A gun company gave lots of money to Florida lawmakers. Now it's lobbying for legal immunity.
Gunmaker Sig Sauer Inc. is lobbying Florida lawmakers for protection from lawsuits following claims that one of its guns keeps firing without anyone pulling the trigger.
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A major gun manufacturer is lobbying Florida lawmakers for protection from lawsuits, as it tries to escape mounting legal exposure over a popular company-made pistol that can allegedly fire without anyone pulling the trigger.
The company — German-owned Sig Sauer Inc. — has simultaneously begun dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on key figures throughout Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature. Records compiled by Seeking Rents show that Sig Sauer donated more than $300,000 to politicians in Tallahassee on the eve of Florida’s 2026 legislative session, which began Jan. 13.
The company’s pre-session contributions included $50,000 each to House Speaker Danny Perez (R-Miami), Senate President Ben Albritton (R-Wauchula), and Rep. Wyman Duggan, a Republican from Jacksonville who is personally sponsoring Sig Sauer’s proposed legal shield in the state House.
Records show Sig Sauer also recently hired one of the largest lobbying firms in Florida to push the bill through the state Capitol. An initial hearing could come as soon as Thursday morning.
One of the largest firearms manufacturers in the world, Sig Sauer makes the P320, a striker-fired, semi-automatic pistol that became one of the best-selling handguns in the United States after the company introduced it in 2014. Sig Sauer, whose American headquarters are in New Hampshire, says it has sold millions of P320s in the U.S. and that the firearm has been adopted by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.
But soon after Sig Sauer began selling the P320, reports began to emerge of the gun firing without any trigger pull. A 2023 investigation by The Trace and The Washington Post found more than 100 people who alleged their P320 had unintentionally discharged — at least 80 of them were wounded in the shootings, which dated back to 2016.
The tally has since grown to more than 120 claims — and more than 110 injuries, including at least one death — according to a 2025 investigation by The Trace, Reveal, and Mother Jones magazine.
Some victims of the inadvertent shootings have been police officers, which has prompted a number of law enforcement agencies to stop using the P320.
In Florida, for instance, the sheriff’s offices in Pasco and Seminole counties and the city police departments in Tampa, Sanford and Winter Haven have all replaced or begun the process of replacing P320s with different guns. A Republican state representative — Rep. Danny Alvarez, a Tampa-area Republican who is also a police union lawyer — has even called on all law enforcement agencies in Florida to remove the P320 from service, arguing that the gun “may pose an unacceptable risk.”
Sig Sauer, which insists that the P320 is safe, is now fighting negligence and products-liability lawsuits across the country — including at least one current case in Florida, brought by a deputy sheriff in Indian River County who was shot in the calf and ankle when he said his holstered P320 suddenly fired without warning.
Sig Sauer defeated some early claims and settled others. But the potential threat to the company grew dramatically in June 2024, when a jury in Georgia ordered the company to pay $2.35 million to a gun enthusiast who suffered a serious gunshot wound to his thigh when he said his P320 fired while he was removing it from its holster.
The verdict marked the first time that Sig Sauer had been found negligent in a case involving the unintentional firing of a P320, according to New Hampshire Public Radio.
That was soon followed by a second loss in Pennsylvania, where a jury awarded $11 million to an Army vet who was shot in the thigh after he said the holstered P320 he was carrying in his pocket suddenly fired while he was walking down a flight of stairs.
The financial stakes keep rising: In November, Sig Sauer was hit with a new potential class action suit covering 34 people in 23 states.
One of the central claims in many of the lawsuits against Sig Sauer is that company executives knew internally that the P320 had a serious risk of firing without an intentional trigger pull — and yet they still opted not to add safety features, like an external safety or a magazine-disconnect mechanism, that would have driven up the gun’s production costs.
So now the company wants to rewrite the rules and prevent plaintiffs from ever making that argument in court.
That’s what Sig Sauer’s bills in the Florida Legislature would do. House Bill 1551 and Senate Bill 1748 would essentially immunize a gun manufacturer against liability from claims based on absence of safety features that are not mandated by state or federal law.
The Florida legislation is modeled after a bill that Sig Sauer first lobbied for last year in New Hampshire, the company’s home state in the U.S.
Lawmakers in the Granite State slipped Sig Sauer’s immunity shield into another bill late in their legislative process, avoiding any public hearings in which others could have testified against it. New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte quickly signed it into law — and then pocketed a $15,000 campaign contribution from Sig Sauer three weeks later.
Representatives for Sig Sauer did not respond to questions from Seeking Rents — including whether the company is now lobbying for legal shields in other states, too.
Sen. Jay Trumbull, a Republican from Panama City and future Senate president who is sponsoring the Sig Sauer bill in the Florida Senate, did not respond to questions, either.
But Rep. Wyman Duggan, the Jacksonville Republican carrying the legislation in the state House, said he considers it an extension of the Legislature’s efforts in recent years to restrict civil lawsuits against insurance companies and other businesses.
“I see it as a legal issue involving a product that happens to be a firearm, consistent with the reform measures we’ve put in place,” Duggan said.
Duggan said he was not influenced by the $50,000 contribution he received from the company he is now trying to help in Tallahassee. While the lawmaker acknowledged “that’s obviously a large contribution,” Duggan said he had already told Sig Sauer’s lobbyists that he would sponsor their bill before the company wired money into his political committee.
“My policy has been since I first ran for office, if you can’t take the contribution and still tell them no, then you shouldn’t be in politics,” Duggan said.
He’s not the only one benefitting from the sudden largesse of Sig Sauer — a company that records show had no history of making campaign contributions in Florida before it began lobbying the state Legislature for a favor.
Full campaign-finance filings for the period won’t be available until April — well beyond when Florida’s 2026 legislative session is supposed to end. But Seeking Rents reviewed the websites for dozens of fundraising committees set up by individual legislators and found that Sig Sauer has given at least $315,000 to Florida politicians just since December.
In addition to the $50,000 gifts to Duggan, House Speaker Danny Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton, the company also gave $50,000 to Republican Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson and $25,000 to Rep. Lawrence McClure (R-Dover), an influential lawmaker who chairs the House Budget Committee.
The company also gave $10,000 apiece to Sen. Clay Yarborough (R-Jacksonville) and Rep. Chuck Brannan (R-Macclenny), who chair committees in the Senate and House that have oversight of Sig Sauer’s legislation. It also gave $10,000 each to Reps. Mike Redondo (R-Miami) and Josie Tomkow (R-Polk City), and Sen. Jonathan Martin (R-Fort Myers).
And Sig Sauer made $5,000 donations to at least eight more legislators: Reps. Jessica Baker (R-Jacksonville), Mike Giallombardo (R-Cape Coral), Patt Maney (R-Shalimar), Lauren Melo (R-Naples) and Meg Weinberger (R-Palm Beach Gardens), as well as Sens. Jennifer Bradley (R-Fleming Island), Danny Burgess (R-Zephyrhills) and Nick DiCeglie (R-Indian Rocks Beach).
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a $5,000 donation from Sig Sauer to Sen. Danny Burgess (R-Zephyrhills).
Wyman "White Shoes" Duggan takes the $50K cake! “My policy has been since I first ran for office, if you can’t take the contribution and still tell them no, then you shouldn’t be in politics,” Duggan said.
I didn't see any Ds on the list of Sig campaign donation recipients -- small comfort, perhaps, that they can keep their skirts clean and avoid firearms graft.
One nasty rumor has Wyman angling for Jax mayor in Nov. 2027. What a menace!
Fucking nightmare.