Penguin Brutality patch and t-shirt available from Varusteleka:
https://www.varusteleka.com/en/product/forgotten-weapons-penguin-brutality-t-shirt/81986
The problem of the P320 has evolved past the actual mechanical issue with the pistol – which still hasn’t actually bee identified. The problem is actually that the P320 does not offer any capability that isn’t available in a multitude of other pistols that are, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from the P320. There is so much uncertainty about the gun now that it’s hard to imagine what reason any agency would have to choose it over the other options. Military adoption was a huge advantage for SIG, and a factor that probably let lots of buyers skip right over the testing and trial process simply by trusting military procurement. With the recent Airman’s death however, that pillar of reputation may well fall away completely.
The actual mechanical problem with the 320 has yet to be specifically identified, and it remains theoretically possible that there actually isn’t a mechanical defect. But that no longer matters very much because of the growing tide of organizations rejecting the 320 and I think the doubt is pretty much permanent in many peoples’ minds now. We still have doubts about shooting low-serial 1903 Springfields from a century ago; people still hate Ruger for its now-dead owners comments decades ago. Can SIG rehabilitate the 320? I doubt it.
The only major difference between the P320 and most other “wunderneuns” around today is the ambidextrous thumb safety on the M17/M19 military version.
But since the 320 uses essentially the searage of the Roth-Steyr M1907, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what that thumb safety setup actually does. Does it lock the sear? The striker? Does it lock anything at all?
I suspect the SiG P320 is headed for the same fate as the SA80 rifle. A FRED nobody wants but those who are stuck with it can’t get rid of.
The military and everybody else needed a reliable sidearm to replace that kludged-up mess known as the Beretta M9.
Replacing it with yet another kludged-up mess was not the way to go.
clear ether
eon
Perhaps the M1911 or M1911A1 could be a suitable replacement.
One good thing about depot storage is that we can pull those retired M9s, update them, and push them back out the same way we did with the Single Action Army. If we still have a healthy, functioning Ordnance Corps, at least.
If I’m not wrong, part of the deal Beretta proposed to the Army was to refurbish all the M9 in storage and update them to “M9A2” standard (that’s why the M9A3 has that name), that means all the features of the M9A3 bar the vertec grip.
OK, fine… We’ll replace it all with new-made M1911A1s.
YOU do the training. I’ll sit over here, and watch, while drinking a beer or two.
And, bear in mind that the vast majority of the people you will be training on that magnificent work of Our Lord and Savior J. Browning are not going to be people like Alvin York or even Audie Murphy. They’re going to be exemplary examples of the term “REMF”, Fobbits, people who’ve never handled firearms, have zero interest in them, and are likely more scared of the pistol than they are of the enemy who will shortly be taking those useless objects from them and raping the snot out of them, regardless of gender.
I’ve actually trained people on the M1911A1. With the sole exception of one commander who shot IPSC as a hobby, it was mostly a waste of time. Why? Because that pistol, while a workhorse in the hands of a reasonably-proficient shooter, is an utter POS for actually creating one of those rare birds. The M1911A1 in a training paradigm? It is the personification of “You can’t get there from here…”
M9 ain’t all that much better, especially with your edge cases that can’t wrap their tiny little brains around the control paradigm on that pistol, which is waaaaaaaaay too complex and fiddly for one of them to ever manage to remember under stress. F*ck me, they have trouble with it on a range with live ammo, during peacetime; ask me why I bought my first set of plates. It wasn’t for combat; it was for running M9 ranges with staff officers and medics…
Solution: Have S&W run-off a batch of model-10’s based on the “hammerless” J-frames. Good ‘old American-steel for the frames, 4” bbls., Pachmyer grips. What caliber you ask? Does it matter? How bout 32ACP? It’s semi-rimmed, you could load them individually, but to help prevent an industrious idjit from jamming them in the forcing cone, have the ammunition supplied with non-detachable moon clips. Drop-safe ever since the ‘murican seaman shot an officer in WW2 and claimed he dropped it. Give it a 20 lb. trigger pull. Doesn’t fire till you pull the HEAVY go switch. Outa ammo, makes a very effective sap.I mean, c’mon, when is the last time someone in a military setting had a handgun shoot-out with multiple mag changes? Thought so,as pointed out by our experienced commenters, Kirk and Eon for example, individual weapons aren’t the deciders in modern warfare.I’ll hang-up and take my answer off the air. Waiting for replies from PDB and Daweo.
I don’t know that a .32 revolver would be the best thing to hand out for military self-defense needs…
That said, I also don’t know that handing out the latest and greatest Wundernine is the best idea, either.
What I would strongly suggest doing is sitting down and figuring out just what the hell the actual role and mission is, in this particular space. Then, do some damn triage: Is it worth taking the time and effort to select and properly train every single soldier up to Alvin York standards? Do we need to do that? If so, what gets us the most lethal combination of pistol, training, and soldier?
The real problem with all too much of this BS is that we go into these procurement affairs without first having gone back to first principles and examined those, to see if they’re still valid. It’s a lot like the Army did with the 1911 thing… It was procured as the ultimate horse-cavalry sidearm, and got used as the general-issue pistol for generations of soldiers who were emphatically not in need of an ability to kill horses with one shot… Yet, there we were: .45 ACP uber alles for some seventy-plus years.
Tell me what the mission is, and who we’re going to be issuing these things to, then tell me how much money and time you’re going to give me to train those people. Then, some rational decisions and testing can be done, and it damn well better include taking a selection of random personnel that are actually going to be issued these things, along with their trainers, and give us a picture of just how easily they’re trained to reach sufficient proficiency on the weapon.
Then, talk to me about what we’re going to be buying.
I still think that they ought to have something like the Forest Service fire shelter approach going on for a majority of the user base. Issue them a “Self-Defense Tool” that’s sealed in packaging like a fire shelter, let them keep it on their person, and when necessity rears its ugly head, they can deploy it and deal with things.
Just what the hell that would look like? No idea; I’d open up the competition to the world, and see what they came up with.
To be quite honest, there were several of my high-value personnel that I thought we’d be smart to just issue with a Claymore already prepped with a clacker; if they needed to defend themselves with it, that’d serve two purposes: Creating a really bad day for the capturing parties going after them, and simultaneously ensuring that they didn’t get captured alive…
When I was instructing and carried a 1911 (MK IV/70 Colt) as my duty weapon, people asked me how I got good enough with it to put a magazine full into three inches at 25 yards, rapid fire, every time.
I told them, shoot a full 50-round box that way every other day, four days a week. Which was what I did.
200 rounds of 230-grain hardball, every week. That Colt burned up a lot of hardball in a decade.
Shoot that much with any pistol, you’re either going to “get good” with it or realize you’re not Ed McGivern or Jeff Cooper.
Most of the officers and deputies I trained were better off with double-action revolvers, period. The trick there was teaching them proper maintenance. I’ve “repaired” a few dozen S&W and Colt revolvers whose only problem was having enough dirt, grass seeds, and etc. inside for a mouse nest if there has been room for the mouse.
I think it’s worth noting that the latest iteration of the “Gunsite Service Pistol” is a 9mm Glock;
https://gunsmagazine.com/discover/concealed-carry/gunsite-glock-service-pistol/
It’s easier to “produce” a good tactical shooter with that than it is with any 1911.
Somehow, I doubt that the recipient of its attentions will notice that it’s not a 1911.
And yes, when I was instructing, I’d have been instructing on Glocks- if any had been available. And up to 1990 or so, they weren’t.
cheers
eon
“(…)M1911A1 in a training(…)”
Remember that according to official training film from 1944 https://archive.org/details/Combatfiringwithhandguns you should not be caring about 0th and 1st rules of fire-arm handling i.e. not pointing said fire-arm at anything you would mind damaging and not resting finger and trigger (around 03:20)
You’ll be able to get rid of your 320, it’ll just be at a pawn shop price. Someone will devise a safe FCU that doesn’t kill its owner, and the platform will go on. Too much aftermarket already exists for the 320 to go away entirely.
The real story is why firearm procurement is a kludged-up mess.
Beretta edged out SIG by “dumping” and offering their product at a cheaper unit cost with baked-in costs kicked farther down the road, I think?
SIG cried foul then, and managed to get their pro-SIG faction to lobby successfully for the M11 and M11A1 pistol for those desirous of a more compact side-arm than, say, the M9. So notice the pattern: The M1 carbine was because the service rifle was too big, ponderous, bulky and expensive for mass-issuance to non-tip-of-the-spear types, who, it was admitted, couldn’t hit anything with a pistol. So a new class of weapon was needed to replace the pistol. And if replace the pistol, well, why not the SMG too? So it did none of those things. Instead there were pistols, SMGs, carbines, rifles, automatic rifles, and machine guns using 3 different ammunition types. Good thing ‘Murica has logistics second to none.
The M14 would get rid of, or render largely superfluous, the M3A1 SMG, the M1 and M2 carbines, the Garand rifle, and the BAR with one single rifle that could do it all. Only it didn’t.
By the mid-1980s, the 1911A1 was long in the tooth and ready for replacement. Lots of service-pistols were actually Smith and Wesson and Ruger revolvers. We had .38s and .45s. European NATO allies all seemed reasonably happy with their 9x19mm pistols, and here was a simple choice that could be pitched as inter-service interoperability like the STANAG magazine and (Belgian version of U.S.-invented) 5.56x45mm. We’d be rid of the 1911A1 that was too old, and the plethora of little stop-gap revolvers. So the M9 was procured. Only also the SIG M11A1. And then the “muh .45” die-hards had to have a .45 acp pistol too. And then there was the requirement of all the high-speed low-drag operator types for an offensive pistol that was easy to suppress, hence the HK .45 pistol–although those same high-speed low-drag types also use Glocks.
Enter the M17!
I have it that the S&W 5946 used by the RCMP was not entirely “drop safe” either… But I may be misinformed.
