I've been trying unsuccessfully to write this succinctly for a few months now, but each attempt ended up getting annoyingly long. In the interest of getting something out there, I'll have to fall on Wikipedia and AI to get most of the background info out of the way. Even now this post will be long, but imagine it with background details!
There's so much stuff out there about the P320 that it's a bit overwhelming, and as I started writing about one thing, I'd find myself going off on various necessary-seeming tangents. In lieu of that, here's the gun's history and design from Wikipedia as well as a section on its alleged penchant for going off on its own while holstered.
A 2023 investigation by The Washington Post and The Trace found more than 100 people who say their P320 discharged with no trigger pressure; at least 80 of them were wounded as a result. At least 35 of the shootings are purported to have occurred with either post-2017 P320s with the updated design intended to address the drop firing problem, or older ones which had been updated by SIG Sauer.
I even asked ChatGPT to give me a summary of the drama surrounding the P320 to help this process along ⸺ though it is not quite complete given recent events. I'd always meant to rant about this cursed pistol and Sig itself from an emotional and consumer standpoint, so spinning off on tangents about history and definitions needn't happen. My attempt, then, at a one-paragraph summary goes a little something like this:
The P320 is a poorly-designed pistol that's had a litany of issues since its release. Rather than being engineered from the ground up, it came to be by converting the existing P250, an older hammer-fired model, into striker-fired and slapping a new model number on it. It was marketed as a duty-grade weapon despite not being drop safe. Its slide had troubles fully seating which could lead to out-of-battery detonation and the gun destroying itself. Given the right circumstances, it can fire on its own when holstered and jostled. This last bit is, perhaps needless to say, quite dangerous, and people have gotten injured, sued, and settled. No one has died yet, thankfully, but the potential is there. Amid these reports, lawsuits, and police departments dropping the P320 as its duty pistol, Sig's response to it all has been suspect at best ⸺ and downright shady and unethical otherwise.
Murmurings about these uncommanded discharges while holstered started slowly some years ago, but the murmur started becoming something of a general rabble in 2023, and things ramped up into roar territory within the past 12 months. As reports came in at an increasing rate, so too did the drama and rhetoric on social media, YouTube, and forums. Since Sig gives money to high-visibility "influencers" across the web, two distinct camps developed:
- Sig themselves, their paid advertisers (colloquially known as shills), and their greatest fanboys who are always ready to jump to Sig's defense should anyone speak ill of them in any way.
- Everyone else who keeps hearing these reports and is doing one of these moves waiting for Sig to admit their faults.
The P320 thus garnered a reputation for being unsafe much to Sig's annoyance. They decided they weren't going to sit idly by for any longer while the internet besmirched their beloved weapon ⸺ one that just so happens to have a yachtload of money attached to it by way of military and police contracts around the world, including the US Army. It was time for them to make a public statement, and they did so in March 2025.
Pump the brakes, bro. This is how they decided to respond? You'd think Sig would take these allegations seriously given their growing number and respond with the measured restraint of so many corporate lawyers. Where is the press release that says they're aware of the rumors, investigating and employing third parties to see if they can recreate the issue, will keep the public informed on their progress, and will issue recalls should they find truth in the allegations?
Rather than address this situation in a sane manner befitting a giant corporation, Sig chose to play the victim and lash out on social media. According to them, everyone who shares information about the P320 they don't like is anti-gun, an uninformed shill, and/or an "engagement hacking [sic] grifter". This isn't their only post along these lines either. Despite the massive backlash that resulted from this post, they went all-in on a social media strategy that would make unpaid interns blush for how egregiously unprofessional it is.
Never mind the fact that it's not hard to find videos of some of these uncommanded discharges. Here's one in which a cop's P320 goes off when he bends over while helping restrain a dude. Each and every one of these instances, according to Sig, is the fault of the user and/or their faulty equipment. It simply can't be the fault of the common thread between them: the P320. And it's totally not because this gun is tied up in potentially billions of dollars worth of sales and contracts. It's those pesky anti-gunners and their various agendae!
For years Sig has been quietly settling lawsuit after lawsuit so as to not draw attention to themselves. Further, when other companies would do a recall, Sig couldn't be bothered because such things would paint their products in a bad light and eat into their profits. That prior issue of the original P320 not being drop safe? They opened up a voluntary "upgrade" process while quietly fixing the problem for future production runs. An actual recall never happened, so no one but Sig knows how many drop-unsafe P320s are still out there.
But it somehow gets worse. As of May 2025, while facing literally dozens of active lawsuits, Sig has successfully lobbied (i.e. bribed) the New Hampshire court system to grant them immunity from liability. They even timed it such that there would be no public hearings on the matter! Rather than take responsibility and tackle the defective design of the P320, they used their money to quite literally buy a change in New Hampshire law! I'm no Law Guy, but this seems unprecedented to me.
Does any of this sound like how an innocent party would respond to such serious allegations? Or does it sound more like a kid getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar and casting blame every possible direction but inwardly?
Is any other gun manufacturer having these sorts of issues and getting lawsuit'd left and right? I'll save you the time searching: No, they are not. When facing claims of unsafe guns, like Glock did some years back, did other companies issue a recall? Yes, they did. Even Taurus, a low-cost manufacturer out of Brazil, has done recalls for their guns when deemed necessary. It's the ethical thing to do!
Sig's actions have turned the situation from one defective gun that can't be trusted to the entire company being cast in the blackest untrustworthy light. It's all just so gross: the aversion to recalls, the quiet settling of cases while publicly claiming otherwise, and the buying of immunity via law change. "Sweep everything under the rug and deny!" seems to be the message from the top. What kind of company goes through such lengths to avoid taking responsibility? Not one that deserves your money or mine!
One day in the future, if we make it there, I'm sure this will be a case study in business management courses in how not to respond to very serious allegations about a potentially harmful product. As far as anyone's aware, all of the rest of their guns are fine, but Sig has dragged their own name through the mud and sullied their reputation as a serious or ethical company.
I'm 100% done with them, and I hope you will be too. We are very far removed of the original Sig from West Germany, a company renowned for its high-quality and reliable guns. This current US version of Sig is something else entirely. I have a few of their optics on my rifles, and those will be the last Sig products I will ever buy. Pardon my French for moment, but fuck Sig and their scumbag-ass bullshit.