Sig Sauer Reaffirms Safety Of P320 Pistol
BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 4 months ago
… individual attempts to perform drop tests outside of professionally controlled environments should not be attempted. “SIG SAUER is committed to producing only the finest products,” said Ron Cohen, President and CEO of SIG SAUER. “Safety and reliability have been and always will be paramount to the SIG SAUER brand.”
That sounds rather contradictory to me. Furthermore, the Sig CEO didn’t do himself any favors when he said that no gun is drop safe.
He’s made three points here, and he’s wrong on every single one of them.
The first is that any gun will fire if dropped from high enough, and if it lands just the right way on an unforgiving surface. This is untrue. Many good modern handguns would likely disintegrate on impact before the forces involved induce firing. My Sig P250 – the P320’s dad – has a firing pin block that would probably put it into this category. I would love to see a test where a P250 can be made to fire as a result from any drop, at any angle, from any height.
The second point is that we’d ‘legitimize mishanding’ if guns were drop safe from typical distances. This is so stupid it actually causes my teeth to hurt. Back when the double-action revolver was the standard police firearm and the most common civilian firearm, mishandling was not ‘legitimized’ by their intrinsically safe design.
Finally, he asserts that guns are ‘inherently’ unsafe if dropped under ordinary circumstances, and by extension, we should have no expectation that they should be. This is again incorrect; it is entirely reasonable to expect that a modern handgun, when dropped in a typical way, will not discharge on impact. Most guns meet this standard, at least if we define ‘typical’ as a drop from waist height on to a hard surface, at any angle. Nobody is complaining that their p320 will fire if it falls from an aircraft. We are complaining because it might fire if it slides off the kitchen table.
I can’t imagine how Sig’s lawyers could have approved a statement like this.
At least the statement is a self inflicted wound. I don’t know about the gun, since I don’t shoot Sigs.
On August 22, 2017 at 1:30 pm, MamaLiberty said:
Was combing through my memories and could only think of one time I dropped a handgun. It hit my foot and I hopped around saying unlady-like things for a moment or two. Didn’t fire. The bruise wasn’t even significant.
Never owned a Sig, likely won’t. Not because of the drop thing, but simply because I’m very satisfied with what I’ve got. I’d rather spend the money feeding those guns than getting another one. At least for now. Oh wait! Gun Show coming up this weekend. :) We’ll see what I can find.