adds 0.5s or so.
For me, that's acceptable for any scenario outside of a pistols at dawn duel in front of an old west saloon.
giraffe_lady•21h ago
Probably not much less likely than a lot of the scenarios people are fantasizing about in here.
chasd00•11h ago
Now, in my 49 years i've been in only one situation where i was attacked, beat up, robbed and would have been justified to use lethal force in my defense. Had i been armed I would not have had it together enough in the amount of time i had to chamber a round, aim, and fire. Unless your brain is trained to respond there just isn't time to think through anything, it's like your mental capacity just grinds to a halt in those moments. If you have it together enough to chamber a round, aim, and fire you have it together enough to use run-fu and escape the situation.
finally, once again, i don't conceal carry and thank my lucky stars my job doesn't involve making decisions like draw and fire or don't. Maybe someone with more training and experience will weigh in in this conversation, i'm just giving my two cents.
sugarplant•1d ago
500ms, just enough time to open up console and type noclip to escape
BeetleB•1d ago
I recommend everyone who has access to it go into training where you take a real handgun that's been modified to shoot laser and has CO2 recoil. The setup is that you have a screen (perhaps all around you), playing out a scenario. You're in a convenience store, and something may happen that requires you to defend yourself.
Even with a fair amount of training, the adrenalin surge is significant, and the time you have to respond is very limited. Doing this eliminated any illusions I had regarding guns and safety. There's little time to rack the gun to put a round in the chamber. And if you haven't done it, it's not easy to rack a gun (you need the right grip, angle, etc). And racking can fail. Even I, with very limited experience, have experienced multiple failures while racking.
People mentioned videos where people practice doing all this, and time themselves. I saw a video where someone 3 yards away draws a machete and runs at the other person. The time he has to draw and defend is just not enough at 3 yards. One needs to actively dodge the machete while drawing. Adding the complexity of racking is almost a guaranteed failure. The person drawing was very experienced (and a handgun trainer), knew the attack was going to come, and still had a low success rate.
Other things I've had to unlearn:
"Why didn't they just shoot at the legs?" At short notice, in an emergency scenario, aim is very poor. People train for these situations to get a reasonable likelihood of hitting a person without needing to spend time aiming. And the primary way to do it is to aim at the body - not arms/head/legs.
"Why did they have to shoot the person 3 times?" See above. Aim is hard, and there's a good chance of missing. When your life is on the line, you are not going to shoot once and check if it hit. You'll shoot 3 rounds quickly. When I did the simulator, I often shot 4-6 rounds without even realizing it (and was told by the instructor to keep it down).
This may be hard for some to believe/digest. As I said, I didn't believe it until I was put in those (simulated) situations.
Another thing I thought was crazy: People sleeping with a loaded gun by their bed. A guy did a video where an intruder was in the house and running towards their room. They timed different scenarios (unloaded with magazine on the side, different gun safes, etc). He succeeded only with one particular gun safe, and only with the gun fully loaded.
If I ever keep a gun at home, it will not be for "defend against an intruder in the middle of the night". It's just too risky to keep a loaded gun next to your bed. But if you have good reason to believe someone is after you, this is the only way to go.
Having said all that, if I carried a gun, I'd likely not have a round in the chamber. But that's really me saying I'm not going to carry a gun for safety purposes.
recursivecaveat•1d ago
It's probably best to be realistic about what is possible. If somebody tried to whack you on the sidewalk with a machete, they would win 100% of the time, because you're not living 24/7 in a hyper-alert paranoid state keeping an incredibly close eye on everyone 360° around you. Unless you've drawn your weapon 100s of times in near-miss scenarios on people who look like they might be grabbing a weapon because their phone is in a coat pocket or something, it's just the truth. If you're going to live in a society you just kind of have to accept that you could hypothetically be killed in broad daylight by a very-motivated someone with no real opportunity to defend yourself. Happens to organized crime members all the time, and obviously they have way way more reason to be paranoid than regular people.
BeetleB•1d ago
But let's extend the distance to 5 yards. Or 8 yards. Or whatever. There is a distance threshold where racking vs not racking makes a difference. It's not a thin threshold. You probably gain a decent number of yards by not having to rack.