Beretta won the contract (after the rules had been changed to allow the P226 to compete on price, instead of being kicked out for having failed the dirt test) because, even if the gun itself costed a little more than the P226, the magazines costed a little less, so the complete package Beretta offered was a little cheaper (ironically, the Army then proceeded to contract a third party, Checkmate, for the magazines anyway).
It had been confirmed by official sources in related books. Beretta’s price barely covered the manufacturing costs. They wanted the contract for the notoriety related to it.
And that’s true for the M17 also. You can see how FEW manufacturers participated to the program (and several that participated didn’t bother to modify their design to make it closer to the required charateristics). Who participated did it because they thought they needed the advertising.
Thank you very much! Clarifies a lot…
I think it’s been debunked, but the word in Germany around the time frame of the M9 decision was that the German government had screwed the pooch by not playing the “basing game” for US cruise missiles and Pershing the way that the Italians had…
I dunno what the reality is, but I seriously want to do a bunch of forensic accounting on all the assholes involved in small arms procurement over the last fifty years. I suspect that you’re gonna find a whole lot of “You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours, when you retire…” having gone on.
I mean, NGSW was supposed to lighten the soldier’s load. That was like the number-one justification for it all, right? So… How the f*ck did we wind up with what we did? Heavier, smaller magazines, and waaaaaaay more expensive ammo that likes to burn through barrels like they’re licorice sticks and Slim Jims around a stoner…
People don’t realize, in the grand scheme of things, how economically insignificant the contract to supply the handguns to the US Army is. $ 75m (in several years) were peanuts even in 1985. A single Arleigh Burke costed ten times that much.
Had Italy wanted something in exchange of those missiles, it would have been something far less visible, and that would have brought real money, like supplying tires, or uniforms.
Not to mention the minor issue of “Just how influential is Beretta in Italian politics, anyway…?”
I’d be hesitant to pronounce on it all, but I always kinda doubted that that little valley in Northern Italy could have that much pull in Rome. Maybe inside the Italian military structures, but the country overall? I doubt it.
Those stories about bribery were always extremely dubious, but they also sprang up like weeds every time something like this happened. According to the various “authoritative pundits”, for example, the reason that Colt USA didn’t get the various contracts for M16-derivatives in nations like Holland and Denmark were political, but then you’d also note that the specs called for CHF barrels, and Colt USA did not make those, sooooo… Yeah. Political? Maybe, but unlikely. More likely? Technical issues mattered more; they wanted the CHF lifespan and better accuracy.
Oh the U.S. army, hell, any army, would to really well to get Italian uniforms! That is for sure! Nicest in both world wars and mighty nice after!
I’m sure Nato officers were saluting ‘fante Giuseppe and Luigi thinking they were officers of equal or higher rank…
@ Dave
Italian uniforms in WWI were almost universally considered the ugliest of all the armies in the conflict, but also the less visible. Italians had taken the matter low visibility colors seriously.
That’s E. Alexander Powell (American war correspondent during World War I, He passed 1914 with the German Army, 1915 with the French and 1916 with the Italian one) on the matter:
“It is claimed for the Italian uniform that it is at once the ugliest and the least visible of any worn in Europe. “Its wearer doesn’t even make a shadow,” a friend of mine remarked. The Italian military authorities were among the first to make a scientific study of colors for uniforms. They did not select, for example, the “horizon blue” adopted by the French because, while this is less visible on the roads and plains of a flat, open, sunlit region, it would prove fatally distinct on the tree-clad mountain slopes where the Italians are fighting. The color is officially described as gray-green, but the best description of it is that given by a British officer: “Take some mud from the Blue Nile, carefully rub into it two pounds of ship-rat’s hair, paint a roan horse with the composition, and then you will understand why the Austrians can’t see the Italian soldiers in broad daylight at fifty yards.” Its quality of invisibility is, indeed, positively uncanny. While motoring in the war zone I have repeatedly come upon bodies of troops resting beside the road, yet, so marvellously do their uniforms merge into the landscape that, had not my attention been called to them, I should have passed them by unnoticed. The uniform of the Italian officer is of precisely the same cut and apparently of the same material as that of the men, and as the former not infrequently dispenses with the badges of rank, it is often difficult to distinguish an officer from a private.”
Small arms procurement in the US is horked up beyond belief due to several factors, not the least of which is that anyone with any real expertise in the arena ain’t gonna get promoted to the rarefied level where they’re actually going to be making small arms-relevant decisions.
The people that do…? They’re all golfers.
Biggest part of the problem is the system is set up for and run by those who are basically dilettantes in their knowledge of small arms. A field grade officer thinks he’s an expert on machineguns because he once carried one for an afternoon as a lieutenant during his time at the Ranger school… Reality is that said field grade knows nothing about the guns, how to use them, or how to run a MG team effectively. Yet… He’s the one making decisions about what they need.
It’s the same with regards to the pistols; before they ever start procurement competitions, there’s a bunch of idiot field grades sitting around a table somewhere, talking about what they need. The majority of them don’t know squat about pistols, but sitting on these committees is “good for the career”, so there they are, getting a bullet point for their OER.
This is precisely why the Glocks never even got considered back during the M9 competition; they didn’t meet the made-up criteria for the competition, which were based on the purely subjective ideas of a bunch of officers who’ve never actually used or trained people to use a pistol in any serious manner. Nobody consulted the trainers; nobody consulted the armorers. Ever.
So, we wound up with the M9. Which is a wonderful example of the machinist’s art, but a terrible pistol to issue soldiers. It’s too big, has too many parts, and has way too many fiddly bits that the average idiot is going to lose. Don’t ever ask me about the little spring that lifts the trigger bar, and how I once spent most of a day driving around Kuwait trying to find one to replace on the XO’s pistol after he lost it… The morons under Clinton that took our Small Arms Repair Parts away from us have a lot to answer for. Time was, I was able to keep the majority of my unit’s weapons working with my stock of parts, but… After the SARP controls came in, I could count on a lost spring putting that weapon down for about six weeks while they processed the paperwork.
Oh, and the reason for the SARP restrictions? Had nothing to do with uniformed Armorers; it was all down to civilian assholes at the Fort Hood Third Shop for small arms selling stock to gun show dealers…
In any event, procurement is broken because small arms are an afterthought, none of the brass that make the actual decisions really know shit about the subject, and anyone who does is never going to be even consulted, let alone involved, in the decision-making process.
Observe this in the NGSW program: I could have told them all that they’d fundamentally misidentified the problem, in that the imaginary “overmatch” wasn’t due to ballistics, but because they didn’t know how to use machineguns. I never interviewed a single member of a gun team from either Afghanistan or Iraq that had had access to even the basic tools of their trade, like binoculars with reticles. Most had only a vague idea of using the guns with traverse and elevation mechanisms in conjunction with an observer; few realized that the locked-in tripod alone provided the necessary stability and repeatability necessary for effective long-range fires, and absolutely none of them had ever been asked to use a tripod in a dynamic tactical situation during a qualification or training range. All the qualification standards represented a simulation of late Korean War trench combat in a defense; you never, ever saw anyone going out into the field and doing live fire in anything other than a static defensive mode. The troops, from gunners up to gun team leaders, simply did not know how to “do machineguns”, mostly because they’d never been trained on them properly. Their leadership wasn’t any better; I talked to a lieutenant of infantry who deliberately left his binoculars on the FOB, for fear he’d lose them, their weight, and the fact that the artillery FO with them had a set, too… The poor bastard had no idea about how to use them to correct and control machinegun fire. Didn’t even realize that the reason there was a mil reticle on the binos was so he could use the T&E mechanism on the tripod to do so.
What’s even more amazing to me is that there are copious records available to the US military, wherein the detailed narratives from WWII German mountain troops are distilled into quite excellent “How to Use the Machinegun in the Mountains” instructional guides.
The whole “What do we need in a pistol…?” question, as you can imagine, fares little better. They just don’t get it; they’ve never gone out and talked to the guys like me who actually did the training on the M1911A1 and the M9, let alone a broad spectrum of trainers who had experience on other “pistol paradigms”. I became an advocate for the whole “Glock methodology” once I noticed that it was far easier to train my “problem children” on the Glock, then transition them to the M9 once they’d built basic skills and confidence. The M9 was just too goddamn complex, too big, and too expensive for what it gave you. They should have gone with a Glock 19 and a bunch more ammo with the money they’d have saved. Hell, from what the M9 system cost us, you probably could have treated a mass-purchase Glock 19 like a disposable “no maintenance” item, and just thrown them out when they became troublesome…
US small arms procurement is a self-inflicted nightmare because the vast majority of the idjit class making the decisions have no real small arms experience, and the ones who do are never listened to. The entire process from “need development” to fielding is mostly delusional, and nobody ever bothers to really think about what the felching f*ck they are really supposed to be doing. It’s all prioritized on some brasshat asshole getting the opportunity to “check the box” on a career development path that will eventually result in yet another clone of Courtney Massengale being anointed and placed in a position of high prestige. As well as positioning said Massengale-ite for a “good retirement job” in some element of the military-industrial complex.
You want to get to the bottom of what the hell led to SIG-Sauer USA getting all these contracts for weapons…? I would highly advise “following the money” for all concerned, particularly for those assholes behind NGSW.
That program began with some good ideas; reduce weight, lighten the load for soldiers in the field. The early iterations of caseless, cased telescopic, and all the rest basically accomplished that, but somehow, what came out the other end of the sausage machine was heavier, had smaller loadouts, and was way overpowered for the job. M14/7.62 NATO redux, in other words. Never should have happened, and they should have ended the program when it started heading that way. The fact that these POS weapons are actually type-standardized and being fielded…? LOL; I predict a rapid return to the M4 Carbine and M240, if we still have them around the next time we get into a shooting war.
