The only interesting development has been the convergence of all the major players on the Glock-style striker fired system, due mainly I think to the consistent first-round trigger pull which is a big deal for practical shooting, and a cultural shift towards accepting the... shall we say, less idiot-proof design. Although, everyone except Glock seems to agree that it's a bad idea to require a trigger pull as part of the takedown procedure.
e: And the "low thousands" is because I got tired of spending so much money on ammo
However, there is a distinction in that the essentially safetyless, essentially SAO trigger system is fundamental to the performance of the gun's function, whereas the takedown procedure is more of a peculiar wart of the design. So those idiots end up shooting their walls (and potentially other people) for no reason other than that Gaston Glock didn't want to compromise on the parts count. Typical engineer, I suppose.
The p320 has a great trigger and contours better then the Glock to most people's hand.
It's the same reason why Berretta won out. I wouldn't want my buddy armed with a Glock if they had to shoot at people two to three inches to the side if myself. I also don't want something made of plastic if I'm rolling around in solvents if I'm working some kind of maintenance job.
If they were going to do that then Glock would be the cheapest option. The best Glocks are 0% original Glock parts so I'd assume they'd have an easier time finding manufacturers that could do quality at a lower price point.
Welcome to the Kafkaesque nightmare that is military procurement.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/03/books/corrupt-from-top-to-...
Is that the design or the use? I assume that the average civilian weapon probably goes through orders of magnitude less ammunition.
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/2015/02/17/g...
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/08/25/thumb-safety-g...
Don't get me wrong. I love the Glock 19 and 26, they're great. But I wouldn't recommend them as first pistols. There's a hell of a lot going on in an autoloader, and another level of "this thing won't go off" is pretty reassuring in the beginning.
Here's a youtube video of exactly that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw-jTCNZSmY
As one of the comments said: "Just another example of a police officer shooting a black man for no reason."
I mentioned I'd carried every day since 2006. Suppose this isn't quite true, and I've only carried 330 days per year (this is too low, but still). Further, we just started 2017, and I started carrying in August 2006. This means I've carried roughly 3,437 days. If my carrying a Glock on any given day is as high as 99.9% safe (i.e., I have a 0.01% chance of a negligent discharge), then I should have a "survival" probability of only 3.2%. If my daily safety probability drops to only 99.7%, my probability of getting to now with no ND is 0.0%. Decreasing my daily safety probability to only 99% means my probability of no ND is 9.95e-14.
Now think about what this means. Either:
1. Carrying a Glock is very unsafe, and I'm incredibly lucky. In this case your claim of survivor bias would be warranted (assuming there weren't many others like me, which there are).
2. Carrying a Glock is very safe, and the chances of an ND are substantially less than 0.01% per day, in which case the charge of survivor bias is unwarranted.
It strikes me that #2 is the clear winner here.
> 99.9% safe (i.e., I have a 0.01% chance of a negligent discharge)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIG_Sauer_P320
Now look at the image of the Army handgun in this article. You can see a difference at the back of the slide, just about where a thumb safety should be. So it appears Sig added one. Wikipedia says (without attribution):
The Modular Handgun System (MHS) or M17
version of the P320 has an ambidextrous
thumb safety.They may well have been a requirement for a manual safety. If there were, I'm surprised that there hasn't been an explicit mention of this. There are rumors that it was down to Glock or Sig:
While a number of companies submitted guns, rumor has it that it came down to Glock and SIG.
https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2017/1/19/the-keef...
If Glock was disqualified for not having a manual safety, why wouldn't it have been eliminated earlier? Also, Glock did include in models submitted for Austrian trials (see comment by 'mrbill upthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13489074). For a contract as large as the US Army, I would imagine Glock would be willing to add a manual safety if it meant they'd get the contract.
Regardless, any of this is speculation unless there are definitive references out there that speak to why Sig was chosen over the other submissions.
[1] http://concealednation.org/2016/02/when-bad-holsters-turn-wo...
[2] https://www.stripes.com/news/disturbing-trend-seen-in-neglig...
Glock was out of the running because lack of a "real" safety and their unwillingness to add one
Sure, there's some albeit circumstantial support for this claim. But so far, that's what it is, and definitely not conclusive.
(As an aside, general arguments comparing the safety of firearms with and without external safeties are all over the internet and not something I'm interested in re-litigating here. I'm interested in knowing whether this played a role in the Army's decision.)
The references you provide here don't do much to further this circumstantial support. [1] is explicitly an argument for better holsters, not safeties. It's not clear that a similar issue would arise in the military. I'm not aware of how frequently the Army uses concealed carry holsters, and poorly designed ones at that.
[2] doesn't break down what weapons were involved with the negligent discharges. Of the two that were described, one was a 9mm pistol, the other an M16 which was on safe. There's a possibility that the pistol was a Glock (or other pistol with no manual safety). The article is from 2004, and the Marine who was killed was part of 3rd Battalion, 6th Regiment, which later became part of Marine Special Operations Command (if I'm reading Wikipedia correctly), which approved the Glock 19 for use only in Marsoc in 2016. It's more likely that it was a Berreta M9, which features a manual safety, given that this is has been the standard issue 9mm pistol for the Marines. Neither of these examples show that safeties prevent negligent discharges.
Don't get me wrong. I'm fine with legitimate discussion about why the Army chose Sig over Glock. I'm by no means arguing that the decision was wrong. I think it's interesting to learn about what criteria come into play and how these decisions are made.