The debate over manual safeties — yay or nay? — on carry guns is hotter than beans or no beans in chili. Whether you’re a “to be” or a “not to be,” SIG now has you covered with the addition of an ambidextrous manual thumb safety-equipped P365 model.
Mounted far at the rear of the pistol, sweeping the safety down with your strong hand thumb is easy and fairly intuitive. It snicks off nicely with a clean, appropriate-strength detent.
Putting it back on, however, takes concerted, specific effort. Which is exactly how it should be. You’ll need to use your support hand to click up the front of the safety lever. It seems like, when down, it has a stronger, tighter detent. It isn’t going to click up on accident.
The lever is steel and fairly low-profile. Naturally, it matches the slide stop and takedown levers on the left side of the gun.
Did I mention it’s ambidextrous? Just don’t ask Chris to try and pronounce that word.
Also new and exciting is the P365 in NRA Coyote flavor. Not the best time to co-brand with the NRA, but hey. Maybe they’ll change it to “scours tan” or “hipster toasted almond butter” or something better than literally anything preceded by “NRA.”
Now this is cool. A “K” sized MPX, which looks great and makes perfect sense to me unlike that Copperhead monstrosity with the permanent chess piece muzzle device thing that can’t accept a suppressor. Sign me up for this one!
Never really understood the whole manuel safety/no safety controversy. I’ve been in multiple high stress situations where I deployed different handguns. Mostly 1911s, but also Glocks, HK P7, DA revolvers, etc. Never forgot what I was carrying, or how it worked. No DA/SA though. The idea always seemed like an answer looking for a question. Like I said before; been in a lot of high speed pursuits, also high stress, never forgot where the brake pedal was. Despite claims otherwise, everyone needs training.
I’m sure Ernest Langdon could show you the merits of DA/SA.
Oh… I want a coyote colored P365. Please out on the Cali roster.
Ha!
This is great news. The lack of manual safety is what has kept me from getting a P365 now that they have the kinks worked.
I don’t understand, this is not a DAO, so a safety and double action to pull a trigger is to much.
There are many people who love unnecessary manual safeties such that they can burden their CNS with one more thing to learn. The side bonus is that it is another part on the gun which can fail. See, complicated is better so manual safety it is!
The manual safety on my Sig Sauer P238 broke off. I was effectively disarmed until I got home and repaired it.
That said, if I’m appendix carrying, I like a DAO revolver or a manual safety so as to reduce the likelihood of shooting off my dick.
you are more likely to shoot yourself while holstering your pistol and getting ready for the day than shoot a bad guy. for that, either a pistol need to have a manual safety or a glock safety on the trigger so that it cant be discharged by dragging on the inside of a holster.
I finally took a look at the 365 yesterday. I just happened to need a bushing for a 1911 so I took a look.
I wasn’t impressed. I expected to see a miniature gun below a sub-compact size. What I did see was a gun about the same size as my P938 with a round or 2 more. And a crappy trigger.
I guess its the plastic fantastic trigger that gets some of you going. Not me.
Ill stay with a single action gun for my needs.
Only safety one needs with a DAO gun is KEEP yur finger off the Booger switch till yur ready to fire it.
For the rest who do own the P365. Safety or not.
Lets hope you never need the gun, and enjoy it at the range.
The trigger on the P365 is great. It holds 10 in the magazine, which I’m pretty sure you’ll find is 4 more (aka 67%) than the P938. And it’s skinnier.
Jeremy
Of the 7 plastic guns I have bought in the last year. Ive kept 2 of them.
One is a PPQ-SC. I also have a Canik TP9SA Ive kept as my in home gun.
I didn’t find anything about the P365s trigger even close to those 2 guns. Those 2 have excellent triggers. Im a 1911 type and find it hard to use any other type of trigger personally.
The P938s trigger is nothing to be proud of for a single action gun by the way.
I promise at some point. Ill probably give the 365 a more then 2 minute look. It would be nice to find a range I use that has one to rent.
jay you sound old and so, so tired.
I find the 365 trigger to be completely mediocre as well. Maybe if I didn’t hear from Sig’s marketing that it has an “excellent, crisp trigger” so many times I would have liked it more. I come from owning a VP9, A colt 1911, and numerous revolvers. All of those have excellent triggers.
The other problem is that a small gun is small, not big. I’d like a little, concealable 9 mm gun that costs $500 to be perfect in every way. I won’t be happy until the can sell a little gun that’s big, but is also small.