I could have fixed all the issues with the imaginary “overmatch” with some improved field gear and vastly modified training; the fact that they didn’t even head down that road, or consult with anyone who actually knew shit about machinegun-based warfare…? Tells you all you need to know, really.
Always very interesting and always very critical and topical. I thank you for the content! I feel a bit guilty though.. Like I’m a troll or I “triggered” you or something. In any case, thanks!
Oh, it’s not you, Dave.
My therapist tells me that it’s good to vent, rather than “hold it in”, so when I run into these things… I tend to vent.
The US military could be a lot better than it is. Unfortunately, the way that the culture has developed inside and out of it is such that it is likely beyond reform. The whole small arms thing is just a microcosm of the problem, and a lot of that boils down to the majority of the organizations within the military becoming these vast bureaucracies where process overcomes actually getting anything done.
I have no hopes that I’ll see reform in my lifetime; that’s going to require an existential crisis and utter failure before the will to actually break all the rice bowls will be found. God alone knows how many are going to have to die in order to make that happen, but it won’t be a small number…
I suspect there’s some bicycle shedding going on in small arms, too. Not just in the U. S., but everywhere, right through history- soldiers can’t bring themselves to not fiddle around with guns, and everyone has an opinion and an ego.
Or is there the same incessant changing with blankets and socks, too?
I’ve to cut a slack for the US small arms procurement in the case of the Glock in the XM9 program. The gun was only three years old, it had been invited to participate anyway, the only thing it lacked to participate was an external safety, the manufacturer declined, because to retool to make the 35 samples required was too much of an hassle.
As far as I know, the thumb safety of the M17 only locks the trigger. But I’ve never seen the actual mechanism.
Big difference between the 320 (and the Springfield XD guns), is that unlike the other striker guns (including the 1907), the striker is fully cocked and the only sear releases it. The others work from a half cocked state, so if the sear released the striker at that point, there is not enough energy to set off the primer.
Here’s a really good vid i found describing how the 320 mechanism and safety work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=anZg4b-QLRA&pp=0gcJCfwAo7VqN5tD
So it only locks the trigger.
Sig could re-paint it, ok it is already flat dark earth or such; modern, tech… As it is, I mean look at it’s paint job. They could try a pearlescent sort of holographic camo that goes from multicam to FW/Varusteleka pattern (Dear leader, Kim Jong) multuicam with loads of wee President Trumps faces on it, as say the brown lumpy bits of said camo pattern. Actually I might write to Hk, Keir Starmer… SA80A3 no, SA35! More like £££’s! Unexplained deaths are a matter for the courts.
Are there any statistics on how many “uncommanded discharges” are attributed to the 1911 or 1911A1 while in service? Or to the Beretta M9? Or any other US service handgun? Is this phenomenon unique to the SIG M17 or M18?
According to H.P. White Laboratories, the only way to make a 1911 discharge other than pulling the trigger with the thumb safety off and the grip safety depressed was to drop it muzzle down 22 feet onto concrete or solid rock.
Due to inertia, this would “bounce” the firing pin forward with sufficient force to indent a primer.
Colt took note of this phenomenon and designed the “National Match” firing pin safety in the slide to prevent such a discharge. After 1990, all Colt-made 1911s and most made by other makers have the NM firing-pin safety, which actually dates to 1921. Star and Llama automatics from Spain had the same sort of firing-pin safety from about 1950 on.
The Beretta M9, like most if not all pistols with a Walther-type “hammer drop” so-called “safety” up on the slide, can discharge accidentally if the safety drum has had sufficient work hardening over time that it fractures when the hammer impacts it, allowing the hammer to continue forward, impact the firing pin, and fire the piece. The solution for this is to use two hands to put any Walther-type pistol “on safe”; use the thumb of the firing hand to apply the safety, use the thumb of the off hand to slowly and gently lower the hammer to the full-down position.
Older single-action Berettas such as the WW1 M1915, the M1934 .32 and M1935 .380, and the M1951 9mm, can normally be carried in Condition Two (hammer down on a live round in the chamber, full magazine) and thumb-cocked on the draw because their firing pins are inertial, and will not protrude far enough from the breech face to indent a primer unless hit properly by the hammer. This is useful to know because other than the later-model M1951 and the Model 70, most single-action Berettas had frame-mounted safeties over the trigger guard that were next to impossible to release when you needed them “off”. All double-action Berettas other than DAOs have had Walther-type “hammer-droppers” for half a century, as did the “clones” made by FN at Herstal.
Some slide-mounted safeties do not “drop the hammer”. That on the Desert Eagle just locks it and unloads the sear. However it is too high up to reach with the thumb of the shooting hand; it must be released with the off-hand thumb. (Personal experience speaking here.)
The otherwise well-thought-out French MAS 1950 inherited the kludgy safety of the MAS 1935. It, too, is one on which the safety is best ignored, and the piece carried hammer-down and thumb-cocked on the way up. By comparison, the MAB P15 and PA15 both have very nice Colt-type thumb safeties and may be carried in Condition One and deployed just like a 1911.
Hope you found this helpful.
cheers
eon
I have a SIG Sauer 320X5-10-BXR3-R2 in 10mm, and it stings my trigger finger every time I fire. I have other guns in 10mm – including a second series Colt Delta Elite – and don’t have this problem with any of those, so it’s the specific gun and not the chambering. I’ve cleaned and lubed and dry fired and it still does this. It’s not enough to keep me from shooting the gun at all, but I don’t put a lot of rounds through it in one range session. I’m wondering if this is connected to the accidental discharge reports.
The only other gun I’ve had with this problem is an HP-35 in .40, and it wasn’t this bad. After a lot of shooting the problem went away. Maybe I just need to shoot the P320 a lot more to correct the situation, but the pain from extensive shooting makes that difficult
That’s a clear indicator that there is something “off” in the design of the pistol. It should not be transmitting that much energy through the trigger assembly. I’ve heard others complain about this issue with the SIG-Sauer 10mm pistols, which is one reason I’ve never had all that much interest in one.
Playing Devil’s Advocate, here…
I went looking for more information about the actual incident where the Airman was shot. What I found describing the event rings all my bells for “Lying liars who lie” from my time in the military.
Purportedly, this Airman took the pistol off his belt, sat it on a table with it still holstered, and then the pistol “just went off”. Uh… WTF?
I don’t know about the practices in the Air Force, but “taking the holstered pistol off of his person” thing just strikes me as… Odd? Why would you do that? Who does that? Why wouldn’t you, upon reaching a point where that would be necessary, also unholster the weapon and clear it before removing the holster from your belt? What sort of “quick-detach” holster is this, because I have never run into one of those that I’d trust for retention, especially in a military environment. If the holster comes off the belt easily for convenience, then what the hell is it going to do while you’re running and gunning?
Something about this just smells of “Yeah, the troops were actually screwing around with the weapons and one of them got shot…” to me. I look forward to the detailed investigation being released, because from everything I’m able to find on the web, my “f*ckery radar” is pinging. Big time.
Wouldn’t be the first time that someone’s stupidity got an attempt at inept coverup by the lowest common denominator idjits down at the actual event site, either. Crap I’ve seen documented in witness statements and forensics would blow your mind, trying to wrap your head around someone actually thinking they’d be able to hide what had actually happened.
No idea here, what really happened. Just… It doesn’t look “right”, what’s been reported so far.
Kirk:
You may well be right.
I recall that the UK adopted the Glock for issue to all troops in Afghanistan, so that they would have a weapon ready at all times. This was because of the propensity of the Afghan troops to decide periodically to turn on their infidel allies. So the Glocks were chosen, a good idea for once, to replace ancient Browning High Powers, and they were to be carried with a round in the chamber for a quick response.
Then, an airman (why is it always them?) started being a dick with his Glock, and shot a comrade dead. The Powers That Be then decided that the Glocks had to be carried with an empty chamber. Rack the slide to fire. Just like the Browning they had replaced. So no improvement. Just hope Abdul doesn’t find Allah on your watch.
It’s not just the Americans who have problems.
JohnK, if you have to work with “allies” with a loaded gun at all times on their head, something strategically is seriously wrong and flawed, choosing what pistol is best for the/that job is a travesty.
The first one of those “insider attacks” that took place, we should have done what the characters in Aliens advocated for: “Nuke it from orbit”.
People keep screwing up the whole “Work with Islam” thing, in that you can’t “Work with Islam”. You either capitulate, or you wind up having to kill them. It’s been that way since the foundation of the religion, and if you actually bother to read a good translation of the Koran, you’ll discover, much to your likely surprise, that it’s all baked in, and effectively beyond “reform”. Certainly not from the outside.
The only form of Islam that you can “work with” is that held by people who’re effectively apostates to their own religion, which doesn’t bode well for them or your future.
I’m not into supporting jingoistic international travel and meet the locals adventures, though I have to agree somewhat (in horror) that it seems like moderate of these people are the ones that want to cut off your “infidel” head immediately, and that seems to be the religious tenet for them. Now try to imagine the extremists.
Best to keep apart from all such folk.
The worst thing about Islam…? It is the only major religion in the world that has as a basic tenet “Lie to others in the furtherance of the Faith…”
You cannot take anything that a Muslim says seriously; their religion tells them to lie, lie, lie. All in service of their religion. So… They want to negotiate? They’re basically setting you up, because that’s what their religion says to do.
I can’t think of a single historical example where any Islamic or Islamic-adjacent entity negotiated anything in good faith, or held to those negotiations for more than a generation or two.
It’s also a mistake to think of Islam as a religion; it’s more a total package of political/lifestyle/spiritual beliefs akin to a mass totalitarian political movement like Communism or Nazism; which is one reason that the Communists and Nazis work so easily with it; there’s been a lot of cross-connection and cross-fertilization.
Local loony going berserk with an Ak and somebody “Everyone?”… Having a Glock “Primed” is no panacea for that… You’d be better having a “laggard” lurking behind everyone including them, with his rifle primed. Not sure that was why, the Glock replaced the aging hi-power. I mean if that was the case, you could have actually gave everyone a hi-power and somebody could have at least thrown it at said miscreant.
