My feeling was that if the lever was going to be used only as a decocker, it should function only as a decocker. The rest of the police community came to agree with me. The SIG-Sauer, unlike its competitors with similar double-action first shot pistols (later known as TDA, or Traditional Double Action), had a “slick slide.” It was simply not possible to inadvertently on-safe a SIG-Sauer, because there was no such device on the pistol.
Moreover, the SIG’s decocking lever was behind the trigger on the frame, not on the slide. This is a more ergonomic placement. Beretta, Ruger, and S&W eventually offered decocker-only models in which the slide-mounted lever was spring-loaded and could not go “on safe.” Nonetheless, there were two downsides to that design. One was that many officers found it awkward to reach their thumb to the slide to decock, and much more natural to bring the thumb down behind the trigger guard to perform the same function with a SIG. (A left-handed officer with a SIG would use the trigger finger to decock.) The other was that a palm-down slide manipulation could inadvertently decock a gun with a slide-mounted lever when the officer didn’t intend for that to happen, as when reloading or clearing a malfunction. This could be confusing in a high-stress situation…and it couldn’t happen with a SIG. S&W copied the SIG-style decocking lever on the ill-fated Model 1076 10mm they developed for the FBI, and put it on some of their other TDA models (distinguishable by the suffix “26” in their model numbers). However, that version of the S&W decocker proved to be problematic, and S&W soon stopped making guns that way.
Author finds the P226 an accurate pistol in general, and likes the fact that it gives consistent accuracy with a broad range of ammo, as with this 9mm example.
9mm Parabellum was the original chambering for the P226, and is still extremely popular.
Current “stippling” on grips instead of checkering pattern is extremely popular among P226 fans. The purpose is a non-slip grasp in the most stressful situations.
The possibility of accidentally engaging the safety of a pistol with a slide-mounted lever was not just theoretical. Circa 1990 in Dade County, Florida, such an incident occurred in a gunfight. Dade County had authorized their deputies to purchase SIG, Beretta, or S&W 9mm autos, and in transition training the deputies were taught to treat the slide-mounted levers on the latter brands as decockers, not safeties.
The time came when a deputy with a new Beretta was the first to respond to a psycho firing a shotgun in a public place. When the shotgunner came at him, the officer fired one round and missed. Still new to the semiautomatic, he failed to return the trigger far enough forward to re-set it for the second shot, and when he pulled the trigger, the gun of course did not fire. Thinking it had jammed, he racked the slide with his non-dominant hand as he had been taught, clearing a live round from the chamber and cycling another one in. However, his hand had inadvertently pushed the lever down into the “safe” position as he performed the stoppage clearance drill. Now, as he attempted to fire on the gunman who was rapidly closing on him, the trigger moved uselessly under his finger. His life was saved when another policeman, off duty at the scene and armed with a slick-slide 9mm, shot and killed the gunman just in time.
This P226 9mm is in its second generation of protecting the public. Originally issued to a trooper by the Michigan State Police, it was traded in when MSP upgraded to the more powerful .40 caliber version of the P226. This officer purchased it second hand, and wears it to work daily today. It still delivers excellent accuracy and, as he demonstrates, excellent control.
Author found extremely uniform accuracy with awide variety of 9mm ammo when shooting this P226 from the “auto hood position” at 25 yards.
It should be noted that in writing the above, I am not condemning the concept of a safety/ decock lever. I am simply saying that if the decision is made to carry the gun off safe, the gun probably should not have an “on safe” option at all. Moreover, that if the design chosen is “decocker-only,” the frame-mounted decocker as on the SIG makes more sense for more people than does a decocker mounted on the slide. I’ve carried the Beretta, the Ruger, and the S&W TDA autos on duty, but always carried them on-safe and always practiced the off-safing movement as part of the draw, and taught it to my officers who also carried that type of gun.
The SIG, of course, had other attributes. No competitive gun had a better trigger in terms of smoothness of the first double-action shot and controllability of single-action follow-up shots. The trigger re-set of the SIG-Sauer was just right for police work: Not so long as to be ungainly, but not so short as to allow a shaky hand to fire an additional shot unintentionally after the need to shoot had ended.
Accuracy is the P226’s calling card. Behold a one-inch five-shot group, fired at 25 yards from a bench rest with the most popular .357 SIG duty load, the Speer Gold Dot 125-grain jacketed hollow point (JHP).
There was the reliability factor, too. The SIG was simply extraordinary in this regard. The good “feel” and “pointability” repeatedly cited by the authorities quoted above made for good, fast shooting in the hands of the average cop. Competence and confidence were both enhanced by this.
The SIG’s inherent accuracy put it in the forefront, too. The experts cited above told you the straight stuff about that. In my job teaching nationwide, I got to not only intensively test every 9mm out there, but got to observe a great number of them in the hands of officers and instructors. As a rule, the SIG P226 would group tighter than the Glock, the Ruger, and the Smith & Wesson service pistols. Only the Beretta and two of HK’s entries, which eventually numbered four, could keep up. The VP70Z, a machine pistol designed for cheap mass-manufacture turned into a cheap semiautomatic pistol, was never in the same ballpark with the SIG for accuracy, reliability, or ergonomics, and was soon mercifully discontinued. The current HK USP is a good gun, and spectacularly accurate in .45 ACP, but not so accurate in the 9mm specimens I’ve seen. The P9S, discontinued in the 1980s, would stay with or even exceed the SIG-Sauer for accuracy in 9mm, but design quirks such as requiring a pull of the trigger to decock made it unworkable for American law enforcement. The HK P7, then and now, could be expected to keep pace with the SIG in the accuracy department, but its unique squeeze-cocking mechanism turned off as many police departments as its very high price.
The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Rhode Island State Police both issue this .357 SIG P226 to their uniformed troopers. These guns combine great power with extraordinary accuracy, very good controllability, and the highest order of reliability. Full cartridge capacity is 13 rounds in the magazine, and one more in the firing chamber.
Thus, if you’re talking about maximum accuracy in a 9mm service pistol, and you want traditional design plus high reliability plus affordability, you’re down to a two-horse race: SIG and Beretta. The two are almost indistinguishable in this regard, each occasionally beating the other, but if it came down to the wire I would have to admit that in my experience the average SIG P226 9mm will, just by a hair, shoot a little tighter than the average Beretta.
The P226 has a distinguished history in American law enforcement. It has been the service gun