Fatal F.E. Warren Shooting Further Hurts Sig Sauer’s Already-Damaged Reputation

Sig Sauer’s reputation was already damaged before one of its pistols was reportedly involved in a fatal shooting at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, so the company faces a monumental challenge winning back customers’ trust, some Wyoming firearms experts said.

The Air Force pulled Sig Sauer M18 pistols from use in the wake of the July 20 shooting death of serviceman Brayden Lovan, 21. 

The shooting was initially framed as a possible unintentional firing of the M18 pistol. 

That didn’t bode well for Sig Sauer. The M18 is the military version of the company’s P320 pistol, which had been involved in numerous alleged unintentional firings, which led to a 2022 lawsuit against the company. 

And the company’s woes go back even farther. When P320 was introduced in 2014, it was allegedly prone to “drop firing” – or going off unintentionally when dropped. 

The fatal shooting at F.E. might not be a simple case of weapon malfunction. Authorities announced earlier this month that a person was arrested in connection with the shooting, on suspicion of manslaughter, making a false statement and obstructing justice. 

However, in terms of marketing and public perception, the damage might already be done, said Scott Weber of Cody, the retired owner of Gunrunner Firearms & Auctions in Cody. 

The incident at F.E. Warren “will reverberate into the commercial market,” Weber told Cowboy State Daily. 

“It’s a cause of considerable alarm” on the company’s part, added Weber, who also worked as a representative for the Beretta firearms company. 

Sig Sauer’s response to allegations of its pistols unintentionally firing could make or break its reputation, Jason Crotteau, who runs the Riverton-based Wyoming Tactical shooters training company, told Cowboy State Daily. 

“At the end of the day, I think what’s hurting Sig more is that they keep doubling down and blaming the users, instead of saying, ‘Hey, maybe something’s going on (with the pistols), and we need to look into them,” he said. 

‘Striker-Fire’ Pistols Take Over The Market

Crotteau said he carried a Sig Sauer pistol as his duty weapon when he worked as a security contractor. 

However that was a P229 model – a pistol with an external hammer. 

The P320/M18 pistols are striker-fired. That design doesn’t have an external hammer – and quite often, no manual safety switch either.

That means when the pistols are carried with a round in the firing chamber – as military and law enforcement personnel routinely do – it takes only a pull of the trigger to fire them. 

No safety needs to be clicked off first. 

A pistol with no safety switch might seem a bit too spooky for some. 

Weber said he prefers pistols with the older, external-hammer design. 

When he worked for Beretta, the standard military-issue pistol was 9 mm Beretta M9, which has an external hammer and safety switch. 

The switchover to the M18 sparked a lively debate over whether the military should issue a striker-fire pistols, he said.

Crotteau said the striker-fire design has been hugely successful for decades and is widely used by law enforcement. 

If there is, indeed, a problem with some Sig Sauer pistols, it’s probably because of some flaw specific to those models, not the striker-fired pistol design itself, he said. 

Weber noted that any pistol model that’s in military service goes through rigorous testing, both before it is issued, and afterward. 

‘We Had A Bunch Of Them Coming Back’

Sometimes when things go wrong in the field, bad pistol design is blamed, when human error is to blame, Weber said. 

He recalled one incident during his tenure with Beretta when a law enforcement officer claimed her duty pistol “stove-piped” (jammed) when she was trying to fire back at a violent suspect. 

A probe into the incident revealed that the pistol jammed because the officer had an improper grip on it, he said.

“She had grabbed the very bottom of the pistol’s grip (and) had three fingers below the magazine,” Weber said.

The slides on semiautomatic pistols sometimes won’t cycle properly if the shooter doesn’t use proper grip. 

As for Sig Sauer’s alleged problems, Weber said that when stories of P320 pistols drop-firing were circulating, he noticed that a many people started dumping them.

“Man, we had a lot of them come back into the auction,” he said.

Crotteau said he’s also seen the effects of Sig Sauer’s alleged problems.

“I’ve seen people say, ‘I’m going to put this pistol back in the box for a while, until we figure out what’s going on,’” he said. 

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.