"The gun just went off."

That's the mantra of most people involved in a negligent discharge. The gun didn't just go off, of course. Not in most cases, anyway.

Unless you have something like a Sig Sauer P320, which reportedly has had a lot of issues with the weapon firing under certain conditions. Namely dropping it.

We reported on that one a time or two, including the recall notice from Sig Sauer.

Yet it seems the problems weren't resolved with just a recall. Now, Sig is on the hook for a big payday to one person.

An Alpharetta man has won $2.3 million at trial against gun maker Sig Sauer after being shot in the thigh while removing his holstered pistol from his belt.

Robert Lang claimed Sig Sauer defectively designed its P320 model and failed to warn customers about the potential for it to discharge unintentionally. A jury in the federal trial court in Atlanta agreed, awarding Lang $2.3 million in damages on Thursday.

Sig Sauer “strongly disagrees” with the verdict and will appeal it, the company said in a news release.

“There are no facts on the record to support that Mr. Lang’s discharge claim was the result of anything other than his own negligent handling causing him to pull the trigger on the P320 pistol,” Sig Sauer said.

Lang, 37, claimed the pistol fired while inside the holster, where he couldn’t reach the trigger, as he attempted to unclip the holster from his belt. He said a bullet tore through his upper right thigh, exiting just above his knee.

The jury found that Lang was not negligent in handling his Sig Sauer pistol, which he bought in March 2018 for just over $700.

Now, I've been critical of the P320 controversy since it first broke, but I have to say that I think Sig might actually have a point here.

The issue with the P320 was always about it not being drop-safe. Should the weapon land in a certain way--right on the butt-end of the slide--it could jar the weapon in such a way as to cause the weapon to fire.

Nothing we've seen before suggested just it would just fire while inside the holster without the drop.

Honestly, I have a ton of questions about this one.

However, we also need to remember that Sig Sauer had a chance to make their case before the jury. They failed to make that case sufficiently, and while civil trials like this don't have the same burden or proof that a criminal trial would, they still failed to satisfy the jurors.

On the flip side, this is evidence that yes, manufacturers can in fact be sued and sued successfully. You can sue them for their own failures just fine, which is what this particular case revolved around. You just can't sue them for what someone else does with the weapons they make.

Which shouldn't even be a consideration, but here we are.

Sig Sauer changed parts of the design of the P320 after the drop testing of some YouTube channels found the issue, ostensibly to prevent such a discharge from happening. This would have been around the time Lang bought his pistol, which means that if you buy one today, it should be perfectly safe to do so.

But what happens next should be of interest to the gun community as a whole.