I just went from a 938 to a 365 as a pocket EDC actually. If I was comparing the two in a vacuum I’d call it a marginal improvement- distinctly better for capacity, slightly better ergos, slightly softer shooting (probably the polymer frame, the 938 with Hogue grips is about on par but the thin G10 panels I put on to slim it up make it a noticeably rougher experience). I think the trigger pull feels too different to fairly compare, but I guess I’ll say that the 365 has as good a striker-fired trigger as the 938 has a 1911 derivative trigger.
For me, though, the 365 is the very clear winner because of its versatility- where I used to pocket carry a 938 and keep a Glock 26 as a fallback/IWB/nightstand option, I now have something that offers 90% of the 938’s portability and 90% of the G26’s capability in all other roles. Of all the things that both of those offered me, all I lose by going to the P365 alone is the use of 15+ round mags and a marginal amount of velocity compared to the 26. Hell, give me a +4 baseplate and a slightly longer aftermarket barrel and I lose nothing. I still very much like and plan to use both the 938 and the 26, but being able to do everything they did to an acceptable degree with a single pocketable pistol instead is huge for me.
Now I just have to sit back and wait for someone to satisfy my greedy hopes for things like a 20+ round mag and a PC carbine magwell adapter. From my keyboard to God’s ears…..
I got to shoot my friend’s 365 in December and I thought the trigger was excellent. Not too heavy at all; it worked well for me. I still don’t own one but I might someday. It’s smaller than my G26 but holds the same amount of rounds.
I understand most complaints about the 365, but not “crappy trigger” complaints. I’ve shot guns with crappy triggers; the 365 isn’t one of those.
My P365’s trigger is fine with me. As for magazine capacity, you don’t seem to have seen the 12 rnd factory mags for a total capacity of 13. This is quite a bit more than “a round or two more” than the P938’s capacity.
I have not seen nor know about any 12 rounder for the 365.
Im not closed off to looking into it more.
Lets just say my personal experience with Sig as a customer. Hasn’t been a good one.
I did buy one of the 1st P238s when it came out.
Its been sitting in my safe for 7 years. Good for a paperweight not much else.
I waited 3 years before getting the P938.
The 365 maybe next year??
No more beta testing Sigs for me.
Jay,
I believe you live in south Florida, like me.
Palm Beach Shooting Center in Lake Worth has the Sig 365 for rent.
It is the exact same size as my Sig 938 and holds 12 rounds.
I believe Kimber has an eight round magazine for their clone of the 938.
It will fit and function in the Sig, so you can at least have an eight round magazine for the Sig 938.
Sig will have 15 rounders for then p365xl that fit the original p365.
Great to have 15 for your spare mag, and for people who own just one gun it means the p365 will be good for that role too
I’ve had a P365 for about a year now, hasn’t gone bang on its own yet and has no “safety” switch. Ditto with the G43 I carried for 5 years or so. In reality, both have a safety- me.
To me, the real advantage of the manual safety is when you’re trying to re-holster with one hand.
I always use one hand to re-holster my P365…with no finger in the trigger guard there is no subsequent BANG! from the pistol. If you’re using two (or more hands) to holster your weapon then you probably should check out a different holster or review your technique.
Thumbs
One of the big reasons for my preference for external hammers Is one-handed re holstering.
Thumbs
When the adrenaline is gushing, and you are gasping for breath with your blood pressure pounding in your ears … and your support hand is very busy … hanging onto hair, hide, shirt, and coat of struggling Freddy Felon, … you really need to rapidly and safely re holster so that you can get your cuffs out … while your vision and attention are riveted to area threat scanning and analysis.
If you happen to be wearing a really good holster on a really good stiff Sam Browne (duty belt), the odds of a ND are fairly low.
When I was a young troop and we all carried 357 revolvers or 1911 pistols, the risk of a ND was acceptably low.
Our thumb flipped the safety or rode the hammer down into the holster.
Our thumb immediately warned us of any unusual development.
Thumbs
Today there are a lot of folks carrying striker fired pistols and using rigid thin shell Kydex holsters, the edge of which can easily snag a trigger.
Even more exciting, quite often, they are using “concealed carry” rigid thin shell Kydex IWB holsters, so that their coat and / or shirt collapses into the holster.
They feel “lucky”.
