Massad Ayoob confesses that the SIG P220 is his very favorite SIG pistol, and indeed, one of his all-time favorite handguns. Extraordinarily accurate, very reliable, and easy to handle and shoot, one of the P220’s cardinal attributes is the cartridge for which it is chambered: the .45 ACP.
I once read somewhere that no one finds their perfect gun right away. Inevitably we end up trying new ones and finding features or ergonomics that we prefer over our current set up. I thought I was done with this disease; I thought the days of my wife rolling her eyes over my long-winded explanations of why gun A should be traded for gun B were a thing of the past. If you can’t tell by now, I was wrong. The catalyst happened a few weeks ago when I taught a concealed weapons class where one of the students was utilizing a new SIG-Sauer P220. Upon taking the weapon from him to explain how the decocker worked, something clicked in my mind. At the range he let me shoot a magazine through it and I knew I was in serious trouble. Two weeks later I became a first-time SIG owner . . .
The P220 is typically configured as a double action / single action pistol and makes use of a de-cocker to lower the hammer for safe carry and uses no external safeties. For law enforcement and military officers who are concerned about accidentally holstering a pistol with a cocked hammer there is a double action only version sold by SIG known as the DAK variant (Double Action Kellerman).