Handgun ‘defect’ responsible for dozens of injuries to US police officers and civilians, investigation alleges

A best-selling handgun widely available in the US has injured more than 80 people since 2016 because of a technical fault that can cause it to fire without the trigger being pulled, a new investigation has alleged.

Police officers are among those to have reported injuries they say were caused by the alleged defect in the SIG Sauer P320 pistol, although more than 100 said they had experienced an accidental firing involving the same weapon, according to an eight-month probe carried out by The Washington Post and The Trace.

The model is a type known as a striker-fired handgun, which contains an internal spring-loaded pin known as a striker that rushes forward to detonate a bullet’s primer when the trigger is pulled, sending a round racing from the barrel.

The Washington Post explains that what makes the P320 different from others in its class is that it is “effectively fully cocked at rest” and does not draw the striker backward “any meaningful distance”, simply releasing it to detonate the primer.

For its part, the company insists: “The SIG Sauer P320 model pistol is among the most tested, proven and successful handguns in small arms history.”

But the newspaper reports that those injured in the incidents it examined include professional firearms users as well as ordinary citizens and that the pistols had inadvertently been discharged in a variety of locations, including private homes, workplaces, parking lots and even school grounds.

Explaining its methodology, The Washington Post said it had interviewed more than a dozen victims of the accidents and reviewed videos and thousands of pages of court and internal police documents as evidence to support the concern.

It said its investigation had revealed “a pattern of discharges” that purportedly occurred during routine movements such as holstering and unholstering, exiting vehicles and walking down stairs, with the owners’ hands not touching the gun at the time of the firing in many of the videos witnessed.

One man profiled, 47-year-old locomotive engineer Dwight Jackson from Georgia, said he had worn his P320 in a holster attached to his belt and that the gun had gone off when he leaned forward across his bed to reach his wallet, sending a bullet passing through his right buttock and catching his left ankle.

Another, US Navy veteran Dionicio Delgado, said he was shot through the thigh and calf after he holstered his pistol during a training session at a gun range in Virginia.

Texas police officer Brittany Hilton, meanwhile, said her P320, also holstered but stowed inside her purse, had gone off as she walked towards her car, entering her groin and narrowly missing the base of her spine.

Officer Hilton is one of at least 33 law enforcement figures across 18 agencies that say they have been injured by inadvertent discharges from the guns, according to court records and interviews. At least six of those agencies have since removed the P320 from active service citing safety concerns.

SIG Sauer is understood to have sold hundreds of thousands of P320s since the model was first made commercially available in 2014 and it has commonly been used by law enforcement professionals nationwide.

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However, the manufacturer is reportedly now facing lawsuits from at least 70 people who allege the model is defective.

Bill Lewinski, an expert on accidental shootings and executive director of the Force Science Institute, told the newspaper the incidents were “highly unusual” and added: “The number and frequency of injuries are strongly suggestive of a design flaw versus a human performance error.”

Responding to The Washington Post regarding its investigation, SIG Sauer, which is based in Newington, New Hampshire, noted that no one had “ever been able to replicate a P320 discharging without a trigger pull”, despite years of litigation.

The manufacturer said it had reached three conclusions over the matter: firstly that “unintentional discharges are not uncommon amongst both law enforcement and civilians”, secondly that “improper or unsafe handling is one of the most common causes of unintentional discharges” and lastly that “unintentional discharges occur with several types of firearms and are not unique to the P320”.

The Independent has contacted SIG Sauer for further comment.

In the US, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC) has never yet ordered the recall of a gun from sale, despite monitoring quality standards across thousands of other domestic products, because firearms secured an exemption from its remit when the committee was first established by act of Congress in 1972.

That was the result of an amendment proposed by Michigan Democrat John Dingell, a gun rights advocate who sat on the board of the National Rifle Association at the time, who persuaded his colleagues it would be “outrageous” for the CPSC to “harass” arms manufacturers.