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Click Click D'oh wrote:I'm sure everyone has heard the news by now that the modified P320 offering from SIG wont he Armys MHS trials beating out the other serious contenders, Glock and S&W.

**Warning: Blunt personal opinions follow**
** Disclaimer: I own all three of these guns**

SIG deserved to win. I know Glock fanboys don't want to hear it, but their product is simply better. All three guns are outstanding guns and I wouldn't hesitate to take any of the three with me to work, but the SIG fills the requirements better than the other two.

What all the guns have in common:
All three guns are remarkably easy to take down for routine maintenance
All three guns can be customized to shooter hand size *
All three guns offer slides milled for red dot sight mounting.
All three guns are striker fired. **

What some of the guns have in common:
S&W and SIG have manual safeties.
S&W and SIG don't require trigger pull for takedown.

What only the SIG offers:
True modular construction.

Why do I think SIG deserves the contract? 1) The SIGs trigger is better than both the M&P and Glock. It's a true single action trigger, so it doesn't have the creep and mush other striker pistols have. The Army likely doesn't care about triggers much though. Being fully modular is where this gun really pays off for the Army. Most of these guns will serve their whole life as full sized pistols, but for pistols that will serve with aircrews, in the hands of female officers or in concealment roles, you don't need to buy another, similar but smaller gun. You just buy a $20 grip. When the gun goes back to mainline service, 30 seconds and it's back to full size. If the Army ever decide (not likely, but possible) to go to another caliber, instead of buying all new guns, they buy new slides and put them on the old guns. I thought it gimmicky at first, but I love this feature now. My full sized duty gun becomes my compact concealed carry gun without having to learn or break in another trigger. For the army it could serve another valuable purpose. Mangling a polymer grip during an operation no longer means replacing the gun, just a $20 grip shell. If the Army is smart (which makes this proposition dubious), soldiers that are to be issued a sidearm should be issued the grip size that fits them, then as they go to different duty stations or draw different firearms for duty, they can put on their grip and always have a gun fit for them.


* Glock and S&W use changeable backstraps, the SIG changes the whole lower body.
** Glock and S&W use partially tensioned strikers, SIG has fully tensioned

Mind if I pass this on to a bud who is the VP of Engineering at Sig?

Sure, go right ahead.

I have come to the conclusion AR-15s are boring.

I am not selling mine or anything as its almost sure to appreciate in value in my lifetime. However, it won't be seeing much more range time unless I need to teach a girl or child how to shoot.

My M1 is way more fun, shoots better, and doesn't make me look like every other asshole at the range.

Learning to live with the Sig P320, or a story of how I'm stupid.

I have been shooting my full size 9mm P320 in IDPA for a while now and have gotten comfortable enough with it to transition into using it for, shall we say, non sporting activities. The thing is, I like the full size for IDPA because of the long sight radius, but not so much for daily carry due to poking office chairs and car seats with the holsters. So, I opted to get the "carry" size exchange kit. This is a compact length slide with a full sized grip. So, you get a 4 inch barrel and a 17 round magazine.

<insert borat_very_nice.jpg here>

Shout out to Quantico Tactical for the hook up on the kit.

There's only one problem, my P320 chasis didn't appear to fit in the new kit. A little Google time later revealed that there are Gen 1 and Gen 2 grip kits and the slide catch from Gen 2 will fit in Gen 1, but not the other way around. I have a Gen 1 slide catch apparently. Well bugger. Back to Google to find me a Gen 2 slide catch... which turns out to be a task harder than expected. So I break down and do the thing I should have done first... Call Sig. About 5 minutes later there is one on the wy to my house, no charge. In the words of the excellent customer service guy who helped me, "we changed the part, why should you pay for that?" About three weeks go by and the toe tapping has gotten to the point of an anxiety attack so I call up and order the part again, thinking that somehow the first order must have just gotten lost. Two days later, I have two envelopes from Sig in my mailbox, one of them post marked three weeks earlier. Sooo... if any of the regulars here suddenly find they need a Gen 2 P320 slide catch... let me know for some pay it forward action. Changing the slide catch took seconds. Pull a pin out with your fingers, switch the spring assembly to the new part, slide the pin back in. Done.

So now I kind of feel like I'm cheating. For gun games I now run the full size slide on the carry grip. For work I put the compact slide on the carry grip. I can even cheat harder and put the non-railed subcompact grip on the compact slide and carry it in the tooled leather holster I had made for my M&P.

