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Thread: Make of this what you will, I guess I was surprised, but not.

  1. #1
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    Make of this what you will, I guess I was surprised, but not.

    I was speaking with a friend who is part of the group picking new firearms for the local S.D.(I will not be using names in this story to protect the guilty). They have pretty much decided on Sig 320's and the Sig rep was there. Somewhere during the day the Sig rep brought up that he was heading to a nearby large city P.D. for their gun day at the academy. At this department the officers have to buy their own sidearms from an approved list. The rep told my friend that this department had two non standard requirements for any vendor to be on the list. 1) The barrel has to be serialized to match the rest of the gun. 2) The pistol has to be armorer level disassembly only.

    I asked my friend if this guy was just pulling his leg, he claims he was not. Has anyone heard of these requirements? What would you do to the pistol so that it was not a major engineering change but only allowed disassembly by a department armorer?

  2. #2
    Need to define "disassembly". Does that actually include field stripping, as in a routine cleaning after practice on the range? Can't take the slide off or barrel out with being an armorer? That would be one weird requirement.

    It almost sounds like a clumsy way of being very specific for the US Military version of the P320, meaning the M17 and M18. With those, it takes a special tool to totally remove the takedown lever, which is needed to allow the entire serialized firing assembly to be removed from the plastic frame.

    But I'm not aware the this M17 version is being offered to any police departments. Plus, it has the manual thumb safety which departments do not seem to want.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bart Noir View Post

    It almost sounds like a clumsy way of being very specific for the US Military version of the P320, meaning the M17 and M18. With those, it takes a special tool to totally remove the takedown lever, which is needed to allow the entire serialized firing assembly to be removed from the plastic frame.

    The army did propose something like this but it was killed / excluded from the final M17 format.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by MVS View Post
    I was speaking with a friend who is part of the group picking new firearms for the local S.D.(I will not be using names in this story to protect the guilty). They have pretty much decided on Sig 320's and the Sig rep was there. Somewhere during the day the Sig rep brought up that he was heading to a nearby large city P.D. for their gun day at the academy. At this department the officers have to buy their own sidearms from an approved list. The rep told my friend that this department had two non standard requirements for any vendor to be on the list. 1) The barrel has to be serialized to match the rest of the gun. 2) The pistol has to be armorer level disassembly only.

    I asked my friend if this guy was just pulling his leg, he claims he was not. Has anyone heard of these requirements? What would you do to the pistol so that it was not a major engineering change but only allowed disassembly by a department armorer?
    Can’t speak to the armorer only disassembly, but the serialized barrel is a court /ballistics/ forensics thing.

    It could also be an integrity thing.

    I mean, an officer would never report their barrel (only the barrel) stolen in a residential burglary after shots were fired at a gentleman’s club where said officer was getting their groove on.

    But if such a situation had occurred, theoretically, a smarter officer issued a duty pistol without a serialized barrel, might buy a new barrel and throw their issued, non serialized barrel in the river.

    But that would never happen.

  5. #5
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    I'd check with the department that has this odd requirement. HCM raises some valid, if unlikely issues, but until we see this requirement in writing, it doesn't exist.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by HCM View Post
    Can’t speak to the armorer only disassembly, but the serialized barrel is a court /ballistics/ forensics thing.

    It could also be an integrity thing.

    I mean, an officer would never report their barrel (only the barrel) stolen in a residential burglary after shots were fired at a gentleman’s club where said officer was getting their groove on.

    But if such a situation had occurred, theoretically, a smarter officer issued a duty pistol without a serialized barrel, might buy a new barrel and throw their issued, non serialized barrel in the river.

    But that would never happen.

    Knowing the department in question, the barrel thing is easy to figure out and you are on the right track.

  7. #7
    Barrel thing can also be to ensure things don't get swapped around during mass cleanings after firearms training/qualifications. The likelihood of something going wrong if barrel A is being used in pistol B is remote, but nice to make sure those components match throughout the service life. I'm surprised they didn't include slides. The ballistics thing is also a good reason.

    As far as armorer disassembly, I'd bet they mean beyond field stripping for cleaning. I'm kind of in favor of that idea. Can't tell you how many pistols I've torn down to for armorer service and found things amiss. Probably most common was slide catch springs not captured on Glocks. Surprisingly, none of the officers admitted they had completely disassembled their Glock when queried.

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