What’s that thing Yanks say… Stopping power, .45 vs 9mm thing “Not an argument in the rest of the world; Bears, General Custer or something? Who knows.” Anyway that – Well, throwing a Hi-Power is going to hurt more upon hitting the target than throwing a Glock at them, the rotter going beserk with a Kalashnikov. Isn’t it…
An AMD65 Ak type, at that; going off in your midst, with it’s very noticible noise/blast – Throw your hi-power at the blast/noise and dive. Is about the best we could reasonably expect from most people, and fair enough.
Big feck off fireball within 10 yrds “Like the Star Wars death star, KABOOM!” Aimed shots, with your primed Glock. In an instant. Asking a bit much,from most folk there I think. A laggard, with a rifle; sure.
Quick draw McDraw, anyway fair play if you are, might have been that; probably wasn’t mind; end of life replacements and the government already bought Glocks for the police the armed ones – So cheaper, probably.
Stray dogs; I’m reliably informed, was the reason for the increased issue. Unpleasent.
There was a current in LEO, which transfered over to Mil LE, for a way to remove the holster from the duty belt with the weapon still secured inside. Safariland and Blackhawk both make duty holsters that allow the holster to be removed from a hook mount on the actual belt. The thought was so you secure your pistol with it still being bolstered.
That… Wow. That just strikes me as a really bad idea, for retention of the weapon during “activities”.
Not the first time that administrivial considerations have led to really bad policy decisions, though.
I have a bunch it came about when CBP embraced the Glock platform. So, whereas CBP has a bunch of cool dudes that do cool shit they also have A LOT of normal folks who work at airports. And a lot of those airports are in big blue cities.
When CBP went to the 47/19/26; they also went with the Safariland detachable holster setup.
And well, there you go.
My old agency went with them too. Because at the time it was the cheapest holster to carry a G17 with RMR and X300. And also, Safriland.
On paper it’s great. Just take off the holster going into jail. Hang your belt on the Bannister and stick your holster on top of the coat closet.
But. Yeah. The thing sucks.
The term ‘Murica’ along with Amerika were terms originated by the Radical Left around the time of Vietnam as terms of insult.
15 years as a Firearms/Use of Force Instructor for Federal Law Enforcement has shown me that adequate training with the Glock stops ADs. Laser, Laser, Laser, Index, Index Index. Keep your booger picker OFF THE BANG SWITCH/TRIGGER, and you have no problems. Standardize a retention/snatch-resistant holster like the Blackhawk series that protects the trigger area and train, train, train. What is one of the first that happens in budget cuts? Training and ammunition funding. Other than in Law Enforcement and Special Ops Teams, pistols are more of a backup, specialized tool for specific functions. Controlling/Searching prisoners is easier with pistols, especially in confined spaces. The so-called need for thumb safeties and magazine disconnects for pistols does not exist in an adequately trained force environment. The only AD on my watch was an MP-5 in the hands of an experienced Cop who put a hole in the floor. Six hours of remedial training later, with numerous MP-5 drills, that never happened again. The embarrassment on his part helped. He went on to become an excellent supervisor. Train like you Fight, don’t depend on mechanical means to improve performance if you don’t want to spend time training. My Dad carried a Surplus 8MM “LEBEL” as a young teenager hunting, no safety, cocked, round in the chamber. He had no ADs.
The only AD in my entire life was with an M1 Carbine with an overly-stiff safety. Yes, in releasing it my finger slipped off it and hit the trigger.
Since I had the rifle properly pointed at the ground at a 45-degree down angle, I just made a divot in the grass four feet in front of me. Nobody there but me, no harm done. To this day I still feel like a prize pluperfect arse for AD’ing like that.
I still maintain that as you said, the best cure for AD is keeping your finger off the Go Switch until your sights are on the target.
cheers
eon
The gun is inherently flawed.
Furthermore, the entire MHS was stupid. The modularity of the P320 has not and will not be available to the average end user in the military.
It was a boondoggle right up there with the M14. And it looks like the M7 is headed that way too.
Like I said earlier… Follow the money. And, the cushy post-retirement jobs.
Personally, I think there ought to be policies in place such that people in a position to make decisions on procurement or anything else remotely related are T-totally ineligible for post-service employment. As in, the only way they get to work in industry after a career doing any form of procurement work is as something like a government-sponsored adviser or something where their income is still entirely military. They should be totally ineligible for civilian monies from any source.
God knows their retirement checks are quite generous; they should be totally unable to “supplement” those by going to work for the people they used to contract with.
Either that, or we put the bribery right out in the open, and consider the pay & benefits packages offered to procurement officials as part of the process for bidding… At least, that way? You’d know. “Yeah, Glock got this contract because they offered 20 years of employment plus retirement to the guys who were on the testing and contracting program…”
Make it all a part of the bidding process, and then have extensive back-end punishments if the equipment in the bid doesn’t work, as in “You’re living under a bridge and sleeping in a cardboard box…” financial penalties for equipment that doesn’t work as promised.
The much-touted “modularity” isn’t really available to anyone.
SIG initially advertised it as every pistol most shooters could want, all on one 4473. The subcompact was never really that compact, and is hard to find these days. They also stopped selling caliber conversions, while introducing cosmetic flavors of the week. Nowadays a P320 can be “converted” between the equivalent of a Colt Government Model and a Colt Commander, i.e. the same level of “modularity” as a 1911. I agree with Ian about the P365, and it’s good to see SIG finally offering some options for its better platform.
Other than a flashy gimmick that got panties wet for the involved officers, what was the whole point of “modularity” in the first damn place? Does PFC Snuffy need to be able to have multiple versions of the same gun available to him? Have we embraced “modularity” anywhere else? Has there been a need for that, in any weapon? Nope.
The more I look at the basic design for the 320 series, the more questions I have. It’s almost as if it was deliberately set up for this exact scenario, and I don’t understand why.
The military has embraced modularity, successfully, in a lot of ways. I agree that it brings very little to a military sidearm, except the ability to suit different hand sizes (which is obviously available in guns that no one considers “modular”).
For private owners, it’s a great solution to multiple problems:
-Most gun guys have more than one pistol – because as a wise man often says 😉 different tools suit different roles.
-Conversely, most recognize that practicing consistently with the same controls and general feel is much safer and more effective than trying to remember different ones. E.g. most drivers used to one type of gearshift (even absent stress or fear) sometimes reach for it out of habit when driving a different car.
-Many shooters also want to enjoy freedom with as few permission slips, fees, taxes, etc. as possible.
-Some like to customize, and it would be great not to duplicate effort.
I question the basic premise here, Mike.
I agree that consistency in controls and so forth is a Really Good Idea(tm), which is why I have an all-Glock ensemble as my pistol battery.
However, I also have to point out that there is no way in hell I’d be going “Oh, hey… I need to do deep concealment, lemme get out the little grips and swap them…” That’s just not on, for so many reasons. If I need that sort of “modularity” in a military environment, something has gone seriously wrong, and ohbytheway, I really, really doubt that I’d be able to keep all the bits and bobs for the casual conversion handy and available for such casual swap-out shenanigans.
There is really only one place that “modularity” makes a lick of sense, and that’s in an austere legal environment like you find in a lot of European countries, where it would make sense to be able to swap frame sizes as situationally appropriate. That is, I must point out, a purely artificial environment and one that does not make sense in a military setting. Nobody is telling military personnel that they have to have a smaller, more concealable pistol and then mandating it be the same one they carry for normal duty.
The whole thing is nuts, from an operational standpoint. I guarantee you that nobody is out there customizing frame sizes for soldiers; that’s all going to be “Here; this is what you get…”, and said soldier is going to have to adapt themselves to whatever platform they get handed. If you think “the system” is going to accommodate PFC Joe or Jill Tinylittlehands with something more appropriate to them, I’d like to introduce you to the Army sizing system for uniforms: Too Small and Too Big.
The idea of “modularity” no doubt sounded cool to the idjit officers who were sitting around the briefing table, but I guarantee you that if anyone had thought to include any of the actual Armorers and trainers from any active unit, they’d have heard that idea, been utterly appalled by it, and then started raising hell. I know I would have.
You have to wrap your head around how the actual Army supply system works; low-frequency of use “kits” and “tool sets” are usually found in such states of abysmal disrepair and loss that it’s not even funny; key components will have been lost or broken, never to be replaced because “nobody uses that, and we’re not spending parts money to replace that stuff…” I’ve literally sat on empty cases for critical items during change-of-command inventories where the only part of the kit that’s on the property book is the case, while it was empty of everything it was supposed to have to make it work… I guarantee you that any attempt at a “modular” weapons system is going to wind up like that, with everything that’s not actually in use becoming nothing more than an accountability nightmare for the unit Armorer…
And (while I agree with everything you said about mil), your civ premise assumes that seasons occur on an “Oh, hey” (frequent and spontaneous) basis. Lengths vary, but biennial (in context) recurrence is universal in most CCW jurisdictions.
Also, it’s not just Europe. I grew up in an area too rural to have a “good” gun store, but otherwise convenient enough that I almost never went to the city. After Brady, a pistol purchase meant two, 3+hr round trips ten days apart (more work than several lifetimes worth of swaps), not even counting the price / excise / fees difference.
Many / most owners keep the EDC handy, and the rest in a safe (storage-locker with combinations and cranks, not the easy ready duty box type). Changing the plastic sleeve can be quicker and easier than retrieving the other-season pistol.
@Mike,
I really have my doubts about “modularity” really being a “thing” for civilians, either. Outside of the austere legal environments I mentioned, where guns are just “bad, mmmkay?” and you can’t own more than a few.
