Sig Sauer Citing National Security to Keep Documents from Public
Original: Sig Sauer citing national security to keep documents from public
Key topics
Sig Sauer is sparking controversy by citing national security to withhold documents from the public, fueling speculation that the company is hiding design flaws in their P320 handgun, which is nearly identical to the military's M17/M18 model. Commenters are dissecting the differences between the military and consumer versions, noting that the manual safety on the military model doesn't necessarily prevent accidental discharges. The conversation takes a tangent into the world of machine pistols, with some arguing they're useful for suppression, while others see them as a waste of ammunition. As the debate rages on, it becomes clear that the issue at hand is not just about Sig Sauer's secrecy, but also about the design and safety of their widely used handguns.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
36m
Peak period
151
0-12h
Avg / period
32
Based on 160 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Aug 29, 2025 at 8:51 AM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Aug 29, 2025 at 9:26 AM EDT
36m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
151 comments in 0-12h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Sep 4, 2025 at 6:22 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
Edit: apparently not full auto, man we should have just let Glock take the contract when they started manufacturing in the US instead of Sig, their track record is much more sound.
None of this is a sear block, or has anything to do directly with the sear. It will prevent the gun from firing if the sear were to fail.
You can see the lever in green in this animation:
https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/dd_dev/origina...
They couldn’t get it to fire uncommanded however, unless they bypassed the trigger.
However, they got the gun because it had gone off uncommanded in the holster - with witnesses - and no hands or anything else near it.
To disable the striker block, they removed the rear plate, applied pressure to lift the slide up and away from the grip, then stuck a punch into the back of the gun to manually release the sear. Maybe this is the beginning of discovering an issue with the striker block, but this isn't simulating a failure that could happen under normal circumstances (specifically jamming a punch in the back and releasing the sear).
How else do you want them to demonstrate an internal safety that was supposed to work was non-functional?
Consumers can buy a civilian version of the M17 that's really difficult to distinguish from the Army's version (the safety's a different color, black instead of brown, or something like that).
What is NOT a meme, and is useful, but counts as fully automatic, is three or five round burst mode.
Chainguns are a type of autocannon. Heavy, light and general purpose machine guns, like the M2 Browning, M249 SAW, Maxim, Been Gun, MG3, etc... none of these are chain guns. They aren't even all belt fed, which I guess is what you meant to say because I think that's the videogame midwit lingo. They are nonetheless universally accepted as being very valuable in combat.
AIUI, chainguns are any externally electrically-actuated automatic weapons, including both single-barrelled and rotary designs, some of which are autocannons, and some of which are lighter (machine guns).
But, yeah, it makes more sense if GP intended to refer to belt-fed weapons, not actual chainguns.
Most recently, it was Russia dropping 2-round burst on AK-12 after experience with it in Ukraine. M4 is another famous historical example.
someguydave is correct. Compact automatic weapons make sense for highly trained body guards protecting VIPs when discretion is considered important.
Compact automatic weapons still usually have either a stock (even the smallest Uzis do), or some other way to stabilize the gun while firing - e.g. the sling is used for this purpose with some MP5K variants.
As int_19h points out, there are special-purpose weapons made for this (see "personal defense weapons") and they are likely what pros carry.
Additionally, the very long history of machine pistols would indicate the form-factor is a poor fit for the application of any full-auto fire.
This is the primary reason that personal defense weapons (PDWs) were developed in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glock_switch
The Glock 18 is a selective-fire variant of the Glock 17, developed at the request of the Austrian counter-terrorist unit EKO Cobra, and as a way to internally test Glock components under high strain conditions.
There are many that have adopted machine pistols for various uses, particularly special forces, VIP protection, and for the roles currently filled by PDWs, which means that common troops sometimes were issued them.
The Swiss Sig's have a sterling reputation. The P226 that entered the XM9 trials (against the Beretta 92) was imported from Switzerland by SAKO.
The US company didn't really start manufacturing until the 90s with the P229 and the Sig Pro series (where they were only tasked with making the plastic frames, not the more intricate lock work).