Lots of things can go wrong while carrying a handgun (with or without a round in the chamber). I don't recommend people do it unless they are aware of a specific threat. But once you are under a specific threat, then it doesn't really make sense to carry it without a round in the chamber.
gottorf•22h ago
This is absolutely true, but security in depth, right? Just because it's easy for you to die in public, whether from a premeditated attack or an accident, doesn't mean it's pointless to add on a few layers to make that less likely. After all, everything happens in the margins.
relaxing•20h ago
including accidentally shooting yourself, accidentally shooting the wrong person, getting shot by someone else who misread who was the good guy with the gun and the bad guy with the gun, and turning it on yourself when the pressure of it all gets to be too much.
BeetleB•20h ago
Keep in mind that your point is orthogonal to the topic of whether you should have a round in the barrel or not. Everything you say here applies to both cases. (Well, OK, there's a tiny marginally higher chance of accidentally shooting yourself).
BeetleB•20h ago
Making it very clear that he owns a gun effectively drives all of them away.
But that's where you make clear you have a gun. Concealed carry, by definition, is hiding that fact. There are pros and cons to open carry, but IMO, if you want the gun to act as a deterrent, open carry probably is a lot more effective than concealed carry.
relaxing•20h ago
What pray tell is this hypothetical threat? Who is this attacker who comes in your bedroom in the middle of the night to use lethal force against you, but gives you time to rouse, grab your weapon, and acquire target? Or they wake you by running in with full knowledge committed to memory of the layout of your house and your sleeping arrangements so that they can beat you to your gun safe? They’ve cased the joint but they’re not going to wait until you come out to get in your car in the morning?
If you believe someone is after you, your resources would be better spent getting support from others, or physically securing your living space, or getting the hell out of dodge.
BeetleB•20h ago
I said "if you have good reason to believe someone is after you". That precludes hypothetical threats.
People sometimes make enemies who threaten to kill them. Some of them actually try to kill them. Some of them are people who know them and their house/apartment intimately. Start looking around. Lots and lots of cases of people who get out on bail and kill the person in the next few days.
> They’ve cased the joint but they’re not going to wait until you come out to get in your car in the morning?
If you're going to kill someone, are you going to do it that openly, when it may be easier to do it in the home?
> If you believe someone is after you, your resources would be better spent getting support from others, or physically securing your living space, or getting the hell out of dodge.
I actually agree, with the caveat that only the last one works, and is not feasible for many.
relaxing•20h ago
If forced to choose between rampaging through someone’s house in close quarters combat, or waiting outside for them to come to me, I’d pick the latter.
BeetleB•19h ago
And many wouldn't.
> A lot is feasible if your life is at stake.
I won't argue the point - people have different opinions on this, and it's not a topic you're going to get a "clear correct" answer for. The point still stands: Some people choose not to leave, and then their options become limited. They often have to live the rest of their life in fear, and not everyone can get a new identity.[0]
Also, as I and others have pointed out - just the mere fact that you have a gun, are trained to use it well, and keep it on/near you at all times will deter a significant percentage of problematic people.
The other thing to point out - this thread is filled with the extremes (including my examples). It's not always the case that someone has planned to kill someone. There is a continuum of threats.
BTW, try living in the rural[1] parts of my state, where everyone has a gun, and the police funding is low, and often the 911 operator will tell people "Sorry, we're out of resources and it'll take at least 30-60 minutes to get to you. Do what you can to defend yourself"[2] People routinely take advantage of the fact that the police will not get there in time, and not having a gun is inviting such folks.
[0] A coworker's father recently passed away. When it happened, he revealed to me that he had lived much of his life in fear that his father would show up at the door with a gun and shoot him. Even when he lived in a different state. Not exaggerating to say he was relieved when he died. Weirdly enough, he got a gun only after his father died.
[1] And by rural, I still mean a proper city where you have neighbors next to you, etc.
[2] Paraphrasing an actual 911 call.
relaxing•8h ago
Yeah, many people are stupid and/or crazy or just hotheads making rash decisions in the heat of the moment which kind of blows apart your rational calculus of armed deterrence.