I first ran into the idea of “modularity” with a friend’s set of HK P4 “stuff”. The problem with that whole deal was that he was your typical gun owner, and not a OCD German Sitzenpinkler type. That silly bastard couldn’t keep track of anything, and I have super-clear memories of us having found a “deal” on a friggin’ crate of .32 ACP at a gun show, once. Cue going back to his place and a multi-hour search for all the stuff to convert his P4 over from .380 to .32 ACP; I was still asking him if he’d found it three weeks later, and I don’t know that anyone ever got to shoot that case of .32 ACP we’d split the cost on.
Modularity sounds really good, but in practice? I think there’s a lot to be desired.
Kirk,
I don’t disagree that irrational people are quite common, but that doesn’t mean that rational people shouldn’t have rational options.
The career risk to having your name on keeping the 320 if someone dies is 100%.
Uhmmm… Yeah. About that? Accountability? Does not and will not happen in this or any other case.
I guarantee you that. Nobody will have a “career truncating” event because of this or whatever decision transpires. There may be some clucking about it all from peers, but the reality is that nobody will “pay” for what happened or what happens in the future.
Shit, my man… Ask yourself this: Who’d they fire for the withdrawal from Afghanistan? Anyone? Oh, yeah… The guy who called out the brass for the incompetence on display. He got fired. Nobody else, as of yet.
Also ask, who the hell got fired for ignoring the elephant in the Afghanistan room for twenty years? I mean, what’s the first thing they teach you about “low-intensity war” or “counter-insurgency”? Mmmm? Don’t the courses on such subjects harp on things like “Isolate the battlefield” and “Deny the insurgents shelter and support”? Yet… What’d we do, for those twenty-odd years in Afghanistan? Yep; we paid the Pakistanis to pay the Taliban to come into Afghanistan to kill Afghanis and Coalition forces.
We did that. Zero accountability; did any of our officer corps stand up in front of Congress or the American people to say “Yeah, this is stupid… Why are we doing this?”
Nope. Which is why you’ll never see accountability fo this SIG 320 BS, either.
F*ck me, but a four-star general could have had a negligent discharge into that poor Airman on national television, and we’d likely see not a goddamn thing happen over it. They’d blame the Airman for it happening, in all likelihood…
The simple fact is that the mean American soldier is inferior to those of bygone years. He cannot be trusted with a fine implement like the 1911 or M9. He needs a Yeet Cannon.
Having been there when both those pistols were on issue, I can assure you that the soldiers of those days did no better with them.
Nah. The 1911 wasn’t some mythical Thor’s Hammer thing. And the M-9 wasn’t some cheap imitation European sissy pistol. The mythos around handguns in America are stupid. Even more so in the military. Training on the handgun gets less attention than SHARP.
SIG did not learn from how Johnson & Johnson handled the Tylenol tampering debacle.
J&J immediately let the problem be publicly known. Did a total recall. Kept the public informed. This restored trust in the company and product.
Granted, there are differences in these two cases. The problem with Tylenol was not the product itself. It came from all companies not realizing how twisted society had become. SIG created their own problems due to poor design and testing. But even under these circumstances, being cheap and circling the wagons only makes the matter worse, in the public eye. Thinking this would work shows the company’s contempt for its customers.
About 10 days ago the FBI released results of tests that said the pistol indeed can fire for no discernable reason. Meanwhile the manufacturer declined to be involved with the tests. I guess they think that if they ignore the problem it will go away.
Since P320’s trigger bar moves opposite direction with trigger… A trigger safety is not needed provided with the mass of trigger being kept lesser than trigger bar… And actually it is… This prevents accidental firing through muzzle up drops…
There is another sear releaser within the FCU named something as “Dismount aid lever”… İt is a lever crossing back the magazine well and releasing the sear when the magazine is out and dismount latch actuated… This lever props on the dismount latch under its spring tension… But no other engagement… It is free to float backward through inertia when the magazine is out…
If…
A user puts a cartridge in the chamber and slams the slide as releasing the slide stop when the magazine is out… That dismount aid lever through its inertia… Strikes the sear and may carry it… Near to released situation… The gun now… İs very near to go off in any slight impact or drop…
This may be a cause of an unintended discharging.
Translation; inherent design defect.
Also, with wear, I would expect the pistol to start discharging on chamber loading.
“Doubling” and even going full-auto cannot be ruled out, either.
It sounds like the absolute first thing that needs to be redesigned or even eliminated is that “dismount aid lever”.
Like magazine-out safeties, something like this looks good to a procurement board but otherwise is more trouble than it’s worth.
clear ether
eon
Thanks Eon…
That “Dismount aid lever” can be made mechanically connected with dismount latch like second generation XD pistols rather than simply propping on it with spring tension… This prevents its free floating inside the CFU when magazine is out…
Besides…
All moving parts within the CFU seem made by MIM process… This manufacturing method gives shrinked nearly one fourth of initial sizes and needs very precise quality control through over all process and creates parts with rather rounded tips which prone to slip under heavy impact or drops…
Regarding for the auxilary sear which is an integral part of main sear is even a serious design fault…
The company should think over those…
Stay safe and cool.
Also the firing pin block is the most idiotic design I’ve ever seen. To me, seeing how perfect the shape and dimension of the block (that’s a simple stamped part) has to be to work as intended, 1 out of 10 are defective already out of the factory.
Maybe by switching trigger groups you could redesign everything and mitigate these flaws. So, instead of replacing all the guns, replace only these drop in parts. But, maybe!
My final analysis is that they should have shitcanned the entire idea of a manual safety, and gone to the Glock 19 as a solution for all and sundry. Just train the idiots not to take the gun out of the holster unless they’re shooting someone…
The basic issue here is the one that screws up so much of US military procurement: The people making the decisions don’t really know shit about guns, period. They don’t know how to use them, they don’t know how to maintain them, and they don’t care to learn, either.
It’s the minor, telling details of it all. Note that roughly 90% of the time, weapons will be in storage in an arms room; has anyone, ever, in the history of any of these programs gone into an Arms Room and actually observed what goes on? How the weapons interact with things like admin and tracking? If they had, ever… Then the M16 series of weapons wouldn’t have the goddamn serial number on the side of the receiver such that you have to remove every single weapon from the rack in order to read the number. It would, instead, be there on the receiver such that you could read it in the rack…
The morons doing all this have never actually been “real soldiers”, or they’ve utterly forgotten what it was like for the infinitesimal period that they were actually “on the line”.
If they hadn’t, then someone would have had the mindfulness to do the necessary on figuring out things like “How long does it take to issue weapons in an emergency…?”, and then made that a part of procurement evaluations. Also, tracking round counts and parts wear? Should be automated, should be built-in somewhere along the line such that you can sit in your office as a commander or maintenance warrant and get an automatically-generated report on the state of your weapons fleet.
All of this sort of thing is overlooked, and when they do think of it, it’s almost always a badly-managed kludged add-on that winds up being more trouble than it is actually worth.
I still don’t know why “modularity” was a big deal… Do we need pistols for take-home, that are small and concealable, while also being “embiggened” for field duties…?
I don’t think so.
You have three classes of mil people who get issued pistols;
– HSLD types wh need a bloody good pistol.
– Officers who need a pistol as a badge of rank.
– Everyone else who needs a compact PDW against the rare chance that they actually get in a gunfight.
It is very hard to meet those requirements with a single weapon.
@Geezer,
You make a very good point, with this.
However, I’d break it down as follows:
1. First-tier people we are actually willing to spend the money on training/equipment/ammo to make them effective in combat with a pistol.
2. Second-tier people who really ought to have that sort of attention and training time spent on them, but who we’re only going to pay lip service to.
3. Third-tier people who represent the roughly 90% “Rest of Us” that aren’t even going to get lip service.
Examples of each tier? First-tier types are your SF/Delta/SEAL sort of creatures, the dreaded “Operators”. These guys don’t even make 1% of the force structure; they’re literally special people.
Second-tier are folks like the Military Police, who are limited to pistols by the nature of their jobs.
Third-tier? Everybody else; the folks who get pistols as badges of office and because carrying an actual effective individual weapon just isn’t on for them.
The reality is that we have been doing recruitment, training, and a lot else just plain wrong, now. For decades.
It would be my contention that if you really wanted to have a truly effective military force, you’d damn well start disqualifying and discharging anyone who demonstrates a lack of interest or ability to master basic small arms. You want to wear the uniform? You need to be able to use the basic tools of your profession, and fulfill the basic function of it, to wit… Kill. Can’t? You oughtn’t be in uniform. Period.
I really do not like the current mentality that says we’re gonna do “budget triage” on units and entire career fields. Every single uniformed person needs to be deadly to the enemy, and able to defend themselves. You should not have situations like what happened to Jessica Lynch and her unit, who were served horribly by their higher leadership. There is no way that a Corps-level unit that never received the slightest hint of actual collective (and, damn little individual…) combat training should have ever been put into a position where they were running around in the combat trains of an actual engaged divisional unit in an active combat theater. Not with the state of training they had. Every single officer in the chain of command that put the 507th Maintenance Company where it was should have been court martialed and thrown out of the service, and I include everyone who made the decisions not to train those Corps-level “slice” units, and then chose to put one of them in harm’s way.
What you want the enemy saying after engaging one of those sorts of units is not “Wow, that was easy… Let’s find us another one of those to hit!!”. You want them silent as the graves they’re now filling, and all their surviving peers saying “No way we’re trying that… Ever.”
And, it is possible. I’ve seen it happen, at the National Training Center, where they brought in a bunch of highly trained, highly motivated light infantrymen as OPFOR, and used them to attack/harass 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s rear areas. They did that one time, and one time only, before they decided that they’d rather just harass the base areas with mortar fire. The reason that the light infantry guys stopped attacking the rear areas? They made the mistake of actually getting inside the perimeter, whereupon the mechanics and logistics pukes from 2 ACR proceeded to tear them all new assholes. By the end of the attack, the infantrymen were running in terror from re-purposed rough terrain telehandlers that had been rigged up as impromptu firing platforms that the maintenance guys were using to get up over the wadis and other hiding places. They were running these poor bastards down like they were prey animals running from hawks… It was nuts; we Observer/Controllers were having to stop the players from conducting what amounted to “wargame atrocities” on the OPFOR, and by the end of the engagement, the OPFOR guys were running to us to try and preemptively surrender.
