The active-duty Security Forces airman, assigned to the base's 90th Security Forces Squadron, "died on base while on duty" in the early morning hours Sunday, a news release from the base said.
Common striker pistols are liked for the consistency of their triggers and the easy manual of arms. Beretta M9s are perfectly safe, but their double action first trigger pulls are tremendously heavy. Additionally the all metal framed M9s while durable are very large and heavy for what they do and they lack some more amenities like out of the box optics compatibility. Replacing them made sense, and replacing them with a polymer striker handgun which is lighter, easier to train, and has modern features made sense. Choosing the Sig over the other designs didn’t make sense.
Striker pistols really aren’t any more or less inherently safe than other designs. The tradeoff for consistency with most striker pistols is that the triggers tend to be somewhat “mushy” with part of the trigger pull always tensioning the spring for the striker before releasing. The designs just can’t hit the lightness of single action pulls. It’s a downside, but a minor one especially for a combat pistol.
The Sig design “solved” this problem by making a striker design where the spring is always fully tensioned, which cuts down on what the trigger pull is doing. I think the best theory on the problems revolve around that. In this design rather than the trigger pull first tensioning and then releasing the spring, all it does is release it. This means if the internal parts holding the spring back slip out of position (say due to bad production quality) the spring releases just as if the trigger had been pulled and fired a round. Apparently even the manual safety isn’t preventing this because all the safety is doing is preventing the trigger from moving but it isn’t actually blocking the striker internally.
Slight update/revision to a developing story. This video shows off the sear and striker interaction, along with some plausible theories on what’s making it slip.
Common striker pistols are liked for the consistency of their triggers and the easy manual of arms. Beretta M9s are perfectly safe, but their double action first trigger pulls are tremendously heavy. Additionally the all metal framed M9s while durable are very large and heavy for what they do and they lack some more amenities like out of the box optics compatibility. Replacing them made sense, and replacing them with a polymer striker handgun which is lighter, easier to train, and has modern features made sense. Choosing the Sig over the other designs didn’t make sense.
Striker pistols really aren’t any more or less inherently safe than other designs. The tradeoff for consistency with most striker pistols is that the triggers tend to be somewhat “mushy” with part of the trigger pull always tensioning the spring for the striker before releasing. The designs just can’t hit the lightness of single action pulls. It’s a downside, but a minor one especially for a combat pistol.
The Sig design “solved” this problem by making a striker design where the spring is always fully tensioned, which cuts down on what the trigger pull is doing. I think the best theory on the problems revolve around that. In this design rather than the trigger pull first tensioning and then releasing the spring, all it does is release it. This means if the internal parts holding the spring back slip out of position (say due to bad production quality) the spring releases just as if the trigger had been pulled and fired a round. Apparently even the manual safety isn’t preventing this because all the safety is doing is preventing the trigger from moving but it isn’t actually blocking the striker internally.
That is an enormous yikes. Thank you for taking the time to write an explainer, I appreciate it!
Slight update/revision to a developing story. This video shows off the sear and striker interaction, along with some plausible theories on what’s making it slip.