SEPTA police to get new service weapons after Sig pistol accidentally fires

Amp Mangum said:
The Philadelphia Police Department is investigating an incident in which a SEPTA police officer’s service weapon fired without manipulation while holstered.

https://whyy.org/articles/septa-pol...istol-accidentally-fires-at-suburban-station/
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How does that happen with a striker fired pistol? Is the striker fully preloaded?
Those Sigs aren’t so inexpensive any more.
“SEPTA made an emergency purchase of 350 new Glock 17s and holsters to replace the P320s.”
 
Pink_Vapor said:
How does that happen with a striker fired pistol?
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It does not happen to a pistol "without manipulation while holstered" but we will never hear the real story.
Pink_Vapor said:
Is the striker fully preloaded?
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Have you ever watched a DA/SA CZ's hammer cam back when it fired in single-action mode? Similarly, a P320 striker moves back a tiny bit to overcome positive sear engagement when the sear releases the striker; otherwise, the P320 striker is fully pre-tensioned.

Start at 1:55 in this video to see the P320 operating sequence.
 
gc70 said:
It does not happen to a pistol "without manipulation while holstered" but we will never hear the real story.
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Dude just shot himself in leg at a competition.
His gun was holstered and not manipulated.
 
I will never own a sig... I don't understand how people can trust anything they make anymore. It's always something with every model they produce these days.

This is all we need. A gun that ACTUALLY goes off by itself? That's bad news for the whole industry and all of us...
 
NKD said:
Dude just shot himself in leg at a competition.
His gun was holstered and not manipulated.
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Okay, then suggest the mechanics that could allow such an incident to occur (i.e. broken, modified or seriously out-of-spec part, etc).

In the case of a P320, the firing pin block (the yellow part above the purple part in the video) would have to be out of the striker's line of movement before the sear released the striker ... and both would have to occur while the gun was holstered and not manipulated.
 
gc70 said:
Okay, then suggest the mechanics that could allow such an incident to occur (i.e. broken, modified or seriously out-of-spec part, etc).

In the case of a P320, the firing pin block (the yellow part above the purple part in the video) would have to be out of the striker's line of movement before the sear released the striker ... and both would have to occur while the gun was holstered and not manipulated.
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Clearly something is off. They've settled numerous lawsuits and we continue to hear more and more stories like this. The first few I dismissed as lies covering negligence. Then you hear about holstered guns going off... "Not drop safe" is an understatement...
 
gc70 said:
Okay, then suggest the mechanics that could allow such an incident to occur (i.e. broken, modified or seriously out-of-spec part, etc).

In the case of a P320, the firing pin block (the yellow part above the purple part in the video) would have to be out of the striker's line of movement before the sear released the striker ... and both would have to occur while the gun was holstered and not manipulated.
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You are ignoring the other big possible failure point here: the holster.
 
my P320 is safe and reliable, drawn and holstered hundreds of times, drawn and fired from a holster on a timer, etc.

Stupid is as stupid does. I can almost guarantee this was user error.
"discharged while secured in his thigh holster."

Ever heard of "Glock Leg" ?
http://gunssavelives.net/blog/video...jacket-drawstring-causes-negligent-discharge/

Hell they had to beat the back of the original P320 with a hammer hundreds of times to get the trigger to unlock and drop the sear to replicate (the original 320 issue). Then the blood was in the water and the lawyers smelled paychecks.

FWIW, The M17/18 military pistol fixed those issues, and I sent mine in for the Voluntary Upgrade before I ever carried it.

But I bet millions are still riding around in cars with defective airbags, even poo-leese.
 
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bigfelipe said:
I will never own a sig... I don't understand how people can trust anything they make anymore. It's always something with every model they produce these days.

This is all we need. A gun that ACTUALLY goes off by itself? That's bad news for the whole industry and all of us...
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None of this make sense. Sig's are the best pistols on the planet. You are smoking something LOL
 
NKD said:
You are ignoring the other big possible failure point here: the holster.
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Discharges readily occur when pistols are being holstered or unholstered but rarely when a pistol is at rest in a holster and not being manipulated (i.e. pulling a string that is caught in a holster and around a trigger).

Again, suggest the mechanics that could allow such an incident to occur
bigfelipe said:
Clearly something is off. They've settled numerous lawsuits and we continue to hear more and more stories like this. The first few I dismissed as lies covering negligence. Then you hear about holstered guns going off... "Not drop safe" is an understatement...
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The P320 had a unique failure mode; the drop sequence had to be just right for a P320 to fire. The pistol had to be dropped slide-down with the barrel pointing up at an angle. That attitude was just right to jar the striker blocker toward the top of the slide and out of engagement. At the same time, there was enough rearward force on the trigger (which had been increased in weight during production), particularly without the resistance of lifting the striker blocker, to pull the trigger bar and release the sear.

There were clearly some cases where a P320 was dropped just right to make it fire. And in other cases, the claims about guns just "going off" in no way fit the characteristics of the P320's design problem.
 
