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Comment by alexpotato | Hacker News Reader

There are videos online showing that this also happens with Glocks (when the trigger is depressed to the wall) [0]

Really, any gun where the sear is in the grip and the part it connects to is in the frame could have the same issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaV32HarnRY

I think Jared's video is good at conveying the mechanics of striker-fired guns, and he is completely correct that this issue exists to some degree in every striker-fired gun (and is not an issue in them). However, the parts in the P320 have so much variance that the wall is very "mushy" on some of these guns. I wouldn't be surprised if we find that these uncommanded discharges involve both movement in the trigger and movement of the slide.

It may be the case that variance is so wide that there are some P320's which are in that "depressed to the wall" state at rest, but that would require an x-ray or CAT scan of the offending guns, and I don't know if anyone other than Sig has one. There is also a safety on P320's that should be stopping this from happening, but again, it is a part with very wide variation, and on some guns it seems it doesn't work (Sig issued a recall over this already).

I agree with Jared that this problem is a lot trickier and weirder than people give it credit for. The sort of core of the issue is that everything about the gun was done cheaply and they flew a little too close to the sun, but I believe they have no idea what in particular they cheaped out on too much.

I'm curious what the different levels of "cheaping out" saved in terms of manufacturing cost.

So am I. I expect that Sig doesn't know what to fix here because taking every part up to be more precise is very expensive.

I understand your speculation on the amount of variance, but I haven't seen any data to support it.

Sig's "recall" was a drop-safety issue, where in certain orientations the weight of the trigger could generate enough momentum to allow an unintentional discharge.

There's plenty of data on the variances of P320 parts being much larger than specified by Sig, and it has been presented in a few court cases. Root causing this issue to tolerances hasn't been done, though.

This video does not show a Glock firing with a "small amount of pressure on the trigger", which is what the OP said the issue w/ the P320 is

It does. This whole "small amount of pressure on the trigger thing" stemmed from a video by "Wyoming Gun Project", in which he did the exact same thing to a P320.

Glock, unlike Sig, uses a trigger safety. It doesn't just require any trigger pressure, the lever safety needs to be pushed back. Is this bad? Of course. The Sig flaw is sig-nificantly worse.

I'm pretty sure you're not implying otherwise, but it's an outrageous design flaw regardless and selling these while being aware of the problem (to the military no less!) should carry devastating consequences for the manufacturers.

The gun firing when the trigger is being pulled is not a design flaw, and it is 100% mitigated with the safety that the military has in their guns.

Nobody is talking about the gun firing when the trigger is pulled. The gun is firing when the trigger is explicitly not pulled. Even if you're talking about the video the parent comment linked, the very first few seconds of the video show the gun discharging without a finger anywhere near the trigger. That's a deadly design flaw that in any other industry should have resulted in a full recall. Here, it was known and covered up while innocent people who made no operational error were maimed. To suggest otherwise is denying objective reality.

I think one of the best demonstrations of this, with detail on the amount of travel required for most striker-fired handguns is this video [0]. Lots of detail and relatively methodical.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L17Mq7XxtlE

So a classic sig double action or 1911 wouldn't be effected? He video says striker fired specifically. Cocked and locked I'm not sure how you would make this happen.

Not affected in the same way. The original M1911 design has a floating firing pin held back only by spring tension, so in theory it might be possible to get it to discharge without pressing the trigger by dropping it straight onto the muzzle from a sufficient height. This is so unlikely in practice that it's not a real concern. Some newer variants also incorporate an extra internal safety that blocks the firing pin from moving.

1911, and 2011 going off when dropped:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wD9-6GUkTUk

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eT1tlBR1W-w

With the safety on too. Interesting

Hammer-fired guns have a similar issue if you drop them directly on the hammer (or on parts that can move the hammer) when the hammer is cocked. When the hammer is not cocked, there's no available energy in the firing mechanism to discharge the gun. Striker fired guns are effectively in the cocked state at rest, though. In a "cocked and locked" state, you would need the drop to disengage or overcome the safety, not just the normal trigger mechanism.

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