User u/loco5oh posted "Officer safety. RE: Equipment. Accidental discharge on a traffic stop." which I've am sharing the photos and text post from for this article. The following post is what is posted:
Two nights ago my partner ( younger officer) and I conducted a traffic stop. I was driving, 2018 Dodge Charger, he was the front seat passenger. I call out the traffic stop, he jumps out of the car to get to the violators vehicle and BOOM, his gun goes off. I say, WTF! My ears are ringing, I'm dazed, I smelled burned gun powder and I see smoke and debris hovering over the front seats. I ask the kid if he's OK, he is. I make sure I don't have a hole in me somewhere, I don't. We finish the stop. No meth, unfortunately. Now, what the hell happened with the gunfire in my brand new car?!?!
We carry the full frame P320 with Streamlight Tac Light and Safariland holster, I double check my weapon and I'm good. We look at my partners weapon and the bottom of his holster is blown out. We had to work the gun out of his holster. I drop the mag and pull back the slide, out pops a spent .40 caliber shell casing. The spent shell casing in the chamber all but guaranteed the kid didn't pull the trigger himself, so what the hell happened?My first thought goes to the voluntary upgrade on the 320's after the whole gun drop incidents. But we were issued new "upgraded" 320s. Plus the only thing he could have hit his gun on while getting out of the car was the door frame. Now with the hood up on the holster, covering the back of the gun that would be virtually impossible, but it's the only thing that made any sense. This bugged me for a day. So, I go sit in the front passenger seat of the car to see exactly how he hit the gun to make it fire and then I figured it out. I looked down towards my gun on my right hip and I see the seat belt buckle hanging at the same height as the trigger of my Sig. Yup, the seat belt buckle almost killed a cop.I had already called our Sig rep and he hadn't got back to me until after I made the discovery of the evil seat belt. When I reached out to him, the only thing I mentioned was the gun going off and no one pulled the trigger. He got back to me and asked if we had lights on our guns, I said yes. He asked if we used Safariland holsters, I said yes. He said, you're driving a Dodge Charger aren't you. Ummm, yeah. He then tells me that this is the 5th or 6th incident of this type. Said it's a known issue with the Safariland holsters and in order for the holster to allow the Sig to have an attached light, there is a larger than normal gap between the firearm and the inside of the holster. This gap, in extremely rare circumstances, can allow items into the holster that can engage the trigger. He also stated the holsters came with a small warning label in the holster packaging itself stating this. Well, I'm not big on reading warning labels on holsters, so I thought I come here and share this story for those of you that also do not read the holster warning labels.We went to the hardware store and bought replacement seat belt stop buttons that raise the hieght of the belt buckle to hopefully prevent a future incident.
(seat belt where it falls near the holster)
(scratches on the trigger)
Now, I don't believe for a second that the only contributing factor here is that a seat belt, just happen to perfectly fall into a safariland light bearing holster and than, that and only that, contributed to this officer's P320 going off. The officer states that this P320 is the "upgraded" version which doesn't randomly fire, I am very highly suspicious about P320's and SIG's QC of recent years. There have been several reports of "upgraded P320's" going off while holstered, there have been some PD's which have went to the P320 and then went back to what they were using after the guns went off randomly, SIG has tried to keep this pretty quiet but this what happens when you develop a pistol too quickly that's got some serious issues that required a good bit of redesign (read: expensive) to fix. However, the P320, while suspect, is just one particular issue here, and while causation may very be probability and correlation here, I believe there may be some other issues.
In the very short video above a LEO demonstrates how much room there is in many safariland weapon light holsters. There is a channel which allows for, not only the light to be inserted easily, but anything else.
One of the issues in this particular situation is that we have all thrown seat belts off of ourselves while getting out of the vehicle in a hurry, they made dents in the plastic/rubber pillar pretty easily. A metal belt retention buckle can easily collide with the rear of a P320 and set it off potentially.
I stopped using light bearing duty holsters because of this reason, too much that can go wrong. However, since the above pictured Safariland 7TS
came out you can clearly see an attempt to help the issue be resolved. The officer involved in the above post was using an older holster, which clearly has/had issues.
came out you can clearly see an attempt to help the issue be resolved. The officer involved in the above post was using an older holster, which clearly has/had issues.
Personally, I will continue to stay away from P320's and light bearing holsters for this particular reason. If you are required to have either, or both, please make sure you get yourself a decent holster like the 7TS, which has been more thoroughly thought through.
This is a classic case of companies blaming other companies for possible issues they themselves have not fixed and/or experienced. I get it, lots of exposure to liability out there and everyone wants to mitigate it in any way possible. Judge for yourself, it's your reputation.