SIG P320 drop controversy

Around July 31st, the internet started to notice that Dallas Police Department issued a "do not use"(paraphrasing) notice to its officers who carries SIG P320 as their service pistol. Dallas PD issued SIG P226, but officers who wants can buy SIG P320 with their own money can carry it.

It was noted by several forums and soon the word spread. It was unclear what lead to the decision, but on August 4, SIG Sauer realesed a statement regarding the issue.

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/08/04/official-statement-sig-sauer-reaffirms-safety-p-320-pistol/

In short, SIG SAUER states that P320 passed all drop tests, and have not heard any drop-related P320 incident in US.

The language SIG SAUER used in users manual which seemed to allude to the gun firing when dropped is more of legal writing than anything else. But coupled with some information and the way the manual was written, it probably gave someone at Dallas PD a pause, then decided that it would be better to be safe than sorry.

With SIG SAUER's statement it seemed to settle down, with Dallas PD lifting the suspension, until Omaha Outdoors posted this video featuring Andrew Tuohy, famous for calling out FireClean as evgetable oil based.


If the gun was dropped on its back of slide, the gun will fire. In the video, Tuohy identified one of possible reason, a heavier trigger.

It is unclear what SIG SAUER will do at this point. But with serious problem of this nature, SIG has to come up with a way to fix the issue instead of saying it passed industry tests. Guns do get dropped - whether it is fighting with an attackeror banging it on something.


What will this do to the MHS selection? It will be hard to tell. GAO said the selection did not violate the rules set up, but the drop test could have been in the second phase. Army can go ahead and just continue with the process, or they can fix it like how they dealt with M9's slide cracking problem. However, at this point a competitor like Glock can argue that it needs to be given a fair chance for the second stage since SIG got to modify its pistol.

This situation is still on going and will be interesting how it will change.