One of the stated requirements for the updated pistol was a thumb-operated external safety. Glock's never been willing to manufacture a pistol with that feature, so they effectively excluded themselves from the competition.
Revoke contracts, investigate the leadership who accepted the contract, and hold Sig criminally liable given they have internal documents from years ago acknowledging the fact.
If we had to choose a world with guns or a world without, then a world without is the obvious choice. Its the SUV problem. SUVs are safe! From what? ... other SUVs.
Of course we can't have a world without guns, so it's all theoretical.
The recent week long pause in the Air Force seems like some brass made a decision that Sig or DoD forced them to walk back.
Assuming that Sig Sauer management is reasonable, we can assume that one or more of these are true:
* The known rate of failure B is determined to be low. Consider that not every discharge would be from a design flaw. Many cases can be assumed or proven to be user negligence.
* They assume that they can keep the court settlement costs, C, to a low value by never admitting fault and hoping that no one else can convincingly demonstrate a poor design. Many cases result in no injury or non-lethal injury, which naturally reduces C.
* The number of guns produced, A, is quite large, so the cost of the recall is also quite large.
* The unit cost of the recall (X/A) is much higher than known externally. This is my preferred theory (outside of corporate incompetence & malice). It could be the case that the design has an issue with tolerance stacking AND there is no single dimension of replacement part that resolves the issue. You could imagine that the replacement part needs to take up negative tolerance by being slightly larger, and positive tolerance by being slightly smaller. Without carefully measuring each unit (which is expensive), you can't determine which part to use. Or it could be that the part that would need to be replaced is a substantial part of the weapon's cost, e.g. the slide or the frame.
Maybe a decade from now this becomes a semi-obscure bit of gun lore and SIG US more or less recovers.
But right now?
If you’re in the market for a handgun, or any gun for that matter, are you going to touch SIG US’s stuff? Maybe, but there are customers who might just say that they don’t want to take that chance and go with Glock or whoever else. Do those customers come back? Why doesn’t this get brought up at every single bid for a contract SIG US makes from now on?
It’s possible that they’re still making the right EV call of course, but the medium-term hit they’re taking from a flaw like this that you don’t make right has to be massive.
I wouldn't be surprised if gun companies get a constant stream of fake complaints.
I didn't have access to guns when I was a 17-year-old, but if I had I'd certainly have tried twirling them like a movie cowboy. And if I accidentally shot myself while doing that, I certainly wouldn't tell my parents what I was doing at the time, that would make me look like a total dumbass, completely irresponsible. I'd say it went off while I was putting it into my holster, or something.
Then my parents would have complained to the gunmaker, repeating my cover story, and the gunmaker would find it impossible to reproduce or fix.
Perhaps gunmakers don't always realise when they're getting legitimate complaints, because they get so many 'creative' complaints?
Ruger had one for the SR22 not too long ago. It's a .22 handgun that is more-or-less a range toy. A cool range toy, but a range toy. There was some sort of dead trigger problem that could pose a safety issue. Did Ruger deny it at every turn? No, they put out a notice and offered to fix the firearm free of charge.
Now compare that with how Sig's handled the P320, which is a service pistol and used daily in life-or-death situations.
If you make new-design firearms in any real volume, you will find yourself issuing recalls. Batches of parts get out of spec, things wear out, and you get reports that it can become dangerous. The good gunmakers stand behind their product.
There was a recent huge thread on HN around the Air Force incident, we now know the guy was playing with the gun, shot and killed someone, then lied about it going off sitting on the table.
If there was some defect that Sig could fix via recall, they would be stupid not to recall. Maybe there is just nothing to fix, and they aren’t stupid.
https://www.sigsauer.com/blog/safety-recall-notice-sig-sauer...
They would have been in a better spot today to defend the P320 if they had made it a mandatory recall, so they probably should have done it.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOMQOtOQoPk
Handgun design doesn't really get any worse than that.
The P320 has had many reported issues but having it go off when you pull the trigger is actually intended behavior.
