While their response to the safety issue is currently being touted as a Voluntary Program, I wouldn’t be surprised if this actually evolves into a more traditional “Recall” at some point. By the way, All manufacturer “recalls” are voluntary programs in regard to an owners participation. The only difference here is that Sig isn’t specifically advising owners Not To Use the pistols they currently possess because of the safety concerns. In the automotive industry, manufacturers are required by law to issue recalls in regard to identified safety defects, but they are still often call “voluntary” as well.
Right now, this is much more like how the Automotive Industry handles recalls. I’ve never heard of a manufacturer telling people to stop driving a car immediately, but some recall issues have been very serious.The fact is that people NEED to drive their cars everyday and the relatively low risk of an obscure failure doesn’t justify what it would cost a company to fund alternative transportation for hundreds of thousands of car owners. Somewhere someone does that math and quickly comes to the conclusion that 2 or 3 wrongful death settlements are cheaper than renting cars for a month for everyone who owns a Honda Civic manufactured between 2011 and 2013. The issue of whether or not car owners should be required to participate in recall repairs is one that is under debate.
Sig’s approach is something we haven’t seen in our community, but it isn’t completely out of product liability left field.
My concern is that it will encourage complacency on the part of current P320 Owners… and that’s where leaders, instructors, range owners and all responsible gun owners come into play. We need to police our own on this issue. Unless you are in a Armed Professional position and issued a P320 with no other alternative being offered (which at this point would surprise me), you don’t NEED to carry a P320. You don’t need to shoot a P320. You don’t need to have a loaded P320 staged for defense in your house. You certainly don’t need to bring that gun to a class and subject yourself or anyone else to even a really really really small risk that a manufacturer’s acknowledge design weakness could cause injury or death. Yes, I am aware that firearms training carries inherent risks… I talk about it at every class. Allowing that risk envelope to include a gun that a manufacturer is spending tens of millions of dollars to fix a flaw in can’t be justified by the fact that we accept other reasonable and necessary risks. My advice to all instructors, range owners and others who have influence on this issue to that they should push P320 owners to do the right thing and take Sig up on their offer to fix the gun. For what it’s worth, this policy extends to all non-drop-safe pistols and that isn’t anything new. I check or ask about 1911’s and any modified modern guns in my classes.
Out if curiosity… since the ‘test’ the P320 failed was above and beyond the SAAMI (et al) required tests for striker fired handguns, shouldn’t ALL striker fired handguns be banned from your classes until they pass the same battery of tests?
Rob, my policy is better stated this way: All guns that are _known_ and acknowledged by the manufacturer to have this type of problem will be (or already are) restricted. This ceased to be a subjective choice the minute that Sig acknowledged the issue and committed tens of millions of dollars to fix it. It would be negligent on my part not to follow their lead and reckless on the part of any 320 owner not to send their gun in for the upgrade. Even close partners of Sig, such as GrayGuns, are recommending the same.