OSD 336: How to rescue Sig Sauer

“Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” cuts both ways.

The allegations about Sig P320 safety flaws have reached a breaking point.

Last week, the Air Force suspended use of all of its P320s after an airman was killed with his own gun. Only bits and pieces are public at this point, but the allegation is that he removed his entire holster from his belt with the P320 still inside, and the gun fired when he placed the holster on a table.

Two weeks before that, the Michigan State Police released a report they’d commissioned from the FBI to analyze an MSP officer’s P320 that had gone off while in the holster (see the full report PDF here). Sig vehemently denied the report’s suggestion of design flaws in the gun.

And this past Saturday, Wyoming Gun Project released a video showing a reproducible way to get a P320 to go off:

1. Press the trigger about 1 millimeter past its free travel.

2. Jostle the slide.

3. Boom.

This guy described apparently the same issue two years ago:

The P320 saga has been going for seven years (there was a YouTube frenzy in summer 2017 showing P320s going off when struck or dropped: example 1, example 2), so there’s a lot to keep track of. The issue that Wyoming Gun Project showed is actually the third separate specific technical issue that people have alleged. The first two were:

1. In 2017, Sig started a “Voluntary Upgrade Program” (emphatically not a recall) that they describe as “refin[ing] functionality for the pistol and improv[ing] both its ergonomics and performance” and “improv[ing] the trigger-pull experience”. That is technically true, because if gravity pulls the trigger for you and shoots you with your own gun, that is definitely a trigger-pull experience that could use improvement. In the program’s FAQs, Sig begrudgingly admits that the original P320 was not drop-safe: “Through additional testing above and beyond standard American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/Sporting Arms & Ammunition Institute (SAAMI), National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Department of Justice (DOJ), Massachusetts, California, and other global military and law enforcement protocols, we have confirmed that usually after multiple drops, at certain angles and conditions, a potential discharge of the firearm may result when dropped. Although it is a rare occurrence, with very specific conditions, SIG SAUER is offering an upgrade to all of its current P320 owners.”

2. There is a rumored problem that the internal safety lever can get stuck in the disengaged (unsafe) position if its spring gets dislodged. That then combines with a separate issue of the sear springs getting tangled and leading to minimal sear engagement. No safety lever plus minimal sear engagement means that a bump can dislodge the sear and fire the gun. That issue is described in this reddit post and is similar (but not identical) to the issue in the FBI’s report about the Michigan State Police’s gun. It’s also similar to the issue in the viral YouTube video from two months ago:

And now there’s this third issue of the internal safeties being disabled with 1mm of trigger travel.

There are really two questions here.

The first is, “Are there specific technical problems with the gun, and if so, what exactly are they?” People can be very forgiving here. Remember Chipotle’s E.coli outbreak in 2015? It almost killed the company and cut the stock price in half. Here’s how things have gone for them since then:

You can survive even the worst mistakes if you (a) go deep into every technical and process improvement you need to make to prevent the mistake from happening again, and (b) nail the communication.

That second part is hard. Ian McCollum posted a video this weekend saying that even if Sig fixes the technical issues, the reputational damage is going to be harder to fix:

That’s very true. With its military and law enforcement contracts, Sig was getting to the point of being the default choice. “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” means that when you’re selling to institutions, being the default is a massive advantage. But it cuts the other way too. When you as a procurement officer suggest buying a new gun for the department, your boss is going to google it. Here’s what your boss will see today if you suggest the Sig P320:

You will get fired for putting your agency onto a gun whose search results page looks like this.

Sig has spent the past seven years trying to “just post through it”. That can work great in cases where there’s no actual underlying issue. But if there is a fire behind all the smoke, eventually the internet is going to find it. Denying the problem won’t work. The way to respond is to go back to corporate comms basics:

1. Find and fix the actual issue(s). As an engineering company, you need to be telling the world about the inner workings of your products. If the world is telling you about the inner workings, that is the first thing to get ahead of.

2. Own it. Apologize unequivocally, and describe the specific problem(s). No corporate jargon, no weasel words, no lawyers writing the tweets. Add to the world’s understanding of the problem. Leave zero room for new details to be sprung on you. Release them yourself.

3. Resolve it. Describe (a) the design and process changes that will fix the problem going forward and (b) a plan to fix the problem for all existing customers. Part (b) should have an additional sweetener to thank all those customers for sticking with you.

4. Keep moving forward. It will take time for your product and process changes to land and for you to resolve the problem for all existing customers. Keep the messaging consistent throughout that time. Be direct but stay action-oriented and don’t dwell on it. If you were a popular company, people liked you for a reason. Stay focused on what they liked about you and how you can keep doing that better and better. In the long run, good products win.

Borrowing a page from

Lulu Cheng Meservey

’s book, let’s apply those steps for Sig:

1. Find and fix the actual issue(s)

   1. Put the company’s best engineers together with a small group of third-party experts. Investigate every reported failure mode, and map out the design changes that will be needed to fix them.

   2. Do a management retro on the process failures that caused the problems to persist for so long and caused Sig to get so disconnected from the public narrative about the company.

2. Own it

   1. Put up an X thread and a video apologizing unequivocally and explaining the exact technical issues that the investigation found. Show us 3D video renders, roll in your best engineer to walk us through it, bring in Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons to moderate, the whole bit.

3. Resolve it

   1. Explain the design changes that are going to fix the problem, and say when you’re going to ship them. Offer a new gun to every affected P320 owner, and make the swap process shockingly easy. Lastly, give each owner a thank-you gift when they send in their gun for the swap. It doesn’t need to be huge but it should feel like the company is going above and beyond. A heavily discounted Sig optic, 100 rounds of ammo, something like that.

4. Keep moving forward

   1. Sig is a legendary company. People want to love Sig’s products, as evidenced by how much people have stuck to the P320 despite years of allegations about its safety. The company has boomed over the past 15 years, and their new products have been hits. Even after doing recalls on gen 1 products (specifically the MCX and the Cross), Sig has grown those products into big successes. Sig has a lot going for it. It should get back to the essentials of why people like the company, focus on the most knowledgeable consumers instead of procurement office middle managers, and buckle up for a long slog to turn things around. Product first, comms second, and everything else third.

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This week’s links

Counterpoint: Bruce Gray on the P320

Bruce is the very well-respected gunsmith who runs Grayguns. He’s starting a series of videos diving into each theory about the P320. This is the sort of thing that Sig should be doing.

RIP to this shooting enthusiast

H/t to Deichgraf on our Discord

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