I own a couple of different brands of handguns: SIG, Glock, S&W, Kimber, Tisas, Beretta, and a couple of others I won’t mention because people will make fun of me for it. ;) And about five different variants of the P320, including M17, VTAC, X5, and a couple I assembled from parts. I wouldn’t own any the fund mentioned if Indisnt think they were safe and effective.
I’ve said before that I do not consider myself an expert in shooting or on firearms in general. And as always on this site, I’m speaking in my personal capacity and not as a rep of any organization. But our entire team is equipped with 320 variants and has been for years. That’s 20+ cadets on the range at least three days a week shooting thousands of rounds a semester doing action shooting.
Action shooting includes lots of drawing from the holster. Lots of swapping grip modules and FCUs. Lots different ammo types. Lots of unskilled (at first) shooters. Lots of running, crawling, sliding, jumping, squatting… you get the idea. On top of what we do, the school trains thousands of cadets a year on M17 basics. Out team trains the installation level Best Ranger/Best Sapper and people who want to prep for GAFB. The guns get shot, and holstered/unholstered (and even dripped; it’s action shooting) a lot. I don’t know of a single case of an uncommanded fire or a round going off that wasn’t a conspicuous ND.
We do a lot of T&E with our guns. We tried and were unable to replicate uncommanded discharges of the type we’ve heard about up to this point, although I saw a video a couple of days ago that I’m going to try when I get back to school.
I fully recognize that there could be problems that we simply haven’t encountered yet. I’m personally very concerned that there have been so many reports of these incidents. But if the chain of command here asked me if we should shelve the 320s—which they won’t because there are many people here much more knowledgeable than I am on this kind of thing—then based on what we know right now I’d feel comfortable saying “no.”
For now.
If the data changes later, I’ll change my opinion.