Thumbs
Now into my mid 70s, I have witnessed a number of NDs, … two of them my own.
Do you feel lucky?
I don’t.
I know better.
Each and every firearm is subject to firing if it is mishandled…that is a given…whether or not that particular weapon has a manual safety, passive safety or ??.
I only have three Kydex holsters and rarely use them…prefer old-school leather carry gear…that said, tens of thousands of people use Kydex every day with minimal issues.
Wrestling with Freddy Felon to cuff him / her up…those days are behind me…I do not carry handcuffs as an armed citizen.
ND’s: I have one to my credit. A Beretta 950BS Minx back in 1982..put one into the floorboard of the patrol car…stopped carrying it as a BUG that same day.
As far as feeling lucky…no, I don’t. I believe in exercising due diligence each and every time I handle a firearm and especially when carrying.
Judging by your post you are all thumbs…we each have our crosses to bear.
V/R,
OGiM
There should be no issue reholstering one handed. Unless of course you have some shitty ass holster that collapses in on itself.
I, for one, applaud them for offering a variant with a manual safety.
The stupidity of the pistol market is that everyone thinks that the be-all-end-all design in pistols is to clone a Glock – because so many people in marketing departments think that they’re going to get a piece of Glock’s sales if they have a Glock clone.
Look, for all those marketing and sales guys in competing gun companies, here’s a tip: If you want to get contracts the way Glock did, then you need to do government sales the way Glock did: Hookers and blow.
If you want to compete with Glock on a basis of feature-for-feature, quality, etc – then quit trying to be Glock and start being better than Glock. The option of a manual safety (or a grip safety) is one of the ways you can be better than Glock. Add in features like a magazine disconnect (S&W didn’t make their semi-autos for LEO’s with mag disconnects for no reason), and you might pick up some more sales.
Perhaps we can hope that the long, national drought in handgun innovation is coming to a close.
Smart move by Sig. Now they will have a whole new big group of people who will buy this model which they did not do so before because it had no manual safety. No one is immune from making a mistake and without a manual safety its just a matter of time before you do make a mistake. Its called the law of averages or in more the more modern vernacular “Murphy’s Law” which is any bad thing that can happen to you will happen to you when you are walking around with a gun at full cock and there is no manual safety to prevent the gun from going off with an accidental snag of the trigger. No one in their right mind would carry a revolver at full cock because it has no manual safety so why would you do it with an auto at full cock that also has no manuals safety. There is no difference, none, they both fire if the trigger is accidentally snagged by you, or your holster or your clothing. Think about it awhile and it will sink in.
Every firearm has a safety. It’s called keeping your booger hook off the bang bang switch.
gods I cannot wait until that trite overused phrase ‘booger hook / bang switch’ dies.
it was funny once, about 10 years ago. it’s become a cringe inducing indicator of unoriginal thought.
that and ‘just the sound of a shotgun being racked…’
the most important safety is the one between your ears lol the fudds give themselves away
Yeah, the people every year who shoot their dick or femoral artery can go drop dead. I know that *I* would never do that because I’m the Donald Trump of handgunology. Not even with a Blackhawk holster.
So, can anyone tell me when the Sig P365 will be available with the manual safety? I have been delaying my purchase of the P365 until it was out.
Waiting for the “Grip Zone” version. THAT will be worth 550 bucks.
So I’m thinking, “Why are gun folks such arrogant, opinionated @ssh*les?”, and then I realized, when guys discuss any kind of gear on social networks, they’re arrogant, opinionated @ssh*les. Carry on.
This is why the Springfield XD system is so brilliant – both a grip safety and trigger safety that have to work together – keep your hand off the grip safety and if the trigger snags on something while holstering, nothing happens – BRILLIANT – many Glock NDs happen as cops reholster and something snags the trigger 🙀
I’m always impressed with, “The only safety I need is the one between my ears because I’m not smart enough to remember to flick a manual safety off under stress.” Those people should probably stick to automatics in their cars; a stick shift would overwhelm them under stress.
Yeah because driving is just as stressful as being violently attacked. You are fucking retarded.