More information available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1KoSBcn2bY
> "The shear amount of movement in the trigger it takes on the Glock PLUS the fact the trigger safety has to depressed lends it self to make this scenario extremely extremely unlikely to happen from jostling. Which is the exact opposite for the 320. Tiny amount of movement needed, way more slop in the gun as a whole and no trigger safety all lends itself to be way more likely to happen from jostling. Thats the argument."
The above claim is most likely true: it is easy to pull the trigger accidentally on the Sig. But that isn't the argument. People are claiming it will fire uncommanded.
The video is misleading because he is partially pulling the trigger, which deactivates the internal safety mechanisms.
It is the clickbait equivalent of a video claiming Rust is not memory safe, that starts by showing a Rust program running and causing a BSOD. Then deep in the video, what they show is he wrote a bunch of explicit unsafe code.
While true that it is misleading, i still think it's fundamentally correct. You do not expect your firearm to discharge if someone bumps you while the trigger has the slack taken out.
This holds true on basically every modern handgun that has such a mechanism (striker or hammer-fired).
The Sig P320 probably has more issues than the originally discovered drop-safety deficiencies, and Sig US has been very quick to deny-deny-deny. But firing when you pull the trigger is not an issue.
This is not a fair and accurate phrasing of the problem. Triggers have a breakpoint in the pull at which you expect them to fire. Discharging by touching the slide, even while the trigger is depressed, is not expected or acceptable.
This is not unique to the P320, Sig, or even striker-fired handguns in general. This could just as easily apply to a CZ-75B. There is no magic that keeps the striker from dropping until the shooter has their heart set on discharging a round.
There is a reason that rule #3 of firearm safety is to not put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to shoot
But there's nuance here.
They showed that with <=1mm of trigger pull (far less than the distance of the firing sequence), the weapon can be put into a state where miniscule input on the slide (consistent with typical holster carry) causes a discharge.
I'm not a firearms expert, but I very much doubt that any hammer-fired (and indeed, even the vast majority of striker-fired) weapons can be put into such a state.
Are you aware of any demonstration that shows another modern handgun being put into a state where this same amount of input on the slide can cause an actual discharge, let alone with <=1mm input on the trigger?
Yes actually. see the video I linked above: https://youtu.be/r1KoSBcn2bY?feature=shared
The glock that I used to compete regularly with basically felt like a double action revolver.
That is fairly average across the market for other handguns.
Unless you were shooting a Glock with one of the infamous NYPD 12lb triggers…
The trigger needs to be pulled a certain (very large) distance before disengaging the safety.
Pull weight might be comparable to peer weapons, but the amount of work required to disengage the safety cannot compare.
Modern military doctrine says that you shouldn't even pull the weapon from the holster if you don't have the intent to fire. Even if you're not quite willing to implement that (eg for LE), you shouldn't be touching/pulling the trigger without an extremely firm intent to fire.
What do you want to bet this is a variant of some sort of light pressure against the trigger at some point in the past (including even just heavy movement!) causing a stuck trigger, plus these other issues, resulting in an uncommanded discharge ‘randomly’?
The FBI analysis showed truly terrible wear characteristics and quality control for the fire control parts which can’t be helping.
If you put a few thousand rounds through either it will generate slide and frame rail wear. After this, either would have slightly more "slop" between the frame and the slide.
The glock trigger-dingus can make unintended discharges less likely because it requires an object to go into the trigger guard. But the WyomingGunProject video shows someone putting something in the trigger guard, pulling the trigger past the wall with sympathetic movement, then firing the gun. Not the result of "jostling".
This isn't to say there aren't P320's that couldn't fire uncommanded but the WyomingGunProject video is not the proverbial "smoking gun". The exact cause is, at this time, not publicly known.
But in the case of the demonstration in the Wyoming Gun Project video, it is literally the case that an object is being jammed into the trigger until all internal safeties are disabled, then flex and sympathetic movement is applied until the gun goes off.