I don’t know what your state is. I live in a rural part of my state, and the open warfare you’re describing doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard about. I think it might be time to move, friend. Whatever’s holding you there can’t be worth your life.
sugarplant•10h ago
people actually do commit random violence in home invasions by the way. your having chosen not to look into it at all or read the news ever doesnt negate this. its to say that random violence in home invasions is common, but the point is that it does happen. and i think people should have a very effective means to defend themselves.
theres even been a serial killer that committed home invasions by claiming to be police upon breaking in. this also happened recently with those politicians that got assassinated.
if you dont want to have a firearm thats your choice. dont see why you think this is necessary for other people though.
relaxing•2h ago
so a police officer shows up at your door. you’re going to greet them with a gun drawn? that will get you killed.
i do own a firearm, but i don’t walk around with it like a cowboy. and i discourage others because of all the risks mentioned.
dmoy•1h ago
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/ascii/vdhb.txt
As of 2010, about a million home invasions per year in the US, 250k of which end up with the occupier (owner, renter) being a victim of some violent crime.
Not a lot ending in death though.
Also I think the numbers went down a bit from 2010.
probably_wrong•14h ago
To me this sounds like not putting your seatbelt on in case you ever need to get out of your car underwater: you're improving your chances at a statistically-unlikely event (home invasion) by making your chances worse at a much likelier event (accidental discharge).
esseph•23h ago
The consensus is carry chambered or don't carry.
sneak•12h ago
I appendix carry; I’m not carrying chambered, period. My remaining options are to not carry, or carry in condition 3.
I think that’s a simple decision.
If I ever felt the legitimate need to daily carry in condition 0/1, I would move. Cities definitely, provinces generally, nations if necessary. Life’s too short. I’m not in the special forces.
I don’t have to be ready for every conceivable scenario; just most of them. And that’s more than enough.
If history is any guide, now’s the time when someone tells me that not wanting a loaded and cocked .45 pointed directly at my right testicle for 16 hours every single day means that I have a cheap holster or haven’t trained enough or don’t have the right pistol or something. (I’m fairly certain that none of these are true.)
PS: A much more likely scenario than a knife guy charging from 20 feet is a routine encounter with an LEO who wishes to temporarily disarm me during a traffic or Terry stop. I absolutely do not trust some dipshit cop to remove a condition 0/1 pistol from my waistband without fucking it up, which would likely happen right around the time it is pointed at my femoral artery, or worse. Fuck that noise.
Spooky23•23h ago
The reality is… not that.
gottorf•22h ago
BeetleB•18h ago
The reality he mentions is very much a reality. Lots of concealed carry folks obsessed with always being vigilant. Good idea not to hang around them, because hypervigilant people are prone to see threats that aren't there.
Merad•23h ago
Second, racking a slide is an action that requires fine motor control. Under the pressure and adrenaline dump that accompanies a life-or-death situation, fine motor control goes to crap. If you are fumbling with your pistol, it's useless.
Third, if you don't feel comfortable with your ability to safely handle a loaded gun, you probably shouldn't be carrying at all.
abbycurtis33•5h ago
OJFord•1d ago
hollywood_court•1d ago
OJFord•1d ago
(I probably agree with you in the context of 'out in public and have decided you need a firearm', just not 'on a friendly military base and carrying a firearm as a matter of course rather than any acute reason'.)
aerostable_slug•1d ago
The Security Forces at the base in question guard strategic nuclear weapons. The other USAF command most concerned is USAFE, where the threat of terrorism against a USAF facility is greater than in the mainland US.
OJFord•21h ago
curt15•13h ago
aerostable_slug•1d ago
These are Security Forces personnel guarding strategic nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. To illustrate the priority of their mission, Global Strike Command ordered that the troops normally carrying pistols be issued assault rifles in their stead.
OJFord•22h ago
Filmatic•1d ago
This policy should tell you something about the actual cost/benefit of private arms as far as overall safety goes. Cuts through the noise and hypotheticals rather nicely.
int_19h•1d ago
giantg2•1d ago
Yes, most people will feel quite safe in a secured facility with controlled access, simialar to court houses. Imagine living in a place where everyone has been vetted and the perimeter is secured with armed guards.
gmueckl•1d ago
Also, everyone I talked to who found suspicious activity while on guard duty confessed to me that they were terrified in the moment even though they were trying to project authority on the outside.
