FBI Issues Report After Examining P320 Pistol Following ‘Uncommanded Discharge’

“Guns don’t just go off.”

I’ve said that for ages. When there’s an intentional discharge of any kind, the person who owns the gun often claims it just went off, and we’ve all likely dismissed those claims because guns generally don’t.

But since 2017, I’ve followed the story of the Sig Sauer P320.

What started with a YouTuber finding that the guns would discharge if dropped, should they land a certain way, has turned into far, far more. We’ve seen a lot of cases where guns are going off in the holster, even, with video proof of it such as the one I talked about earlier this week.

But it seems the FBI took a look at a firearm that “just went off” and just released a report on their findings, according to Outdoor Life.

A report by the FBI’s Ballistic Research Facility that was recently made public has placed the Sig Sauer M18/P320 series of striker-fired semi-auto pistols back into the spotlight. The report was based on the BRF’s tests of a Sig Sauer M18 that had been issued to a motor officer with the Michigan State Police. That pistol experienced an “uncommanded discharge” in July 2024, according to the document. The incident occurred while the gun was holstered, and in front of multiple witnesses. It joins a substantial list of similar reports, many of which have resulted in lawsuits. 

The report was released Monday after a public-records request to the Michigan State Police, the agency confirmed to OL, and distributed Tuesday in a YouTube video. The results of the August 2024 report were inconclusive, but that hasn’t stopped a renewed flow of online speculation by people questioning the pistol’s design. At issue is whether the P320 and its variants are capable of an uncommanded discharge — meaning that the gun can potentially fire when there is no contact with or manipulation of the trigger.

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With respect to the FBI report that was just made public, two observations stand out. 

One is that the striker safety spring, which keeps pressure on a plunger that prevents the striker from moving forward, shifted position during one portion of the FBI’s test. If the spring were somehow dislodged, that could potentially negate that safety feature. The other was a test where the primary and secondary sear locks were intentionally overridden. During one iteration of this test, which was performed with the slide and frame being pressed together and pulled apart by hand while manually releasing the sear, the FBI was able to cause several empty primed cases to fire.

The problem with the first issue is that the window the FBI cut into the slide (in order to examine the striker safety spring under recoil) is part of what retains the spring. By removing that material, the spring was able to move.

The second issue is less clear. The FBI’s description of their test where its agents applied pressure and torque to the slide and frame is vague. And so far, the FBI hasn’t responded to OL’s requests for comment on the test.

A spokesman for Sig Sauer confirmed the test document’s authenticity for Outdoor Life, and was independently obtained by OL from the Michigan State Police.

I get what OL is saying here, but there’s something they failed to note in their story on the report.

Here’s what I found explicitly spelled out in the FBI report itself:

A reliable test could not be developed at the time of this document to test the effectiveness of the secondary sear notch.  However, testing did indicate with movements representing those common to a law enforcement officer it is possible to render the Striker Safety Lock inoperable and ineffective at preventing the striker from impacting a chambered round if complete sear engagement is lost.  It is important to note that the Striker Safety Lock, by design, is the last safety in line to prevent an unintended discharge as it is in place to protect against a secondary sear notch override. 

In other words, it’s entirely possible that things police officers do on a routine basis may cause the Striker Safety Lock to not work as intended, thus leading to an unintentional discharge while inside the holster.

Now, one big caveat: This was an examination of a single pistol. This one handgun was one that an officer carried that did go off, which means that what the FBI lab found may not be a systemic issue in and of itself. It might be. It may also be a one in 1,000 flaw that is missing from the vast majority of firearms, but creates problems for that one poor bastard to gets the bad gun.

But this is an independent, third-party investigation that found that, yeah, sometimes these guns do “just go off.”

Outdoor Life notes that while many of the cases against Sig have been dismissed, they’ve lost a couple of them outright.

Sig has still refused to claim any responsibility and has gone on the offensive, accusing critics of being anti-gun, which hasn’t made anyone really happy. Now, I get that legally, saying they may have screwed up is a non-starter. I really do. While I’d like for them to do so, they’re probably not going to unless they want to give their lawyers an aneurysm. 

But the attacks on critics were way too much.

I just want Sig to fix the damn guns. Most of their firearms work great. I have friends who love their P365s, for example, and a lot of people love their P320s.

Yet this report does seem to suggest that, yeah, there’s likely something to the claims of these just going off, even if there weren’t videos showing it happening.