There may exist a more damning explanation of what has caused the reported uncommanded discharges but that video isn’t it
There's a decent chance that the handgun our men and women are issued is a danger. When the M16 had problems early in Vietnam there was an investigation and they found out it was a powder issue in the cartridges. No (good) reason that there's not something similar for this issue here.
And Sig can dig their heels in all they want, but when you've got ranges banning P320s and they're in the bargain bin at the local gun shop, well, the market has spoken. You can't unring that bell. Stop production of the P320, fire the executives, and do what it takes to repair this issue.
Cynically, there's a very good reason they haven't. Embarrassment, money, entitlement... lots of reasons, actually.
Personally my money's on corruption but I have no proof.
Sig also won contracts for suppressors, optics, and probably more I'm unaware of or can't remember. Unit cost of the M7 is several times higher than the M4, it's heavier, has more recoil, carries less ammo, and the cartridge it fires is still stopped by commonly available body armor that's manufactured today.
Corruption is obvious in my mind, it's shocking Congress seems either oblivious or so complacent.
The requirements may be goofy, but that's a requirements problem and not a Sig problem.
I can sort of see why they went with a completely new cartridge with the XM7; they want a common cartridge between the service rifle and machine-gun, and they want ballistic performance that can defeat certain types of body armor out of a barrel that's short enough to be maneuverable with a suppressor affixed to it. Would 7.62 NATO do that? I don't know. Maybe not.
The one that gets me, though, is the "modular grips" requirement for the competition the P320 ended up winning, with part of the rationale being a better fit for more hand sizes. C'mon. That seems like an interesting idea, but the idea of fitting soldiers for custom grips and keeping them in inventory, just seems far-fetched. Maybe I'm wrong. More importantly, it made the P320 the apparent shoo-in for the competition. It's like someone involved in the process knew someone at Sig and the two devised a requirement that only Sig could reasonably hope to fulfill. Then they undercut Glock on the price, and suddenly a well-regarded service pistol that is proven the world over just isn't good enough for the price, but this completely new design somehow is.
It just stinks of collusion between the military and someone putting in a tender for a contract.
Hammer fired guns are capable of doing this safely because they have a sear geometry that requires moving the hammer back against spring pressure with trigger input a very short distance before the hammer drops. Along with a functioning sear block in case the hammer slips off the sear without trigger input, this makes them very safe.
Basically every other striker fired gun on the market uses a semi-cocked striker with a trigger widget and sear block, which is a copy of Glock's design, and it's quite safe.
Sig deviated from this design without fully proving it out. Their guns don't have trigger widgets, which allows the trigger to move under momentum when dropped, causing repeatable firings. The fully cocked striker design leads to a shorter, crisper pull, but a sear slip leads to uncommanded firings, unlike a semi-cocked design, which doesn't have enough energy to fire a primer.
Combine this with poor control of manufacturing, intermingling of parts designed and intended for different calibers, as well as factories in the US and India with varying levels of quality control and poor spec for parts to begin with (metal injection molding for fire control parts), and safety critical systems like the sear block have been shown to not be 100% reliable. It's a system of cascading failures resulting in a firearm that's unsafe to carry loaded.
I’ve owned rifles that had safeties that made it impossible to pull the trigger. Don’t these?
But some of the types of safeties increase the change you won’t have it on (because time to disengage the safety is too long/complicated) or that they will introduce additional failure modes.
For some missions, “unsafe” is better than “too safe” - think one step from gun drawn, finger on the trigger.
This is one of the reasons Glocks are so popular, as the trigger safety is really “easy” to disengage as it’s the same as the mechanism you use to fire.
But it doesn’t protect YOU from being a dumbass. Safeties that do that are dangerous in another way.
Fully cocked strikers are ready to ignite a primer if the striker drops. I don't know of another design like Sig's that has a fully cocked striker, which is not to say there isn't one, or that they're all unsafe.
The P320 in particular suffers from compromises shoehorning a fire control unit designed for one gun into another.
