FN FiveseveN Forums - An Unconventional Pistol

FN FiveseveN Forums - An Unconventional Pistol: An Unconventional Pistol

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Fabrique Nationale, a firearm developer located in Herstal, Belgium, has been designing guns for over a century and supplying them to nearly every country in the world. One of their latest offerings, the 5.7mm Five-seveN pistol, is remarkably different than anything else of its kind. The most significant advantages incorporated in the Five-seveN are the ammunition, accuracy, weight, and size. The Five-seveN uses the 5.7x28mm ammunition designed by FN for their P-90 sub-machine gun. This means that the Five-seveN’s bullet is 5.7 millimeters thick and the shell is 28 millimeters long. Conventional pistols usually use 9x19mm or 10x21mm bullets that are effective for stopping an individual in ordinary circumstances. However, if that individual is wearing even a light Kevlar vest, these bullets will be stopped with little damage inflicted, and body armor is currently in use with over 50% of the world’s armed forces. For law enforcement officers, the ability to pierce body armor is also needed, as it is worn by an increasing number of criminals. The FN 5.7mm bullet when used in the Five-seveN pistol is perfectly fitted to these needs. It will pierce a US Army vest at 300 meters range, and a US Army helmet at 240 meters range*. Despite these figures, the 5.7mm round weighs half as much as a 9mm round and produces roughly half the recoil. The 5.7mm round of the Five-seveN has been designed to effectively incapacitate the target, but there has been controversy from skeptics over whether it is capable. Conventional hollow-point bullets rely on expansion to create a large wound, but the 5.7mm is made to hit the target, travel a few inches, then turn point upwards while inside the target and continue traveling in this manner. This means that the wound it creates would be as tall as the length of the projectile—a little over twenty-one millimeters or nearly one inch. The greatest argument in favor of the Five-seveN’s wounding ability is its performance in shootings. Anyone shot with a 5.7mm bullet has died immediately. Currently there have been over a dozen shootings with the 5.7x28mm round. Skeptics argue that this isn't a large enough sample to make any conclusions. The negligible recoil produced by the 5.7x28mm makes the Five-seveN remarkably accurate out to a range of 100 meters. The firer also has many chances to hit the target because the capacity of the weapon is also a vast improvement over other pistols. It holds twenty rounds of ammunition. But despite this capacity and the unusual length of its bullets, the Five-seveN is an incredibly light pistol, weighing 1.6 pounds loaded—only 70% as much as other plastic pistols and 50% as much as metal pistols. The Five-seveN is also reasonably compact, being the same size as comparable pistols that hold half as many cartridges of shorter length! It can be seen that the advantages incorporated in the FN Five-seveN make it an effective, if unusual, pistol.


---Written by DML, 09/02/05

* These figures come from FN's FNMI website.