NKD said:
Yeah they really pounded the heck out of these with hammers.

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Regardless of the failure, Sig fixed it. Just like Springfield fixed the XD-S that would fire upon charging the pistol (slam fire), and other examples of guns that weren't quite ready for prime time. The FNS striker is the latest example I can think of where a gun can be manipulated out of the normal to induce a weird condition involving the firing mechanism.

Remember that time an Indiana police dept decided that the Glock 17 wasn't quite ready for their experts?
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016/08/19/breaking-glock-17m-recalled-police-department/
 
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You have to ask yourself a question in this situation. Is it probable that a properly holstered and unmanipulated striker-fired gun would spontaneously discharge, or that two police officers would lie?
 
I'm going to call BS on this one. Having shot one of these, the trigger is incredibly light and easy to pull. I can see how operator error could be something common to occur with this pistol. Similar to the "black widow" Lugers of the day.
 
Just by a metal Sig. The only plastic Sig i own is the P365. I have a bunch of other Sigs, but they are all metal guns. My favorite plastic gun is the Canik. Anyone who has shot with me at Apex knows that :) They are exceptional all around.
 
NKD said:
You are ignoring the other big possible failure point here: the holster.
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Good point here. Policing agencies usually have holsters requiring manipulation to prevent the weapon from being grabbed in a tussle. They can be stage 1,2 or 3 etc. and some require a lot of training and practice to operate.

I have a Glock stage 1 holster that has a button you press with the trigger finger as the weapon is removed from the holster. Easy to touch the trigger in the process. Dude locally shot himself in the leg in a match and it was banned. Don't really know but just saying.
 
Cochise said:
Good point here. Policing agencies usually have holsters requiring manipulation to prevent the weapon from being grabbed in a tussle. They can be stage 1,2 or 3 etc. and some require a lot of training and practice to operate.

I have a Glock stage 1 holster that has a button you press with the trigger finger as the weapon is removed from the holster. Easy to touch the trigger in the process. Dude locally shot himself in the leg in a match and it was banned. Don't really know but just saying.
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Yeah, and with some retention holsters, they allow a lot of movement of the gun. In the case I mentioned above, it was enough movement to work the safety to the off position. And enough to set off a light DA trigger. I think we all understand that with a striker it is more difficult.

The truth is: mechanical devices fail. Period full stop.
So, a statement like “guns don’t go off by themselves” is false. They have gone off by themselves. And, other factors have caused them to go off.

I thought Japanese nuclear reactors were probably about the safest thing you could imagine. Failsafe after failsafe. Until I saw one melt down. Maybe a poor example but you get the idea. It was outside factors (rare tsunami) that helped it along.
 
There was a time a certain group's main weapon was a revolver and they were required to practice every working day by shooting at least 100 rounds of full house 357. When you practice that much, if you say your weapon is crap, I listen.

Fun fact: I read SEPTIC police.
 
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gc70 said:
It does not happen to a pistol "without manipulation while holstered" but we will never hear the real story.
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It could happen with an FNS-9 or FNS-40 -- a striker-fired design -- prior to a recent change in the striker design.

It apparently happened with a Balitmore County police officer, while holstering his weapon, and an Arizona agency created an video showing how it could happen.

Prior to the upgrade, if the gun's slide was pushed to the rear (as could happen when holstering) or pushed against a soft surface, when the slide returned to battery, the striker safety was somehow overcome, and the gun could sometimes discharge without further shooter intervention. (Resetting the striker, by racking the slide would set everything right, but that meant capturing the round that had been in the chamber and reloading it.) A number of FNS owners on the FN Forum chose NOT to send in the guns for the recall, but many did. I got mine back in a bit more than two weeks, during the peak of the Christmas/New Years holidays.​

Perhaps there was more to the story in the case of the SIG P320, or something was wrong inside the gun.
 
Almost 50 years around firearms, handguns in particular and 25 of those years in LE. I was also a civilian firearms instructor for a couple of years. And in all that time around guns I saw more than a handful of negligent discharges.

The gun was claimed to be at fault in every instance. But after each incident was disected and investigated, they all turned out to be operator error. Every single one.

I would be extremely surprised if this incident turns out differently. Regards 18DAI
 
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Walt Sherrill said:
It apparently happened with a Balitmore County police officer, while holstering his weapon, and an Arizona agency created an video showing how it could happen.
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"Holstering his weapon" is not the same as his gun going off without being manipulated. The article says the gun fired while holsterED, without manipulation. Not while holsterING.
 
dmarbell said:
"Holstering his weapon" is not the same as his gun going off without being manipulated. The article says the gun fired while holsterED, without manipulation. Not while holsterING.
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I should have been a bit more precise in my response. In at least one case, the discharged apparently happened immediately AFTER the gun was holstered. (None of us on the FN Forum, like you, believed it happened as described...we were sure it was a negligent discharge.)