Really digging this gun. It's like adult legos... you know, if the AR-15 didn't already hold that title.

MY FNX-45 gets here tomorrow! I'm so excited.

Also got a little 38 revolver just for plinking fun! Looking at some ARs...seems like the BX has very good deals in this regard. The also have the FN 15 10.5 and 14.5 which look like fun, but the PS90 is on sale...OTOH, I have no clue what good a PS90 would be for anything other than looking strange.

The LAPD is the latest agency to officially tell the SERPA to get lost:

Clicky the Linky

Several people in the firearms community have said that we don't really know why SIG won the MHS contract because Glock never revealed the gun they submitted and it could be a completely modular monstrosity of awesome. Well, Glock finally showed everyone what they submitted:



It's a FDE G19.... with a manual safety put on. It's not modular. They didn't even cut if for a RDS mount.

So yeah, Glock didn't even really try. I'm guessing that no one at Glock took the possibility of losing seriously... until they lost.

Speaking of the Army contract...... someone is offering me a Sig P320C RX for a pretty good deal ($725). Anyone use the gun or Sig Optics of the RX?

As for why the Sig won, all the reviews say its super reliable, eats all kinds of ammo, and is a great size. (Sigs first striker?) I am not sure if the added height of the optics is worth it though.

I am a big fan of putting a RDS on pistols these days. They've become much smaller than previous generations, are much more durable and best of all, most of them have battery life measured in months... usually a half year to year.

I am much faster on target and with transitions when running a EDS. All of the shooting sports that allow RDS have split them into their own category because it was unfair to people running iron sights.

It does take some getting used to though. Traditional handgun training emphasizes front sight focus. With a EDS YOU NEED to focus on the front sight. Most people make the mistake of trying to acquire the dot then move it onto the target. Instead, focus on the target and bring the gun between you so that the dot appears in front of you. It takes a bit of practice to change habits, but once you do, going back to irons is like stepping back in capabilities.

Yep, smart guns are a great idea!



Magnets outlawed in 3... 2...

I think the most important part of what he did wasn't that mh made the gun fire when it shouldn't have. We knew that was coming. People take mag safeties and that kind of stuff out of guns all the time.

I think the most important part of what he did was remotely disable the gun using $20 of junk from radioshack. That's a no go for smart gun development.

Depends on from what angle you look at it.

That you can disable the gun - with rather cheap equipment, but still requiring a bit of knowledge the average criminal might just not have - probably makes the gun unsuitable for a professional work environment.

In a normal home- / self-defense scenario, it is highly unlikely that an attacker would research your gun type and macgyver a jamming device before putting you into a situation where you need to use the gun against him.

It would make the gun unsuitable for a professional work environment, though. The knowledge that it only takes $20 worth of radio shack equipment to disarm entire security companies would open new windows of opportunity for criminals.

OTOH, that it takes nothing more than a simple magnet to make the gun fire renders it useless if your idea behind owning a smart gun is to prevent unauthorized use.

A good use for a smart gun that I can see is the "bedside table" scenario. If you own a gun because you want to be able to protect your house and family, what do you do with it at night?

Keep it safely locked away, so you would lose valuable time recovering it when you wake up in the middle of the night from strange noises downstairs?

Or keep it openly on your bedside table, so that junior might find it before you even wake up, when he comes to your bedroom in the middle of the night?

A smart gun would solve that problem - unless junior only needs a toy magnet to be able to fire it.

Zak wrote:That you can disable the gun - with rather cheap equipment, but still requiring a bit of knowledge the average criminal might just not have - probably makes the gun unsuitable for a professional work environment.

I will give you a comparable example that immediately spring to mind and three ways that they have been used unethically and even straight out criminally.

Cell phone jammers.

1) Because people are dicks: You don't need to know how to make them, just how to buy them off the internet. There have been several cases where people for one reason or another purchased small, portable cell phone jammers and have used them in public. The most recent case that made the news was a guy mad at other drivers for talking on cell phones while driving, so he ran a jammer in his car driving to and from work.

2) Anti-Gun establishments: Back when cell phone jammers were first starting to become a thing that you could buy instead of putting together with a soldering iron, several local movie theaters and play houses installed them which was all sorts of fun until the FCC cleared their throats and reminded them what the fines for that sort of thing looked like. I don't see too big of a leap between places that were willing to shut down your cellphone and places that would want to shut down your gun. I see it as the next step beyond posting the silly signs they think keep criminals out.