Combined with poor manufacturing techniques, tolerance stacking, part mixing, and poor QA, the striker block, which is the last safety intended to block the striker without an explicit trigger pull, can become ineffective.
To answer your question, there's no mechanical reason a handgun cannot be designed an manufactured to not fire without explicit mechanical input from the user. Indeed almost every commercially produced handgun on the market fits this requirement. A combination of failures on Sig's part has allowed this to happen.
FWIW this isn't even a new take. Many popular DA/SA guns cannot be put on safe at all when they're not cocked, even though they can be fired through double action - logic here being the same, between heavy trigger pull and hammer block it just cannot fire without a trigger pull.
That said I personally don't agree with this analysis. Or, more accurately, I believe that the increased risk from not being able to use the gun when it's needed is not properly balanced against the increased risk from making the gun easier to fire, especially in applications where handgun is not the primary weapon (which is almost always the case for the military).
See: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/07/05/glock-says-be...
- Sig has known about it for years[1]
- A company recently filed a patent for a fix[2] and they offered Sig the rights to it before filing, but Sig refused.
- The Air Force has cleared the 320 for use[3]. In my pessimistic opinion, they probably determined the cost to procure new weapons would exceed the cost to replace lost airmen.
[1] https://smokinggun.org/court-records-reveal-sig-sauer-knew-o...
[2] https://www.wearethemighty.com/military-news/patent-says-the...
[3] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/08/25/m18s-cleared-...
In a Friday statement, a Department of the Air Force spokesperson said that the unidentified arrested person is accused of making a false official statement, obstruction of justice and involuntary manslaughter.
In this case, the whole "it want off by itself" claim was a lie.
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2025/08/08...
Maybe the issue is that the 320 is too close to a competition trigger, and it isn't appropriate for a duty gun. But the gun has been under a microscope for years now, and no one has shown a design defect that causes the gun to fire by itself.
https://youtube.com/shorts/cOUfurKIjnI
If the gun was able to fire by itself, without the trigger being actuated, then someone should make it happen on video. Shake the crap out of it, bang on it. Take it in and out of a clear plastic holster 1000 times until the supposed defect happens.
Here, the police officer isn't even touching his holster.
https://youtu.be/V381HkJUXH4
A hair trigger is unsuitable for combat use because of the "errybody be muzzle sweeping errybody up in here" nature of combat.
Those two uses are 99.99% of what the air force needs its pistols to do.
They could give it better tolerances so it has a "good trigger" without "hair trigger" but that will cost a lot of money. Or they could give it an absurd trigger pull like duty guns had in the "good old days" but that will cost just as much money for equivalent results because you'll need to train the force more to get the same accuracy of fire.
Additionally, with the fairly sloppy nature of these guns and the fundamental nature of how handguns work, it's not unforeseeable that they do get clapped out to the point of just going off if you bump the slide right as they age since they're so close to that as is.
Considering how many people need to be trained/equipped and how often the air force fires sidearms in "real" situations both of these solutions are way, way, way more expensive than a few bodies.
2: The trigger is what it is, the military and police departments chose it for what was.
I agree, the police in particular, should use a gun that takes more effort to fire. But don't blame Sig for this, it isn't a design flaw.
There are also manufacturing issues with intermingling parts with different geometries intended for different calibers and building guns with the wrong parts, such as installing a 10mm Auto/.45 ACP takedown safety level in a 9mm gun, or installing a metal injection molded firing pin safety that's out of spec, worn, or contributes to tolerance stacking in such a way that the gun becomes unsafe.
For example, Sig offered a "voluntary upgrade" to fix the well documented drop safety flaw with the P320, and there's video proof of the same guns going off still in holsters.
Sig is going to be playing whackamole fixing these issues if they ever admit to it, so they won't.
A gun in a holster can fire when it is moved and the holster is poorly fit, incorrectly configured, or there anything caught in it like tail of a shirt, drawstring. Also, many police have a flashlight on their pistol, which opens up space quite a bit making it easier for things to get caught inside.
The range video where they are standing on the line was allegedly a modified gun with non-Sig upper and trigger.