They left the support bubbas all alone, after that. So, I know it is possible to get those sorts of folks trained up and prepared for actual war; you just have to spend the time and money to actually do it.
By the way… One of the absolute best Operation Order events I ever observed and evaluated did not come from a combat arms outfit; it was one of those 2 ACR maintenance elements whose warrant officer was apparently also a Ranger-tabbed lunatic former enlisted guy who became a mechanic at some point. His orders and leadership processes were superior to 90% of the combat arms guys I saw while I was there at the NTC, and his element was one of the main ones responsible for crushing the OPFOR attack. Without the slightest pre-warning or much of anything else; they simply dropped tools, grabbed weapons, and proceeded to work out a whole lot of frustration on the OPFOR.
That’s the sort of standard we should be seeking, not “Well, they’re not really combat troops…”
I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that the one-hand gun has had its day in the military. Maybe in law enforcement, too.
Other than an officer who “needs” a holstered pistol on their Sam Browne belt as a symbol of rank (for which something like the old Walther PP .32 was probably sufficient), anyone not armed with an actual honest-to-God rifle should probably have something like the now-popular PDWs;
https://www.sportsmansoutdoorsuperstore.com/prodimages/79408-DEFAULT-l.jpg
Short barrel, weight loaded under 2.5 kg, retracting “arm brace”, and chambered for something between a pistol round and an intermediate rifle cartridge. 5.7x28mm or .300 Blackout might be just about right.
Like the old M1 Carbine, the idea would be something light and handy enough that it doesn’t get left in the arms room, but accurate and powerful enough to get the job done out to about 100 meters.
It would be a good choice for MPs who formerly had SMGs or shotguns to back up their sidearms. And a better choice for support troops than a sidearm.
Ideally, it would have a Steyr AUG type searage; three “stops” on the trigger, first-single shot, second-three shot burst, all the way back- full auto.
Ambidextrous safety, magazine catch, and bolt release.
Yes, I’m thinking something like a slightly scaled-down AR platform. Or a slightly beefed-up HK MP7. (Good layout but that proprietary 4.6x30mm round is a problem.)
Either one would be more use than a 9x19mm- or .45 ACP- pistol in the modern combat environment.
Going back to Afghanistan, the one place I’d see for the pistol in future would be as a hideout gun when dealing with questionable “allies”. For that, a suppressed version of something like the Ruger LCP .380 or LCP Max 9mm might be a good choice.
For that matter, a Gerber MKII or even a Bowie knife wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
cheers
eon
The issue I have with PDW-concept weapons is that the sad reality is that if you develop, purchase, and then issue weapons like that, you’re inevitably going to create conditions for idjit types to shortchange support troops for actual combat. It’s a conceptual thing, akin to how if you slap a turret and a cannon on top of an APC, all too many idjit types are gonna mistake them for tanks and go driving off into la-la land playing Erwin Rommel.
When you’re in a combat situation, you need combat weapons and combat equipment, not half-ass tinkertoy substitutes. You also need to have the proper mindset and aggressiveness, which ain’t going to be there if you’re sitting there under fire with a less capable weapon and half the MTOE gear your Infantry peers get to do the same job.
This is a mentality thing, not really an equipment one. Hand out M1 Carbine-alikes, and you’re going to create a mentality of “Yeah, we’re just here for the beer and the actual combat goes to the dudes with the cute little cords and disks…”
Which I really don’t like.
It’s also a huge disservice to those guys in the support jobs who’re likely to find themselves in the hotnheavy: Cut their weapons short, and a lot of them are going to have to die in order to make up for it all.
The PDW is a bad idea, and I say that because it’s an enabler for sloppy thought and half-ass training: “Oh, they gave me a toy for self-defense… I am not supposed to take the fight to the enemy! See, this little thing proves it!!”
Giving the same training to the support guys along with the same weapons and other gear is a huge confidence-builder, and will also serve to convince said support troops that their jobs include “…taking it to the enemy…”
I worked for the guy who was running the 3 ID divisional chemical unit that was directly in front of the 507th Maintenance Company during that whole debacle. He was also around for the period those guys were all undergoing training in Kuwait, and the largest part of the problem he observed (and, realized only after the fact) was that the 507th cadre really had no clue about what they were supposed to be doing. Their commander kept reporting to Division that they were doing training, but… None of them really knew what the hell “training for going into Iraq” ought to look like, and the divisional guys were too busy doing their thing to really pay attention. It wasn’t just a case of the blind leading the blind, it was a case of the utterly unprepared not knowing what “right” even looked like.
Also, the 507th did not get all the nice little combat enablers like actual machineguns to put on their trucks, or even radios for all of them. Their entire MTOE was predicated on “Corps-level support in rear areas”, not “Mechanized Divisional Trains in Combat”.
What was worse was that their situation was a huge blind spot for 3 ID; they’d never had anything other than the 14th Combat Engineer Battalion attached to them as a Corps slice element at the National Training Center, and that was really an excellent way to wind up with an extremely false image of what they needed to do as a divisional outfit assigned Corps assets, because the 14th was absolutely atypical of such units; it actually did combat training and had integrated extensively with divisional headquarters and missions, plus all the soldiers assigned to it were guys who’d at least been exposed to regular combat training in other units. The 3 ID guys were expecting that every Corps-level unit that they got assigned to them in Kuwait was at least close to the 14th’s training levels, when they absolutely were not.
The “PDW mentality” is what led to the whole Jessica Lynch/507th Maintenance Company debacle.
And, I would beg to differ with you about the whole “pistols are useless” thing. The problem is not so much with the pistol or its capabilities; the problem is that we’ve decided that much of our military should be effectively herbivorous, and we’re unwilling to take the time and money to properly select and train the people we have as soldiers.
There are always going to be times and places where a pistol is appropriate; there was an insider attack on my FOB in Iraq, and the guy who was attacked had his assailant try to kill him with a club and a knife inside a toilet trailer. His M16A2 was hanging on the hook inside the toilet compartment with him, and he had to resort to using his fists, a folding knife, and the toilet plunger as weapons. We presumed that his assailant was wanting his rifle, which never came into play due to “M16 in a toilet compartment”. Had this guy had a pistol on him, the whole thing would have been a lot less traumatic and bloody.
Frankly, I think everyone ought to be carrying a sidearm for such moments. If it isn’t an insider attack, then it’s going to be something else; buddy of mine got into it with a rabid raccoon in the middle of the night, once. The attack came out of nowhere, in the dark, during a movement. He wound up neck-deep in a swamp with this crazed raccoon attacking him, his weapon lost, and him with only a folding Buck knife in the dark. He got torn the hell up, and I still remember hearing the screams and having to go white-light to try and find him and what was going on. Whole thing was ‘effing surreal… If I’d had a handgun loaded with real ammo, that would have been over in moments, but as it was, there were three of us trying to beat this raccoon off of him, and him screaming while trying to stab it to death.
Sidearms save lives, if only we had the balls to bother issuing them. Spent the night on top of a kitchen trailer once, in Germany… Because, boars. No ammo in the weapons, which were also in the trailer we couldn’t get down into because, again… Boars. Had I been carrying, we could at least have defended ourselves. Not against the Forstmeisters, mind you, but against the friggin’ boars.
My primary reason for carrying a .45 was that I knew from experience that it stopped ferocious raccoons better than a .38, 9mm or even a .357 loaded with the back-then-mandated-for-PR-reasons 158-grain lead SWC “metro loads”. It just did more damage. (Half-inch hole vs. three-eighths.)
Unlike some others, I’ve never regarded Procyon Lotor as “cute”, or indeed as anything but a confounded nuisance at best and a threat to life and limb at worst. They’re mean, nasty, aggressive, equipped with nasty sharp teeth and claws and the muscle to back them up, and carry rabies. I regard disposing of them as proper pest control.
As for the sidearm vs Carbines or etc., it all goes back to training. Are we (meaning the country) willing to commit to training everybody in uniform to the infantry standard?
By the same token, are we willing to weed out the won’t-ever-make-a-good-soldier types at intake? For that, we’d need to stop seeing the military as primarily a jobs program and secondarily a laboratory for social experimentation. (“And what is your pronoun?”)
“War-fighting” seems to be a distant third, fourth, or fifth, and is apparently resented by the “good staff” types who are there to “work the system” for the Three P’s- Promotion, Power, and Prestige. (Plus the Fourth and Fifth P’s, Position and Profit, after retirement.)
BTW, your reference to “Courtney Massengale” piqued my interest and I discovered Once an Eagle by Anton Myrer as a result. I vaguely remember seeing a couple of episodes of the CBS miniseries of it back in the Seventies. I think I’ll have to hunt them up online.
Myrer’s book pretty much sums up the problem with every army, in all countries, in all times. The Good Staffs vs. the War-Fighters.
And it is never the latter who end up in the big chairs.
cheers
eon
@eon,
Well, that just goes to show how cultural assumptions happen… I’d have thought you would have run into that book, and the reference would have been clear, but I guess not.
Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you. Not everyone has the luxury of time to read incessantly, and I pretty much worked my way through all the various and sundry reading lists promulgated by the various service schools… Once an Eagle was on multiple lists, so I made a point of reading it. Lots of good points made in it, lots of archetypal characters you’ll find in real life with distressing regularity. I ran into innumerable Massengale types, and I can sadly count the number of real-life Sam Damon sorts on the fingers of one hand.
