Last week the Montville, Connecticut, police department reported that one of the department’s SIG P320 pistols had discharged for no apparent reason. Less than a week after the July 24 incident, more than $20,000 worth of GLOCK pistols had replaced the SIGS.
Montville released a video clip that certainly made it appear that the pistol in question absolutely did discharge. Apparently without the officer’s hand being near it. In fact, it was in a retention holster when it went off.
SIG, as you can imagine, was concerned at the report. After investigating and requesting a copy of the complete videotape showing the incident -and being denied - angry might be a better word than “concerned.” They’re “concerned” at another unsubstantiated report of their P320 discharging, but they are no longer sitting quietly when claims like this are made.
And on Tuesday, the Newington, New Hampshire, company released a statement regarding the incident. As the statement says:
“We have seen the news reporting of the incident involving a P320 discharge at the Montville (CT) Police Department. We are confident, as is the case in all instances, that when the factors and evidence are reviewed this will be proven to be an unintentional discharge as a result of inadvertent contact with the trigger, and that the pistol did not fire without a trigger pull.”
Sounds like a standard response to a reported safety issue. For many, it might seem that SIG could potentially be looking at a problem with a very popular pistol now deployed worldwide.
When, however, you look at SIG’s full response -including video excerpts from the video the chief used as his reason for the wholesale replacement of the department’s SIG P320s, you see they’re beyond the concerned stage. They’re frustrated by the lack of investigation and angered at the implications made without substantiation.
SIG uses still frames from the department’s own video point out a couple of things that aren’t readily apparent.
First, the officer in question’s pistol isn’t fully seated in his holster. And the “holster retention hood” isn’t closed over the holster, it’s open.
Having carried pistols in law enforcement style holsters, including a recent Gunsite class, I know that even with double or triple retention, failure to correctly insert a pistol into those retention features renders them ineffective -especially when you’re moving “smartly”.
The officer in question was moving toward a subject who was resisting officers. He had already been handcuffed after becoming unruly, although it wasn’t shown in the excerpt of the tape released by Montville. That’s when the pistol went off.
While SIG expressed “regret” at the incident, their statement (a link to the full response is provided below) quickly let it be known they’ve seen these sorts of claims before -and dealt with so-called “experts” who have testified to the dangers of the P320 pistol.
“The P320 model firearm is used effectively and safely every day, by both civilians and armed professionals. Despite years of litigation and extensive discovery, no one has ever been able to replicate a condition under which the P320 could discharge without a trigger pull, and experts who have attempted to assert such a claim have been repeatedly thrown out of court as unqualified and/or unreliable. Three separate federal courts (in the matters of Frankenberry v. SIG SAUER, Mayes v. SIG SAUER, and Hilton v. SIG SAUER) have concluded that the two experts who have proffered a theory of uncommanded discharge are unfit to testify in court because they are unqualified and/or their opinions are untested and unreliable. In the only case regarding a P320 discharge to proceed to a full trial (Guay v. SIG SAUER), a jury of 12 rejected these experts’ unproven and unscientific theory, and found unanimously in favor of SIG SAUER. SIG SAUER stands behind the proven safety and reliability of the P320.”
—SIG Statement (July 31, 2023)
As you see in SIG’s court citations, the claim that the pistol “fires by itself” isn’t a one-off. In fact, it’s been a claim SIG’s been forced to respond to over the years.
On Wednesday, I spoke at length with Tom Taylor, SIG’s Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Commercial Sales, about the Montville incident, and the ongoing assertions that the P320 pistol has “issues”.
“We are a LOT tired of this,” Taylor told me, “we requested the full video- and it was denied. But the video we do have clearly shows the pistol’s trigger was exposed. And we’re not the only people to have looked at the video and seen that.”
Our conversation was the first time SIG’s directly addressed the claims of accidental discharges and their P320 pistol. SIG’s immovable position is simple, the cause for these discharges aren’t their pistols -and that’s been proven in court. SIG’s been reluctant to express that publicly because many of the incidents have involved police officers.
You can read the entire interview with Taylor in tomorrow’s edition of QA Outdoors. It’s an insightful look at how a company has to walk a fine line between customer relations and brand reputation. It’s also a glimpse into a company that’s become our largest gun company despite not being the category leader in few, if any, product categories. The biggest brand doesn’t necessarily mean the leader in the most categories.
As always, we’ll keep you posted.
—Jim Shepherd
Editor’s Note: Here are the links to a) the news report from Montville and the full SIG response.