Officer standing and moves slightly and it goes off, with their hands in front of them? (Eyewitness)
And at least 3 others. There are some good compilation videos out there.
The argument is that there exists a combination of states and tolerances when a P320 is loaded and cocked that could, theoretically, allow the striker to impact the primer forcefully without a complete and full trigger pull, one where you don't feel the break. This could either be while the finger is on the trigger (maybe a police officer pointing it at someone who has a weapon while commanding them to drop the weapon, for example) or not (in a holster).
Inserting that screw is meant to simulate a tolerance stacking issue wherein the pistol's components don't line up together in such a way as to prevent the striker from slipping past the sear.
Is it wonky? Of course. Could you probably do it with other pistols? Probably. Are there police officers and servicemen/women who need a convenient excuse for their negligent discharges? Yes. Should a real investigation occur? Also yes.
https://youtu.be/r1KoSBcn2bY
I think we need to await the facts of the case and the judgement. The only public information I've seen strikes me as unusual.
The accused airman is being charged with involuntary manslaughter, which coupled with the extensive issues with the P320 brings up more questions than it answers.
I could come up with my own conjecture based on that information, but there's enough people doing that already.
The fact remains that the P320 malfunctions. There's been countless documented cases, and numerous recorded demonstrations of the issue on YouTube and elsewhere.
It can be both Sig and this Airman’s fault at the same time.
Carrying a handgun relies on that rule not being followed and instead the holster preventing anyone from pulling the trigger, but if the gun can go off without a trigger pull all bets are off.
I feel that the safety versus response time trade off is worth it for me. It could be from my military background, but for me a negligent discharge is one of the worst things I could possibly do with a firearm. I was also raised to never trust a safety and unload my gun when crossing fence lines while hunting.
1) The safety mechanisms on say a glock are different than on a lot of military rifles soldiers are trained on. An Ar-15/M16 can go off without pulling the trigger if the firing pin gets stuck in the channel. That won't happen with a glock because the safety physically blocks the primer from being struck. Also in theory a free-floating firing pin could maybe somehow get slammed hard enough or slam an abused primer enough to set off some military rifles.
2) Some hunting shotguns or military rifles aren't drop safe. Modern handguns are.
3) A military rifle or hunting rifle generally has the trigger exposed at all times you are carrying it. A CCW handgun, you are not exposing the gun and trigger unless you are about to shoot someone.
Now I've never served in the military, other than a rag-tag Kurdish militia. What I would imagine the boot sergeant or whatever they are called do, is tells the soldier they will keep the manual safety on or the weapon unchambered and leave it at that, because explaining the intricacies of a striker-fired pistol vs an M16 to a bunch of barely out of highschoolers from Guam who are already exhausted from sleep deprivation and jarring work-outs would not be terribly productive.
Source: many years of carrying a weapon in a professional capacity.
I certainly don't expect I'll be able to address this from someone confidently bragging about years of "professional" experience carrying an unchambered weapon as the only right way to do it on the street, so hopefully you can find a class with someone with a background you respect so it will go through your brain.
Regardless, depending on the situation and specifically in the USAF, you are ordered to either carry with a round in the chamber or not, and you'd damned well follow those orders.
It's beside the point, but I imagine, based on my own first hand experience, that USAF Security Forces typically carry without a round in the chamber, in most situations. I did Weapons Courier duty and I was ordered to carry a round in the chamber and be "locked and loaded" at all times.
Marine Corps order for MP and armed guard standard is round in chamber, weapon on safe, slide forward, hammer down. It stands to reason that is the standard case for all military LEO.
All that to say, anyone who says you shouldn't have a round in chamber is living in a fantasy world.
That was historically a very common military rule, and AFAIK it's still common worldwide, just not in US.
IDF is particularly famous for having empty chamber as the standard protocol, which is why this is often colloquially known as "Israeli carry". And you can say a lot of things about IDF, but one thing for sure: they have operational experience.
That's the Air Force's accusation.
99 more comments available on Hacker News