Sig Sauer guns hanging on soldiers’ hips may be firing without trigger pull

LTC Eugene Chu Same Here! I thought they were Resolved!

Yes, Glocks must be safer because Glocks have that "Safe Action" which was a term invented by their marketing department to avoid mentioning that the Glock is a single-action gun because at the time when Glock was trying to capture the police market in the US many police departments had a rule against any officer carrying any single-action gun.

In those early days, when most departments were looking to transition from revolvers to automatics many departments adopted the Glock 17.

Glocks firing on their own was so common that the term "Glock Leg" became part of our vocabulary. It turned out that most of those instances were due to mishandling of the gun - in part encouraged by Glock marketing that sold the gun to police departments by telling them it required less training because it handled "just like a revolver." Officers transitioning were taught clearing, disassembly, cleaning, assembly, and loading, and typically fired the new Glock for what passed for marksmanship training, but generally got no specific training on handling the Glock. The result was that most cases of Glock Leg were during holstering and were blamed on the officer having their finger on the trigger while trying to holster the gun. Other cases were always blamed on "something" pressed the trigger. The NYPD still requires Glocks to have a 10-pound trigger pull as a result of all the accidents they had.

If there is a defect in the P320/M17/M18 no one has been able to find it and no one has found any repeatable way to make the Sig "just go off" or to find any common factor among the instances where the new Sig has had an "uncommanded discharge."

MSG Thomas Currie I like the part about “something pulled the trigger.” That something also has to depress and keep depressing the trigger safety. Every firearm has the potential of firing if one doesn’t properly handle the firearm. I have a G 30 and G 43 and have never encountered any issue with the firearm going off on its own or by accident.

Maj Robert Thornton - I'm 76 years old, been around firearms for 57 years and I have never seen any gun "just go off" -- the only guns I have even seen fire without the trigger being pressed were an occasional machine gun that fires from the open bolt (e.g. M3, M60 and M85) that fire if you do something stupid like opening the cover of a jammed gun.

On the other hand, I have never understood the value of the "trigger safety" that has become ubiquitous on striker fired pistols. The little lever blocks the trigger from being pressed unless something presses the trigger, but almost anything pressing the trigger would also be pressing the "trigger safety." To me, the so-called "trigger safety" seems to be superfluous nonsense created to give lawyers and marketing people something to talk about.

I doubt very much the the unit "armorer" (who is usually just the supply clerk) had anything to do with checking the pistols involved in any "uncommanded discharge" -- unit level armorers rarely even disassemble any of the weapons and generally are not expected to do any repairs.

Perhaps we do need trained armorers, but having spent a lot of time working budget and manpower issues I doubt we could ever see real armorers at the company level. Perhaps a real armorer at some sort of consolidated arms room, but a consolidated arms room generally isn't practical for the kinds of units where soldiers are wearing/carrying loaded weapons on a regular basis.

Still I would agree with you that the Army investigation of the pistols involved in such incidents may sometimes be less than completely thorough. Was every pin and hole checked with a micrometer? Was every mating surface checked with a microscope? Probably not every time.