giantg2•1d ago
0xffff2•1d ago
supportengineer•1d ago
ungreased0675•20h ago
JKCalhoun•1d ago
OJFord•22h ago
giantg2•20h ago
ImJamal•1d ago
OJFord•22h ago
ImJamal•21h ago
Animats•17h ago
The barrier solves an old problem - what action to take when a vehicle fails to stop at a checkpoint. Most of the time, it's drunks or minor crazies. Lethal force is excessive and car chases on base are dangerous. Barriers became standard for DoD installations around 2005.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW79PLFuUGw
wrp•1d ago
It does sound like there is a specific design issue to be discussed.
spacephysics•21h ago
Unique case in that the FBI got the firearm still in the holster (it hadn’t been removed or the round cleared after the discharge)
This is what has led to the recent uptick in Sig scrutiny, then unfortunately the OP incident happened and it’s rightfully so made Sig’s situation much worse
https://youtu.be/LfnhTYeVHHE
SoftTalker•19h ago
If you need more than five rounds, you've already lost.
ndrwdvvs•1d ago
evantbyrne•1d ago
0x457•1d ago
evantbyrne•1d ago
gosub100•21h ago
evantbyrne•20h ago
nosignono•1d ago
Most modern pistols have multiple internal safeties to prevent firing without a trigger pull. There's something extremely wrong with the Sig 320.
jandrewrogers•1d ago
This is extremely mature technology. People have been churning out defect-free designs for many decades. It is surprising that a company with the engineering experience and pedigree of SIG Sauer would design something with this issue. It would be like if Airbus designed a plane where the wing sometimes fell off mid-flight.
giantg2•1d ago
Not that rare. Gen 1 and 2 Glocks had slam fires (that's right, "Safe Action" Glocks... the irony). The XDS had doubles or slam fires. I'm sure there were others, and now the P320.
deelowe•17h ago
giantg2•11h ago
Modified3019•1d ago
Proponents of having a loaded chamber value having the firearm immediately ready, because a situation where they actually need to draw on someone/something may not have time or space to use both hands to rack their pistol before someone/something is on them.
Those who want an empty chamber consider the increased safety vs potential malfunctions/accidents to outweigh the risks of being less able to respond to a small subset of threats.
aerostable_slug•1d ago
The context of who is carrying these pistols in this command may also help: they're issued to the Security Forces guarding strategic nuclear weapons (and their delivery systems). It is the highest priority security mission in the military.
varjag•1d ago
dardeaup•1d ago
deelowe•17h ago
chiph•1d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-person_rule
The P320 is known to have accidental discharges for civilian owners (honestly - don't buy one). But Sig Sauer has stated that the M18 military version did not have those problems. We will need to wait on the results of the investigation to find out.
[0] An extra duty typically assigned to junior enlisted - we only armed up during exercises. Which brings back a story - we were waiting on the trucks to take us to our posts, and the room was full of Airmen armed with M16s and M60 machine guns. And we were all watching Justin Wilson cooking up some delicious Cajun food on the TV.
giantg2•1d ago
More lies and misdirection on Sig's part. The only mechanical difference is really the manual safety (which works on the trigger and not on the striker), and if we're being generous the second would be the spanner screw. They should have the upgraded FCU, but in the civilian world there are still reports of the issue even after the upgrade.
fossuser•1d ago
smithkl42•1d ago
That said, given all the stories I've read, I can't imagine carrying a P320 with one in the chamber.
paulddraper•1d ago
Depends how responsive you want to be.
esseph•23h ago
1. When you need it you won't remember to chamber due to stress
2. stress causes fine motor skill distortion
3. Only draw when you are prepared to fire (or you end up dealing with Brandishing laws)
8note•21h ago
the stree messes with your memory, so the barista looks like a threat. the stress messes with your fine motor skill, so you hit the guy waiting for his coffee. and of course, you gotta shoot the rest so theres no witnesses to have you charged for not actually doing self defence
kbelder•18h ago
Der_Einzige•17h ago
the__alchemist•21h ago
I had to carry one in my vest in case of emergencies, and I never felt comfortable being one trigger pull from bang, while it's pointed at my waist for extended periods. Also, the double-action pull sucks, and it's harder to aim straight when putting so much muscle into the pull IMO. Had to have the finger on it in a certain way to get leverage. (The single-action pull after doesn't have this issue)
So, I would accept the weapon from the equipment guys, insert the mag, send the slide forward, put it on fire since that's what you're supposed to do... then put it back on safe.
bugsMarathon88•8h ago
A gun carried without one in the chamber is just a totem for emotional coddling, nothing more.