I have 365 for about 5 months and shoot about 1000 rounds throw it
Great gun with own personality which sb understood
I have plenty of other guns to compare to 365 and like 365
Trigger on 365 is not competition trigger and need training to understood how to handle it
It’s difenetly better than on 238 but still not competition trigger
Try to shoot it very slow and you will see how accurate it can be
I been able to shoot about 2 inch group (32 rounds) on 18 yards range with slow fire – 2 hand
Same distance rapid fire (20 seconds 32 rounds – 10 + 10 + 12) shoot lower 4 – 5 inches due to the trigger pull
I replaced my p938 for a p365 for two reasons: first, magazine capacity. The 938 has half capacity of a 365 if you use a 12 round mag. That’s one less mag change when shooting a string. Competition or self defense, that’s one less potential bobble and being off target out of ammo.
Those 938 mags have high pressure springs to present ammo quickly for the very light slide which acts with a high cyclic speed. All short barreled 9’s have that issue – same as short barreled .45’s – using the same ammo as your 5″ gun, the shorter barrel may get slightly lesser bullet velocity however the slide speed ramps up traveling faster and also having less length to function in.
Reloading those 938 mags is a PITA – and as I got older I realized would require a mag loader to accomplish for an enjoyable range trip. No, I’m not buying a dozen mags to get around that, it’s still a thumb bruiser getting rounds in. More mags doesn’t make it better.
The 365 double stack mag isn’t light, either, especially a new one getting in the last rounds, but after a number of reloads the 938 wasn’t improving. Plenty of 365 owners discuss their mags becoming less of a problem – and plenty of them also use mag reloaders to speed it up. I was going to use a reloader, might as well put in more ammo, too. Higher capacity is another one of those improvements we adopted decades ago, the John Browning Improved Combat Pistol known as the HiPower being a good example. He had to get around his own patents he sold to Colt, and we are better off for it. 25 years of progress then still makes a better pistol now.
Second issue, the 938 reassembly process – it’s not clean and easy with guide rod/spring issues that no other 1911 in my experience creates. The guide spring isn’t light, either – cyclic speeds are high. The P365 is substantially easier, even tho a striker. No unsafe trigger pulling, which is the up to date configuration, and no safety blade, either. Not the vintage 1980’s striker technology of yesteryear. Really – Glock started up on that over 40 years ago. There has been a lot of auto striker design improvement since. HK started the polymer trend, Kahr with patents internally, SIG, too.
These issues with the 938 exist because it’s based on 1911 engineering which means it’s 120 year old thinking about how an auto pistol can work. The 365 incorporates concepts we have learned along the way – and the FCU unit offers other opportunities down the road you can take advantage of. Don’t like the size of the grip, get the bigger one. Color? Change it, about a 1 minute process no gunsmith involved. Same with customizing – laser engraved available, new shapes, etc. All you or I get to change on the 938 is some panels, which aren’t competitively priced. Finishes, etc are higher skill work for the most part.
Need or want a safety – the 938 is safety only, don’t use it if that’s your choice, the 365 is with or without – it can be removed and will not alter the operation of other parts, and can be added with the minor change to adding a small relief in that easy to work on grip unit. Another easy option denied the 938 owner. You get it the way it is and like it.
Overall, the 365 is another step in the incremental improvement of the modern auto pistol design vs the 938’s dated thinking from the introductory era of auto’s competing with revolvers. BAck then they were hampered by only having intuitive engineering absent any computer aided processes. It was all “old school” back then, right down to how do we make the parts – post blacksmith era. The Iron Age. Frankly, locomotives and the awakening electrical market got the advanced thinkers then. It took John Moses Browning another 25 years to introduce his Improved Combat Pistol – posthumously – that we now call the HiPower. He had to work around his patents, and in so doing pushed the design of the auto pistol to incorporate double stack mags, SA/DA, easier take down, etc.
We are better off for it. If we lived in the right timeline, the CMP would be selling all the 1911’s dated prior to 1971 as curios and relics with direct shipping to our homes. Hmm? Why would I want to purchase something with that old a design for self defense in this day and age? I can’t even find a dial pay phone on the street anymore (and I was still using one in GTMO in 2001.) The 1911 replaced the revolver, they are both antiques in terms of design, manufacture, and use philosophy, same as a 34 Chevy Coupe. Fine for a sunny Sunday, for serious work we choose otherwise.
F150 here with EFI, automatic, air, four wheel discs. And use a smart phone. Phooey on old guns. A lot of older guys might post up objection to this point of view, but I suspect they aren’t using a Texas Instruments and audible modem with the receiver stuck into the cups. I moved on from three on the tree and a Amstrad, too.
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