If you watch the video on YouTube or read a more detailed explanation, you can see that if the slide is pushed back some distance and is then allowed to move forward so that the slide is in battery, as could happen when holstering *if the slide maybe is pressed against part of the holster and then is pushed into the holster, the hand can be off the gun, and it could fire a short time later.

The videos on YouTube show it happening, when NOBODY is doing anything to the gun. It was an EARLIER slide movement which caused a delayed ignition. The other case is when the slide is pressed against a surface and then released, and the gun is truck -- it can fire in that situation, too.

That subtle but dangerous glitch, which was not caught during design and testing, has been corrected. A very trivial change to the shape of part of the striker fixed the problem. Apex came out with a new heavy duty striker assembly, which was snapped up by a bunch of FN Forum members -- some of the early "updated" FN strikers broke -- had it's own problem, and a few wouldn't fire. Apex tried to err on the side of safety, and added some material to address the problem, and a few (all machined parts). Apex immediately sent out corrected strikers.

FN had a MIM striker and a lot of folks were convinced THAT was the cause of the breakage when the design was updated. I'm not as sure as they were.
 
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Walt Sherrill said:
If you watch the videos or read a more detailed explanation, if the slide is pushed back some distance, and then is allowed to move forward, as could happen when holstering, the hand can be off the gun, and it would fire a short time later. The videos on YouTube show it happening, when NOBODY is doing anything to the gun. It was the EARLIER slide movement which caused a delayed ignition.
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dmarbell said:
You have to ask yourself a question in this situation. Is it probable that a properly holstered and unmanipulated striker-fired gun would spontaneously discharge, or that two police officers would lie?
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I stick to my belief, and as was said above, it was at best operator error, at worst, ND. Would you rat on your buddy in blue on an ND?
 
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Walt Sherrill said:
It could happen with an FNS-9 or FNS-40 -- a striker-fired design -- prior to a recent change in the striker design.

It apparently happened with a Balitmore County police officer, while holstering his weapon, and an Arizona agency created an video showing how it could happen.

Prior to the upgrade, if the gun's slide was pushed to the rear (as could happen when holstering) or pushed against a soft surface, when the slide returned to battery, the striker safety was somehow overcome, and the gun could sometimes discharge without further shooter intervention.​
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​
Again, it does not happen to a pistol "without manipulation while holstered."

The exact mechanics of how the gun fired may not be understood, but it did involve some kind of "manipulation" to fire. Maybe the SEPTA gun was jarred when the officer stepped out of the golf cart, or maybe the holster bumped the side of the cart, but some type of force (manipulation) was applied to make the gun fire. What is absolutely certain is that the striker had not already been released to miraculously "hang" in mid-air for an unknown time before suddenly deciding on its own to fly forward, nor did the sear simply choose to move and release the striker on its own volition.
 
dmarbell said:
You have to ask yourself a question in this situation. Is it probable that a properly holstered and unmanipulated striker-fired gun would spontaneously discharge, or that two police officers would lie?
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This is why you can no longer see the edges of "the thin blue line"....
 
gc70 said:
Again, it does not happen to a pistol "without manipulation while holstered."
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To clarify a point that wasn't clear regarding the FN striker problem:

There was the matter of trigger posistion, which I didn't remember from earlier discussions about the FNS issue...

The problem behavior identified by the Arizona agency occurred only when the slide was moved a small distance, the trigger pulled, and the slide was allowed to return to battery with the trigger held to the rear. In that rare situation, the gun can be then hit, jarred or just reholstered, after the trigger is released, and it can fire. Here's a link to the Arizona video from YouTube:



There was manipulation prior to the unintended discharge, but the manipulation in at least one case could be the process of holstering the weapon! But person handling the gun still had to do something prior to holstering that raises questions about the Baltimore event.

When the problem was first brought up, a bunch of us on the FN Forum thought the problem was caused by user actions (i.e., a negligent discharge). That MAY Have been the case in the Baltimore event, but it seems unlikely (in the Baltimore case) that it was due to the problems demonstrated in the Arizona testing.

I think I'd want to call BS on the Baltimore Officer's claim that it was nothing HE did that caused the discharge. (It only happens if the trigger is held to the rear while the slide is returned to battery. The Baltimore officer shouldn't have been doing anything that left the gun in that state.)​

I suspect hat the Baltimore case was, in fact, due to negligent handling -- but if the striker issue had a role in the discharge, the guns still shouldn't have gone off if it happened while holstering.

Note, too, that the gun in question was NOT a SIG P320. In the case of the FNS line, there was a design issue which has been corrected.
 
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So my takeaway from all of this is:

Don't be finger-flipping the trigger while going all pokey with the slide or hammering the back of the slide while gun is pointed at your face.

Seems there are some rules about this handling of a firearm, any of y'all know how many?
 
Out of all this documentation and video demonstration I didnt see the glock misfired..

wait...sorry..

Never-mind carry on.
 
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