3) <Insert N.W.A. quote here>: Police have started shutting down cell phone networks in crisis situations. I have absolutely zero belief that they would refrain from using this too.

As for the other question, what to do for a bedside gun option that allows for safety and maintains rapid access, I prefer the Speed Vault myself.

No gun owner I know ever takes this stuff seriously. Adding layers of technology and things that can go wrong to a life or death tool? Why? Does the benefit of the watch and preventing someone from using your gun outweigh the worry and issues of having to wear the watch all of the time, of the technology or battery failing, of someone deliberately hacking your gun system? That's a resounding no. Even with the smart gun you should still make sure to have possession and control of your gun, the watch seems to be a safety that will most likely never be needed, therefore not worth the time nor worry. Could it be useful for professional LEO's who do have a real threat of someone trying to take their gun everyday? Yes, I can see the need there.

As a defensive and non professional gun owner, even if this system was 100% foolproof I still wouldn't want the extra worry added to a mechanical system that doesn't rely on electric and computer technology. (Unless I buy a Sig RX and even then you can still fire it without the dot)

So, lot's of talk these days about the P320 failing drop testing. I have seen two types of videos circulating, one which may show a legitimate problem, the other is bovine fecal matter.

The first are the actual drop tests in which the gun is dropped on the rear of the slide and the frame, the trigger can be seen to move to the rear at impact and the gun discharges. That's concerning. First off, this should be able to happen. Unlike guns like the Glock or the M&P which push their trigger bar to the rear, the P320 pulls it's trigger bar forwards. The P320 trigger also has a mass above the axis pin which helps counteract any reward motion the trigger might make if dropped. Combined with the trigger bar spring, which acts to pull the trigger forward, the trigger should not be able to move on it's own when the gun is dropped. Out of curiosity, last night I decided that my time was best spent dropping my P320. I borrowed my wifes el'cheapo walmart yoga mat (about as cushiony as tissue paper but I'm not screwing up the finish on my gun for some silly experiment), laid it out on the pavement, double check to make sure the gun was unloaded then proceeded to drop in 50 times from above my head. After every drop I checked to make sure it hadn't released the striker. Zero failures. So, my gun doesn't do it. I have the Gen 2 "anti-slap" trigger that some people are theorizing is causing the issue. If I had to do some not so scientific speculation as to what is causing the inertia trigger pulls, it could be that some SIG may have gotten some underpowered trigger bar springs in the supply chain. Of course, it also takes all of about two seconds on Google to find morons who have lightened the P320 trigger pull on their own, not realizing that it's a vital safety feature.

Video type 2, in which people hitting the back of a P320 with a hammer cause it to discharge. Shenanigans. I'm calling shenanigans. Notice how not a single one of these videos demonstrates the trigger is dead after the discharge. If striking the pistol with a hammer did cause the striker to override the strike safety, the trigger would be dead. I'm betting that the reason they don't pull the trigger is because the striker is still under tension and the gun hasn't fired. The primer fired itself. In most modern ammunition, the primer is composed of two metal parts, the cup and the anvil. The stuff that goes bang is poured in between the two metal parts. In normal operation, when the firing pin hits the cup, it smashes it into the anvil and pinches the stuff that goes bang, making it go bang. The important bit here is that even though the anvil is seated in the cup, it's not part of it. It's a separate metal piece that is fitted in it. So, imagine you have a person sitting in a car, just minding their own business when along comes a giant truck and smashes into the car from behind at 60mph... what happens to the driver? Same thing with the anvil inside the cup. Generally this isn't a big issues because of several things. 1) The impact needs to be from directly in to the front or rear of the ammunition. 2) It has to be a substantial impact 3) Most ammunition in a magazine or box has room to bounce around and the impact is mitigated to some extend... but, when it's chambered in a gun, it's held tight and can't move, transferring all the force of the impact on the gun to the primer. So yeah, it's a party trick, not a broken gun. Unless you live in a world where people routinely hit your gun directly on the rear with a hammer, it's not a big issue.

That said, I love you SIG, and you've taken care of me in the past, but until we hear your announcement on Monday, the M&P is back on duty. Not that I don't have faith in the P320 after having dropped it for a long time last night, but because there is no way in heck I'm going to risk giving a lawyer the opportunity to have an opening because I was carrying an "unsafe gun".

