Yes: I'm not confident in the P320's safety record
No: I believe the gun is mechanically sound.
Hopefully someone will correct me if I’m wrong. But in its current configuration it seems a true ND is possible theoretically only if the striker safety return spring breaks and the sear slips AND doesn’t catch on the second ledge.
Or theoretically the striker leg breaks off and the striker safety return spring is broken.
From what I can discern it would take 2-3 failures simultaneously to have an ND.
I can't help but think that the striker safety is flimsy and on the wrong end of the gun. I'd have far more confidence in the P320 if there was something analogous to Glock's firing pin safety piunger to physically block the striker.
"When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man."
Those are interesting ideas @Sig_Fiend, but I don't think any would be commercially viable by the aftermarket or make business sense for Sig:
CNC'd FCU: The FCU is the part that is legally a firearm, so producing one means you are producing firearms, which in and of itself greatly reduces the number of companies in this space that would be interested in such a project.
CNC'd or otherwise carefully machined internal parts: From what I understand the P320 FCU is fairly complex to disassemble, and if the purpose of this part is solely to improve safety and not performance, I imagine the market for individuals that are willing to pay for something like this (part+labor) is fairly small. This would also be an issue with an aftermarket FCU. Further, if it is marketed as addressing a safety issue, and the guns still AD due to something unrelated to the sear, the manufacturer might be opening themselves up to a lawsuit in that case. Even if the lawsuit is frivolous, having to fight one or two such lawsuits could negate any profits from selling the part.
SIG redesign to longer or more positive engagement surfaces: this would make the trigger less "good" and the number of people who would see that as a negative probably outweigh the number who would see the safety gain as a positive, given that this would need to be applied across the board to all new P320's.
SIG redesign to a more conventional striker safety: I think that such a redesign would be problematic for their military contract because the guns would no longer match the M18/M17 design as agreed upon by the contract with the US military. Didn't Beretta run into similar issues when they tried to update the locking block on the 92?
Nor would it make business sense to have a separate design for the M18/M17 and the commercial P320, they would lose advantages in economy of scale and it just looks like they are admitting failure in their design.
Redesign to physically block striker movement before trigger is pulled a la Glock: I do not think this is possible with any SAO striker fired design. Do any of the SAO striker fired designs have such a mechanism?
Yes, so the military M9s had to use the original locking block for all runs of .mil production, while the commercial/LE Berettas came with the updated locking blocks that were more durable and reliable (I think its the 3rd gen locking block).Originally Posted by TicTacticalTimmy
Personally I think it would've been smarter for the military to take up Beretta's offer on the M9A3, they even offered a cheaper price than what they were currently paying for M9s. Either that or just go with the tried-and-true Glock.
Are you basing this on personal experience as a shooter or on military or other institutional use of handguns by people who are not dedicated “gun people?”
I’m a big fan of Beretta 92 series guns, but the military was looking for a gun for the next 20, 30, or 40 years end and improved Beretta 92 was not that for a variety of reasons.
Military weapon systems have been moving towards modularity and flexibility to take advantage of changing technology for at least the past 30 years. The US military wanted a modular handgun and whatever the pros or cons of the Glock it was not a true modular handgun.
The US military also has manual safeties on almost all of their weapon systems. While Glock has produced, at least three types of manual safeties for military and government contracts which required them, all have been awkward afterthoughts. It’s not a matter of whether a manual safety is necessary on a Glock, it’s a matter of consistency for a group of about 1 million people, including national guard and reservists, most of whom are not “gun people.”
Outside of a few niche groups, handguns are an afterthought for the military and handgun training for conventional forces is …..lacking. Mass issue of a gun which requires pulling the trigger for field stripping creates its own set of problems.
Last edited by HCM; 11-12-2022 at 04:33 PM.
When I first took a Nano (yes, I know...) apart I read the writing on the wall, yet it has taken longer than I imagined to get to the current state of the art, such as it is.
gn
"On the internet, nobody knows if you are a dog... or even a cat."
I'm not convinced that the modularity of the P320 series will even be used by the military. They only adopted the M17 and M18, where the Glock submission filled both roles. As I understand it, Glock's loss had nothing to do with modularity, as it met the requirements for entry.
I have a hard time imagining the military accommodating an individual soldier by letting them go into an arms room with boxes of different grip frames and slides to find what works best for them. This is underscored by the fact that the earliest M17/M18s had an "anti-tamper" device preventing the user from being able to use the pistol's potential modularity.
From your answer, I’m going to take that as a no.
There was a proposal for the M 17 to have an anti-temper device, because army people are generally not gun people. That proposal was never implemented, because the actual gun people in the army successfully argued that it would defeat the purpose of having a modular gun.
The army adopted the M 17 the Air Force Navy and Marine Corps adopted the M18.
There are two aspects to modularity, institutional and personal.
On the institutional side, elements of the Air Force have already bought conversion kits to convert M 18’s to a X compact format. SIG has also offered SOCOM elements an M18 upgrade kit, which includes the X style grip and deletion of the manual thumb safety. The way grip size modularity would work in most cases is everybody gets a medium and people who exhibit issues will be considered for a different size grip. That’s gonna be true of any sizable institution.
At an individual level, a service member can have their own grip shell, whether for reasons of size, texture, etc. install that for actual use then remove it so the weapon can be turned in in as issued condition. Individual units and circumstances are going to differ just like with M4s. Some units allow more latitude, other units, allow limited latitude as long as the weapon is returned to original condition, and others won’t allow it at all. In some cases a blind eye will be turned during an actual deployment where as it might not be permissible CONUS. All of that is common in any large institution.
Pistols are generally an afterthought for the military, but there are some instances such as low visibility operations where a pistol is a primary weapon. A pistol which can be made smaller and more concealable has real value. While we can just whip out a credit card, go to Cabela’s and buy a Glock 26 or Glock 43 if we need a smaller pistol, institutionally it is much easier to buy parts to convert something that is already in the system into a new configuration. The significance of the base weapon already being “in the system” is hard to appreciate if you haven’t dealt with large bureaucracies.
The same applies to operating in extreme environments where weight and space are at a premium.
This thread caused me to ditch my early generation P320 full size and compact (both with the safety “upgrade”) in favor of this little guy:
I’ve been trying to get rid of the dead wood in my safe and keep only guns that I shoot at least on a semi-regular basis. Those 2 P320s came back from Sig and just sat around taking up space because I didn’t trust them.
I like my rifles like my women - short, light, fast, brown, and suppressed.
As much as I consider the current version, P3 20 good to go, I think you made the right choice.This thread caused me to ditch my early generation P320 full size and compact (both with the safety “upgrade”) in favor of this little guy:
I’ve been trying to get rid of the dead wood in my safe and keep only guns that I shoot at least on a semi-regular basis. Those 2 P320s came back from Sig and just sat around taking up space because I didn’t trust them.
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