SIG P320: A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

KIND OF IRONIC THAT THERE IS A TOURNIQUET IN FRONT OF THE P320 IN THE IMAGE. MAYBE ITS A CLUE…

I know that hammering on the Sig P320 is all the rage right now. The vibe has shifted away from blindly following the Sig train and pretending that the guns do not have fatal flaws, no pun intended. I want to look at this situation from a slightly different point of view, though. I want to talk about the MHS (Modular Handgun System) trials, what we are now dealing with, the root cause of it all, and priority shifts we need to take to avoid this calamity in the future.

PROMISE OF THE MHS PROGRAM

The MHS program came to us with promise to upgrade our aging stock of pistols. The idea was to select a design that could offer modular features to allow possible caliber conversions, different size frames to fit a wide variety of shooters, and have a rail to mount lights. There were high hopes that we would see the military move on from the 9mm and play with newer loads that would prove more effective in a full metal jacket.

When the military is supposed to test a weapon system for service, you would expect that the weapon is going to get put through the ringer and given a battery of functional tests that will simulate the high round counts service in sand, mud, water, ice, etc. This is an exciting concept because manufacturers, even if they do not win the trials, they can learn a lot and even market their designs to the civilian market and make a killing.

THE CURRENT ISSUES WE ARE FACING

Right now, I see evidence all over the country and the world of buyers’ remorse. The Sig P320 is being dropped (no pun intended) from service all over the place and the FBI labelled the pistol ‘unfit for duty use’. This happened shortly before the third death took place from an uncommanded discharge with the pistol. This time, it wasn’t a run of the mill civilian, so people are actually paying attention this time. It is no longer being ignored, and our nations respect and love for our service members has acted as a ‘call to action’ for people everywhere.

After the recent news of the P320 design claiming its third victim, civilians and police started getting wise and trying to get rid of the pistols as soon as practicable. Some departments have not been able to trade them out due to budget constraints or a lack of issues or concerns. However, federal agencies have already banned the use of them and switched to using the Glock as the issued and authorized service pistol. Washington States’ Corrections Training Center has banned the use of the P320 in their facilities, limiting certain departments from being allowed to use their facilities for training. Sig has retaliated and sued the state for this, but we will have to see how that pans out.

Civilian users all over the country are now in a conundrum because they are trying to get rid of their guns, but pawn shops and gun stores are not accepting them or selling them. This could get really messy for Sig because now almost every influencer on YouTube is making a video about this issue. The influencers who are paid by Sig are silent at the moment. This is quite interesting, and it should be fun to watch and see how this pans out.

The MHS program never even happened the way it was supposed to. The Sig basically won out simply due to price. Apparently, it has been leaked that extreme lobbying gave Sig an inside scoop on the prices of the contenders for the contract, causing many manufacturers to pull out due to foreseeing the political games being played against them. Sig offered the military the best price on everything as a sole-source manufacturer of the ammunition and firearms, which was an offer the bean counters couldn’t refuse.

Just for perspective, the Sig P226 in 1985 was offered to the military at a rate of $220 per unit and the Beretta 92F cost the military $280 per unit. Sig lost back then because the parts and magazines cost way more. The Sig was plenty durable, but the Beretta just didn’t require as many spring and parts changes over a service life. Today, the military is paying $207 per unit for the M17/M18. You cannot tell me that this is legit pricing and that Sig is not losing money on their product. The Glock was going to come in at $280 per unit, the FN 509 and M&P 2.0 at $325. We call that a clue.

Sig was apparently wanting the military contract just for the notoriety and to drive sales. After all, their CEO used to work for Kimber, and is a marketing genius. You can’t go anywhere without seeing ads for Kimber, and as soon as he took the reigns of Sig, that brand has been in your face ever since. I personally found the over-advertising to be a bit overboard and suspicious. I just find advertisements to be a sign of desperation rather than a legitimate way to market. Especially when it comes to firearms, I find advertising to be fishy since they are performance products, in my mind. Their reputation should speak for themselves, like at H&K.

THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM

In short, we are the reason all this crap happened in the first place. Yeah, we firearms enthusiasts are part of the problem. I remember when the P320 came on the market in 2014 and people blindly praised it (with thick knee pads on) about how the P320 trigger was everything that they had hoped for. It was modular, had the best trigger on the market, and was “the future” of striker fired pistols. No one questioned why it didn’t have a trigger safety or what the safety issues could be with a pistol that had such a light trigger.

Then the P320 was tested by an influencer for drop safety, it sparked a ton of controversy that Sig has not even owned up to. Sig claimed that the pistols ARE just fine, despite a “voluntary upgrade” program. This would have been expensive for them to fix, but people appreciate integrity more than sly dismissal. However, the Sig P320 craze continued after the publicity wore off and the P320 won the military MHS contract.

