In 2020, Detective Brittney Hilton was in Bridge City, Texas, at the police station house when she grabbed her purse and then heard a loud bang.
Her own weapon had discharged and fired a round through her leg. Fortunately, the shot wasn’t lethal and Hilton has since made a recovery – but it’s not the first time something like this has happened.
The weapon that Hilton had on her is the SIG Sauer P320. It’s one of the most popular handguns in the U.S, but at least 120 people have claimed that it’s fired on its own.
SIG Sauer has repeatedly claimed that its gun isn’t defective, but in the past few years, law enforcement agencies have started taking them out of rotation – and in some cases, are selling them back into the public.
Ava Sasani is an assistant editor with the Trace, an outlet that reports on gun violence. She joined Texas Standard to discuss a recent investigation into this practice. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: We have a semi-automatic handgun that many claim is firing on its own. Do we know if people have been injured or killed by this?
Ava Sasani: Yeah, so there’s been at least one report or allegation of a death happening from an accidental discharge with a P320 that happened in October of last year. A man in Pennsylvania allegedly had a holstered P320 that fired and, unfortunately, killed him.
We also know that at least 110 people have claimed that they’ve been injured by this gun firing accidentally.
SIG Sauer says this gun’s not defective, so what’s its explanation for why it seems to be firing on its own?
So the company has been pretty consistently saying that these stories of the gun firing on its own are actually user error. You know, there was something on the part of the gun owner that maybe was negligent and caused the gun to fire.
But they’ve been pretty steadfast in maintaining that the gun cannot fire without a trigger pull.
Well, I imagine there have been lawsuits about this. How has that played out in court?
Yeah, a ton of lawsuits, especially in the past year.
So most of them have been dismissed. A big problem, without going too much into the weeds, is there are certain requirements for when you have a weapons specialist in court. And if you don’t have a weapon specialist that meets a certain legal standard, it’s very easy for the attorneys for SIG Sauer to get that thrown out.
SIG did win one jury trial in 2022, but then more recently last year, SIG Sauer experienced two court defeats in 2024 – settlements worth a total of $13 million.
Well, as part of your investigation, you found some Texas law enforcement agencies have actually sold these guns back into the general public as they’ve gotten rid of them on the force. Where did you find that this happened?
Yes, so there are a couple of places. There is Laredo Police Department, Killeen, Burnet, and Bridge City.
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And have they said anything about why they’re taking them out of rotation? I mean, the assumption would be they’re not good enough for police at that point, right?
Yeah, you know, Bridge City, where we did see an accident that pretty significantly injured one of their officers, their leadership told us the gun that was owned by the officer that was injured was not traded in, but the rest were. So, it’s a little bit confusing if the departments like Bridge City are getting rid of every gun out of an abundance of caution.
But in terms of that caution being extended to civilian gun buyers, they’re saying, well, these other weapons weren’t involved in any accidents, so they’re safe for civilian use.
I guess you’re watching this. Are others calling out the danger? Do they see issues with these P320s being sold back into the general public, or has it really gone under the radar?
It’s mostly just an accepted police practice.
It’s similar to how you trade in an old car, right? So if you’re trading in a used car, you get part of the value of that car put towards a future purchase.
It’s the same thing with guns and weapons. So police departments get sometimes tens of thousands of dollars from trading in their old weapons, and that money is used to buy upgraded equipment.
