8 Aug 99
My friends at S&W tell me that they have had the same occasional light hammer hit with the Sigma pistol as we often see with Glocks. Once in a while, a cartridge with a hard primer fails to go off in a Glock. Pistols with a traditional, arching hammer rarely experience the problem.
I believe this is a problem endemic to striker-fired pistols. None of them will ever have ignition as reliable at that of hammer-fired pistols. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it is something to which we must all resign ourselves.
Trigger-cocking, hammer-fired pistols have heavy triggers but positive ignition. Striker-fired pistols have shorter, lighter triggers, but ignition reliability is never going to be as good.
Lesson: Stoppage-reduction drills are critically important, no matter what kind of pistol you carry!
/John