Then, once the Sig was Americas sweetheart again, and giving its guns away to Police Departments so they could cash in on the notoriety, we started seeing random kabooms happen inside holsters. Despite bodycam and surveillance camera footage, the Sig cultists still refused to see a correlation here. GUNS ARE GOING OFF IN HOLSTERS!!! The sad thing is that it took an Air Force serviceman to die before the Sig religion started being questioned.

But hey, we got what we asked for right? How did all this come about, anyways? Well, we spend decades praising manufacturers who were trying to supplant the 1911 in trigger characteristics and ergonomics. When Glock came around, everyone since then has tried to supplant the Glock for everything from weight, to capacity, to reliability, to its trigger pull. Glock is the polymer standard Sig and every manufacturer was begged to beat. People begged and begged for an even lighter trigger and they ended up getting it in the P320 in 2014.

The problem I have seen is that American shooters caused this issue because they are never satisfied with an option. They are consumers and they want the latest and greatest thing to stand tall over. Also, a sickening trend I have noticed is that Americans are heavily reliant on technology. From manufacturing to navigation to shooting, Americans want battery-operated gadgets and things that look cool. They would rather look cool than take the time and effort to learn a skill and master it.

This is an infectious problem that has hurt our culture in so many ways. We have vehicles that practically drive themselves, cell phones that atrophy people’s ability to socialize healthily, and video games that immerse us in digital worlds that prevents kids from getting out of the house. I’m sorry to say it, but your desire to use tech to supplant hard-earned skill is the issue here. If you seek out a light trigger to try and avoid the work of developing skill, you are just as culpable for this as Sig, in my opinion.

I don’t know if you noticed, but World War 2 was the last land war we ever won as a nation against a near peer. Every other conflict has seen us lose terribly and get outlasted by tactically superior forces. It is as if our education system and national pride has blinded our people and military to realize that we have terribly atrophied in tactical skills. The highest quality small unit tactics training happens in a school-house with book-answer procedures. No versatility, little to no old school low-tech skills like land navigation with a compass and map or shooting with iron sights.

If you look at the Ukrainian conflict right now, it might be interesting to note how Ukraine is not interested in all the tech gadgets offered. Some things are fine like NVGs and Thermals, but they have found that tech cannot supplant tactical skill on the battlefield. Often our peers are able to find you with a drone that senses electronic emissions, much like radio direction finding equipment. In fact, this is how Russia has had so much success with their artillery. One jackass on the Ukrainian side makes a transmission, they simply send a barrage right to the source of the transmission. Anyways, this is just a taste of the current issues.

PROPER PRIORITIES

It is said that respect is earned. In my mind that is absolutely the way it should be. But I also have seen that skill is earned too. If you want to perform well, you have to put in the mileage. Shooting is not intuitive and natural. You do not replicate any of the combined movements and body disciplines on a daily basis. Therefore, you need to spend enough time to teach your body how to shoot right. Develop skills before you start looking to enhance your gear. Work with the stock trigger on a Glock and get over it. If the trigger “sucks”, you are the one sucking. It is just a trigger, and you can get over it.

If you want extra bragging points, master a stock/unmodified Beretta 92FS trigger. Do not use lower tension hammer springs to take away the work. The springs have that tension for a reason (longevity and safety). Grow a pair and learn how to use a double action and stop crying just because it hurts your ego and shows how little skill you possess. All these systems do for me is show me your faults as a shooter when I hand you one and let you try it out. If you avoid the double action, I will know you lack knowledge and/or skill. If you shoot slow, you lack visual acuity to read the sights and/or have an untrained trigger pull. When it comes to shooting, I can read you like a book just by giving you a few different trigger systems and watching you perform with them. The way you shoot tells me all I need to know about you.

My proposition to you is that you not become myopic and stick to just one type of trigger system. Learn and get good with DA/SA, DAO, SAO, and striker fired triggers. Master the fundamental of the trigger pull and how to employ each trigger system. You will find that double action is quite versatile and very easy to shoot fast with due to how aggressive you can be with the trigger system. Do not take the hype and the trigger snob advice. When you hear someone say a pistol has a “good trigger”, just know that the rest of what they say about shooting should be suspect. A “good trigger”, to me, is one that makes the gun go off. Essentially, I do not believe in good or bad triggers, just good or bad trigger manipulation.

Lasty, I would like to see people become more critical of these influencers who are being paid to rave about products. It is insincere of them and it is terrible that the population cannot even think critically. Blind trust of strangers reviews is no different than deciding to drink or do drugs just because it looked cool in a movie. That should be considered a data point, not a full scale endorsement and authorization. Learn to do research and weigh the needs and practical cost of the platform in time, ammo, resources, and risk.

WRAPUP

I know I ranted and raved about some things in this article, but I felt compelled to cover this topic because I have noticed that people are complaining about the symptom, but are ignoring the fundamental cultural issue that caused this in the first place. If we do not shift our priorities and course-correct, we will repeat this issue in the future. Think for yourself and be a grownup about your decisions to invest in a deadly weapon before it bites you in the *** (pun intended).