Another thought on the issue. For anyone that has been involved in product design and testing, Aug 14th is way to fast for SIG to have a "solution" ready to roll out. If they were already able to demonstrate the "solution" to the media the other day, that means they've been working on it for a while. There have been mentions of upgrading civilian guns to M17 standard. My guess is that SIG was already working on plans to standardize the civilian P320 to simplify their production lines, and the upgrades just happened to address the issue that came up. That would lend credence to my theory that only some guns are effected by this issue, because the upgrade wasn't intentionally targeting the issue at all.

I own a Glock 19. I like it for being lightweight, accurate and easy to conceal.

The full Defcon presentation on hacking smart guns is now up:

Small Updates:

1) The P320 voluntary recall/upgrade/whateveryouwanttocallit program. I got my shipping label from Sig on 10/31 and shipped the gun and three conversion kits to Sig two days later. The estimated turn over time was stated as 4 to 6 weeks. I had it back in my hands on 11/16. Each slide has a new cut milled in the bottom and the trigger is clearly new. There is also a new bird head looking thing sticking up out of the fire control components next to the sear. The gun seems more finicky going back together after a take down.

The easiest way to quickly tell if you are dealing with an updated P320 is to lock the slide to the rear, then look at the gun from the bottom of the slide. Updated guns will have an obvious cut milled into the rear most portion of the slide to the right of the center line ridge when viewed from below.

2) I just got back my latest Form 1 for an SBR filed on a Trust. Filed with the ATF on 12/12/2016. Approved 12/02/2017. So.. it's looking like a solid year right now on NFA paperwork approvals.

This article is a perfect example of why the "pro-gun" side says that there needs to be massive reform of the current gun laws before we even talk about moving forward with new legislation:

Clicky the Linky

You might need to draw a diagram to try to keep it straight.

That case should be thrown out.

Anyone here have experience with "iTarget" or know someone who has? I learned of this product via Dan Bongino's podcast and poking around the website it seems like a pretty neat device. $89.

Shy, the iTarget system works well for feedback with dry fire training, there are just two things to consider when choosing it instead of other options.

The first is that it can only run single target mode with a basic timer. It can't do things that some of the more expensive apps can do like split timers, reloads, random target calls and other things that allow for more complex training scenerios.

The second issue is that those sort of laser insert cartridges are kind of wonky to use. They activate when struck by the firing pin, so for double action guns like a Beretta 92, old CZs, SIG P226s or third gen Smiths, they work great. For a 1911 or Glock, you have to cycle the slide for each shot to get a laser pulse. I use the laser cartridge inserts in my CZs and SIG P220, but I am kind of afraid of them and use extra safety before and after training with them. That is because the are about the same size, shape and weight as live ammunition. I really, really, really don't want to mix those two things up. For training with striker pistols, SIRT or Laserlyte simulators allow a laser pulse for every trigger pull. I have simulators for both the Glock and M&P and those are those ones I use with students before stepping them up to a real firearm.

Me yesterday. Not much else to say other than I wore my grin to bed last night.

Click Click D'oh wrote:Shy, the iTarget system works well for feedback with dry fire training, there are just two things to consider when choosing it instead of other options.

Good to know. Thanks! I knew it wasn't suitable for more complex scenarios and defiantly not a replacement for professional training. I'll be receiving that should I get the job I'm currently up for and if that falls through, I'll sign myself up for a training course that a company here in the metro offers.

The 2018 NRA convention is done and in the bag

And thank god. Saturday alone was enough to kill me:



OMG, my poor legs.

Contrary to some of the media coverage, there wasn't a single protester in sight or hearing of the convention center. The closest thing approximating a protester was a guy riding a bike in circles shouting "Pot saves lives" Suck it Mayor Protem Caraway. SUCK IT!

Huge shout out to DPD and the Texas State Police who were everywhere and super friendly

It was a good weekend from SWAG.

I got a few freebie patches:



.. A couple hundred stickers for the safes, gimme caps from Hornady, Cheaper Than Dirt and Dan Wesson, a belt buckle from Colt, a load data book from RCBS, 2 different NRA coins and a Voodoo Tactical coin... and the theme item from this year... Reusable shopping bags. I got ones from Pro-Mag, Brownells, Cabelas, Hi-Point, Inland, Armscor, Magstorage Solutions, and Leupold. I'm thinking about going shopping at whole foods with them...

I even ran into Jerry Miculek and got an autograph. The guy is super awesome in person and an inspiration.

Overall, super good time. Lot's of cool new stuff on display. Met lots of cool people.