As to raccoons…? I really have nothing against the furry little bastards, but I’m not getting up close and personal with one, ever again. I regard the way they’ve apparently taken over Central Europe as delightfully Karmic, and I find it even more humorous that the responsible party for it all was apparently one Hermann Goering. At least, per stories and so forth… It’s funny to me, at least, that the most lasting legacy of the Nazi regime may well be an invasive species that they’re never going to get rid of… The furry little bastards are apparently mounting forces for an invasion of France, while simultaneously moving East-wards towards Poland and Ukraine.
Which cracks me up, honestly. I keep visualizing all these unreconstructed Nazi-pet raccoons having internalized the goals of National Socialism, and who’re now trying to put into effect the dreams of their importers… Will there eventually be parades, of fur-clad “Sig Heil” neo-Nazi raccoons taking over all of Europe…? Raising their little paws in the traditional Hitler salutes?
There is ongoing differences of opinion over whether when carrying a semi-auto pistol a round is kept in the chamber. Israel pushes the dictate that the chamber be empty. This is because that during the Israeli war of independence, armaments were whatever the Israelis could find and most of it was really junky. SIG seems to be the case for this rule to be applied.
Modern firearms are supposed to be designed to be ultra safe. But it looks like not all manufacturers got the message.
Good discussion on the topic:
https://www.concealedcarry.com/safety/carrying-with-a-round-in-the-chamber-to-do-or-not-to-do/
Point “A”: The Israelis are not the handgun gurus people make them out to be; they’re also generally not all that smart, collectively, about weapons. There are notable examples showing how badly they “get” skill-at-arms, not the least of which is the abysmal response times to events happening right in front of them when they are armed.
Point “B”: If the pistol is properly designed for “chamber-loaded” carry, then it’s perfectly OK to do so. Glock has it right, with their unloaded striker system; SIG obviously does not.
I’ve been carrying Glock pistols now for more than thirty years; I’ve never once seen or experienced an “uncommanded discharge”, whatever the hell that is. In my book, you’re not pulling the trigger and the weapon fires? That’s a defective weapon malfunctioning. Period.
SIG screwed the pooch with the 320 so hard that it’s like they didn’t understand what the hell a real striker-fired pistol is supposed to be. As such, they ought to be forced to take them all back, repay the government for the contract plus interest, and then quietly go bankrupt. The guns were never ready for prime-time service, and now we’ve got a dead Airman to go and prove that fact. Granted, all the facts are still unconfirmed, but what I’m seeing and hearing says that SIG and the 320 are at fault. Along with the idjit types that signed off on the purchase…
Glock is a thoroughly wrung-out design with extensive service history around the world. The low-risk option was “Glock, unchanged”. Nobody else has found that a safety was either necessary or a good idea; why did the US military think one was required?
The fact that they demanded one just demonstrates how little the procurement idjits really understand about pistols and how they’re used in the military context.
Plus, now that the patent has run out, why couldn’t we get an American made Glock clone that was just as reliable, slightly product improved, and inexpensive? It seems like a no-brainer.
I think that would be the Smith & Wesson M&P 2.0…
I do have a question, though… Why is it ethical to do your purchase of small arms via waiting for the patents to run out, and then copying the design that’s literally had years of R&D go into it, improving the product? Why not pay the small premium for the experience, and because that’s the right thing to do?
I don’t get the “Let’s chisel the innovator out of the last nickel…” idea, because that’s the biggest motivator behind these companies and individuals doing what they do in terms of “maximizing profit”. Be fair; unless they’re ripping you off, pay them for what they’ve done.
Frankly, I think I’d rather spend the fraction more for the original Glock design and experience than try to duplicate the whole thing myself. Just ask Glock to set up full production here in the US, and that we’d have a guarantee of access to that production facility going forward.
There’s no damn point to all this assholery, TBH. It’s like with Crye; why the hell didn’t we just buy MultiCam up front, instead of playing games with UCP and then the bargain-basement copy of Scorpion? If they’d done that, instead of that false economy of going with UCP for ten years, we’d have actually saved a ton of money…
Stupidity on stilts. Pay the innovator an honest profit, and call it good. I see no honor or point to trying to deprive them of their just earnings.
Hell, I think you’d almost certainly spend more money trying to re-invent the wheel than you’d save by trying to avoid paying them, at this point. How much of the “Glock intellectual property” is actually embodied in their unpatented production process that you’re going to have to create from first principles…?
Military institutions and their civil financial masters have done this trick over and over again. Or used unpatented “alternatives” that did not require royalties.
The Trapdoor Springfield was an inferior (and unsafe) copy of Hiram Berdan’s first-model breechloading system. (His “Berdan II”, made in Russia for the Tsar’s army, was an early bolt-action.) The U.S. government ended up paying Berdan’s widow a penalty for the steal.
The British Enfield revolvers, both the original 1878 in .476 and the later 1926 model in 0.380in (.38 S&W) were attempts to avoid paying royalties to Webley & Scott for their top-break patent. The 1878 used a wonky Merwin & Hulbert-type system designed by Owen Jones, the later .38 made by Albion Motor Works simply changed the position of one small lever in the extraction setup and claimed “originality”, therefore no royalties due to W&S.
The U.S. Army Ordnance Department copied the Mauser Model 1898 almost exactly in 1902, and called it the “Springfield M1903”. They blandly claimed that it was an “improved” Krag-Jorgenson M1892, a design they actually had bought legally. It actually resembles a Krag about the way Colin Chapman’s Lotus 18 Formula One car that Jim Clark and Stirling Moss drove resembles a Yugo. The U.S. government ended up paying DWM more as a penalty after the lawsuit than DWM would have charged them for the license (and tech support) to begin with.
Most of these decisions are made based on politics. Ordnance wallahs tend to do whatever they think the politicians will like. Because they all have their eyes on jobs in bespoke suits later on.
clear ether
eon
Note the shortsighted “economy” that they wound up paying for anyway…
The real issue is that nobody holds these self-serving criminal masterminds at fault, or even criticizes them. Look at all the crap the French government did with machineguns, trying to “roll their own”, only to wind up having to type-standardize on the damn Hotchkiss designs anyway. How many French servicemen wound up dead because of that?
Same thing here. SIG sold the US procurement people a pig in a poke, from what I understand… Someone was just telling me today that the test article M17/18 pistols were all either machined bar stock or stamped, while the production versions were all MIM of really poor quality control. Bait and switch, really.
I like the old traditions of the Japanese Samurai, who had it that what you did with a broken sword was return it to the maker via their anal orifice… We ought to be doing the same thing to the procurement weenies that sign off on this crap, and on the crooked bastards that work with them to finagle their little POS weapons into the system.
Had the US forces type-standardized on Glock back in the 1980s, we’d still be issuing those things, and they’d still be plugging along. Instead, we bought three different pistols for the same role/mission, and it looks like the latest iteration is going down in flames. My guess is that unless embarrassment forces a cover-up, the M17/18 is going the way of the dodo; the design is inherently flawed. The Air Force doesn’t pull things from service unless they’ve actually found something seriously wrong with them.
@ Kirk;
It still amuses me that the Air Force was the first to adopt the AR15/M16 when Army Ordnance was busy sabotaging the tests every-which-way to avoid it replacing their pet M14.
Just like I never had a bit of trouble with my early M16 on duty because a couple of smart OH NG Ord sergeants, both ex-USAF ordies, told me “Don’t use M193 ball; use Remington commercial .223 55-grain. That’s what the Air Police use.” It was loaded with the powder the AR was designed to use to start with. No problems, ever.
Most of Ord’s “problems” are own goals created when they try to game the system to remain the gurus of anything and everything to do with ordnance.
There should be a regulation that nobody is allowed to serve more than two tours in Ord in their entire career. And they cannot be back-to-back. Violation of this should be a GCM offense, and not just an Article 15.
Getting caught engaging in the sort of BS they did in the M16 rifle trials should be grounds for DD and imprisonment. Soldiers died because of the s#!t they did.
I call it just one inch short of aiding and abetting the enemy. But then I’m just a retired crime lab geek, WTH do I know?
clear ether
eon
The thing that just frosts my walnuts is that the assholes doing all this have lost sight of the basic responsibility they have to arm the men they send in harm’s way properly.
Custer’s poor bastards, stuck prying cartridges out of their carbines; men in Cuba facing 7X57 Mausers; going over the top with the Chauchat; dealing with the MG34/42; Korean War-era nuttiness with the 2.36in Bazooka against the T-34; the M14/AK47 mis-match in Vietnam; the M60… And, on and on and on.
If you stop to think about it, the assholes have been very consistent in feathering their own beds, going back to that presentation about Springfield Arsenal that Ian put up last week. I guarantee you that if someone were to look, there are no doubt some “irregularities” with regards to the whole M17/18 and NGSW procurements; all they need to do is look closely enough.
In the final analysis, none of the bastards have been doing their jobs, going back to the early days of the Republic. I’d be up for some public executions, myself. After fair trials, of course…
Patent laws are a balance between rewarding innovation and making sure that, eventually, everybody benefits from the innovation. Inventors are given time to make lots of money from their inventions. Then the technology is out in public to be improved. Otherwise great improvements will stagnate as the inventor just wants to keep the cash cow alive and not make the next big leap forward.
@Bart,
What point are you trying to make, here?
Market is literally full of improved Glock clones, made in America and elsewere, many of them are less expensive than the original.
Glock revolutionized the market in the ’80, and had practically not improved its product since then.
Reality is that competitors catched up and surpassed it long ago.
That’s why Glock started losing marked share about 15 years ago, and that’s why it participated to the XM17 program.
These days my go-to brands for just about anything re firearms are Taurus and their Rossi subsidiary.
Taurus revolvers are well enough designed and built today that S&W is now copying them. (Noted the crane lockup on the latter’s “classic edition” .357s.) Taurus automatics are about as good as Ruger’s and a good bit cheaper.
Rossi still builds Winchester lever actions as well as Winchester has them built buy Miroku in Japan and for a lower price.
I’d go to them for pump-action shotguns, too if they made them. As it, I stick to Mossberg.
cheers
eon
“(…)pump-action shotguns, too if they made them(…)”
Now you can https://modernfirearms.net/en/shotguns/brazil-shotguns/taurus-st-12-eng/
“Improved”? Yeah, right…
All the so-called “Improved Glock Clones” are nowhere near the level of actual development that the Glock has attained after nearly fifty years of development and improvement. They’re also not out there in anywhere near the numbers that the Glock is, and have none of the base for aftermarket parts or accessories. You buy Glock, there’s a whole host of things available for that system; you buy something else, you are going to have trouble finding something as basic as a holster.
Glock may not be “Perfect”, as they like to claim in their advertising, but the raw fact is that they’re like the M16: F*cking ubiquitous. And, they work. You can’t beat those two facts with some half-ass “clone” that has sold maybe a single-digit percentage of what’s out there for Glock.
Not to mention, you learn the Glock and adapt yourself to it, what’s the most common pistol you can find, around the world? What are you most likely going to do a “battlefield pickup” on? Yeah; it ain’t a Canik or a Walther P99. It’s a Glock; the installed user base is as much a feature of the system as anything the factory does, at this point. The sheer mass of them all is a key selling point, if you’ve the sense God gave a rabid wombat. And, given the scale of things? Glock is likely to continue on as the “most likely to be found” pistol for a few more decades…
@ Kirk
Improved, yeah, right.
They have improved ergonomy, in several ways, improved trigger, improved sights, removable chassis… chose one.
The aftermarket meddling with “perfection” are not part of what Glock sells you (and certainly not part of a military contract), and the vast majority of Glock buyers don’t buy them anyway. They exist because Glock is common. Is the advantage of the old manufacturer with a dominant position over the newcomer, but, as already said, Glock had kept losing market share for over a decade by now DESPITE that advantage. Because more and more people start questioning why they have to pay more for a gun that doesn’t have those improvements. Dominant positions don’t last forever. Even Glock fans make jokes about the supposed improvements between third, fourth and fifth generation. The question was not if Glock “work”. It obviously does. The question was why there were not improved Glock clones around, and the answer is that there are many.
@Dogwalker,
The density of your thought process is apparently on the scale of a neutron star or black hole.
My point about “Glock” isn’t that there aren’t improvements or competitors, but that you’re basically ignoring the fact that it’s the most prevalent handgun currently on the market, worldwide. Odds of seeing a Walther P99 somewhere along the Limpopo or Amazon? Nearly zero. Glock? Like as not, there’s going to be one. And, with that mass of weapons out there, the sheer volume of things means that you’re a damn fool if you think it’s a good idea to ignore that fact and go with a clone.
Like I said… Try finding a holster for a P99 in any of the minor markets. Walk into a gunshop somewhere in the US, and ask them for night sights, or much of anything else for one of those “improved Glock clones”. You’re not going to be able to find much, at all.
On the other hand, need Glock anything? It’s likely out there in the smallest gun shop in the land, and in usable quantities. Your boutique toys, on the other hand? Nada damn thing…
It’s going to be decades before that “installed base” advantage goes away. If ever. Is that optimal? Is that a good thing? I’ll leave that to the market to determine; right now, enough people are still buying and fielding Glock pistols to make anything else a chump’s bet, if you’re looking for “something else”.
I’m reminded of my buddy, who wanted to “Buy American”.
He bought S&W Sigma pistols, several of them. Know where they wound up? On a table, at a gun show, being sold for literal dimes on the dollars he spent, along with all the gear he bought for them. The guns were kinda-sorta crap, the availability of things like night sights and all the rest? He got tired of not being able to find what he needed; I just had to get on Amazon the last time I had to redo my sights on my Glock battery, and there they were, in my hands (along with the rear sight pusher…) in couple of days.
Half the crap you’re espousing for? You can’t even special-order it, because they don’t make it…
@ kirk
You are simply answering to a question that none asked.
The question, asked by Schwensen, was: “now that the patent has run out, why couldn’t we get an American made Glock clone that was just as reliable, slightly product improved, and inexpensive? It seems like a no-brainer.”
The answer is that there is plenty out there, made in the US and elsewere (even in Austria, for that matter) and they are progressively gaining market share.
The fact that Glock still sells more than others was not part of the question. The need to advertise Glock against a perceived attack is all in your brain.
I’m not selling guns. You prefer Glock for whatever reason? That’s your business. To me, you can like whatever you want.
@Dogwalker,
You keep ignoring the point I’m making.
Glock pistols in US service? Gee, how easy would it be for someone deployed as an adviser to say… Norway, to get parts for their hypothetical “BETTERN’GLOCK” uber-pistol? As opposed, say, to talking to one of the Norwegian armorers and asking for a new magazine spring or whatever?
Installed base. I keep repeating it, and you keep ignoring it. Glock is good enough; everyone uses it, and the damn things are as close to ubiquitous as you can get. Why get “something else” for some .01% improvement, when the de facto world standard handgun right now is a Glock?
You want bespoke “perfect”? Fine; you pay for it, and you be the guy on the pointy end trying to make it all work. My vote is for affordability and simplicity of support, not some purely hypothetical “perfect”.
I don’t think you’re even close to comprehending the point I’m making. Instead, you’re arguing for some crazed idea of perfection, much like the idjits who went for NGSW on the basis of the ever-dreaded and purely imaginary “overmatch”. Glock is good enough, everyone else is using it, and the advantages that accrue from that make it a no-brainer for issuing the forces en masse.
Swear to God, if you were trying to illustrate what is wrong with US weapons procurement, you could not possibly do a better job of demonstrating the all-too-usual stone stupidity and obliviousness. There’s no need for some fraction of a percent of “improved” when Glock works well enough, right now. It’s like “Oh, we can’t possibly replace the M16 until/unless we find something that’s 100% better by some nebulous ill-defined thing like “lethality”…”
Not a fan of chasing “perfect/better” when the “good enough” solution is right in front of us. The Glock contract should have been made simply on the basis of “That’s what half the police use, and most of NATO besides…”, not some idealized BS that won’t make a bit of difference compared to the sheer simplicity and convenience of going with what’s become the de facto world standard.
@ Kirk
I’m ignoring it because it was nothing I was talking AT ALL.
Again. The question was: “now that the patent has run out, why couldn’t we get an American made Glock clone that was just as reliable, slightly product improved, and inexpensive? It seems like a no-brainer.”
The answer is that there is plenty out there, made in the US and elsewere (even in Austria, for that matter) and they are progressively gaining market share.
What The Army should prefer, What you prefer, or what Schwensen should prefer was not part of the question. Why should I give any consideration to it?
And, worse, I’m not talking about any supposed “perfection”. You are seeing something that’s not there. Again, you perceived a non-existent attack to a gun you like, and are organizing a completely unnecessary defense. It’s a theater that’s happening only in your mind.
See. A gun, like a car, or a motorcycle, is made of MANY charateristics. What’s “better” only depends to the relative weight you give to ANY of them. If someone prefers the Steyr M9 grip angle over the possibility to find a tin coated barrel for a Glock THAT’S EXCLUSIVELY UP TO HIM. If someone values the interchangeable backstraps of the Beretta APX over the fact that there are more holster manufacturers for the Glock THAT’S HIS PREFERENCE. None of them is “wrong”.
Kirk:
I agree about the P320. I had not realized it is carried with a fully cocked striker. That seems mad, given that the semi-cocked striker works so well. And having looked at the “chassis” that contains the mechanism, I like it even less. So many parts and springs, it’s just madness. This is just a gun that needs to be put out of its misery.
@JohnK,
When they announced the adoption of the M17/18, I took myself off to the local gun purveyor and had a look; I was kinda/sorta thinking I’d like to own one.
Field stripped it, looked the mechanism over, and instantly said “Not only no, but hell no…”
Looking that thing over, I saw problems coming down the line, from ohsoverymany angles. I don’t like the design, I don’t like the philosophy behind it, and I don’t like the SIG production quality, which I place somewhere just a little ahead of the folks building Japanese Nambu Type 94 pistols.
Harsh that Kirk, you’ll have some Swiss chap reading this crying. I mean they make great… Cuckoo clocks, and stuff.
The late great Colonel Cooper had the right idea, .45 1911’s… Its why they invented belts, people not wearing 1911’s on belts is why America has a saggy jeans problem.
Exactly. Case closed.
You know, I worry me; if Russian Vlad and our Donald in the “West” are not both sat there… But there is something else going on, and yes I do mean “Terminators” like the movies. I honestly do.
I will confess that I am not a fan of any of the polymer wonders. Give me an all metal 1911 or a Browning Hi-Power and I will go up against any of the barbarian hordes, regardless of any flaws in the pistols. Yes, I am an old coot that does not like change. The VUNDERGUNS just don’t impress me. The hate can begin now.
For the individual user, that’s perfectly legit.
For an army, the point of view is different.
IE, an indivudual gunner would have likely preferred the Lewis Gun to the Chauchat.
But for an army, the 262.000 Chauchat that the French managed to chug out in a partially invaded country vs. the 50.000 Lewis Gun the Brits managed to manufacture in the same time with all the resources of the Empire at their disposal? Chauchat forever.
I agree that soldiers in times of war have to use whatever the army has available, even if what the army has is not deemed optimal, by an individual. This disconnect is not always from stupid procurement processes.
But I do wonder if any of the generally available polymer wonders have been given a full force combat test. I can see their advantages for civilian carry personal protection. I am still trying to get my head around if they would hold up through the hard usage of several years in the trenches.
And I will further admit my opinion of the polymer wonders is tainted by having larger hands. I have yet to find one that I could get a firm, comfortable grip around. Compact for concealed carry is great, if the shooter can still get a good grip. So far I have not achieved this.