FN Five Seven Getting A Bad Rap

I think it's recent and thus at least for a while, will be mentioned.

Ballistically, I'm not impressed by the 5.7x28mm, especially out of a short handgun barrel. And honestly, the shooter at Ft. Hood could have gotten similar results from spraying the crowd with a high point in .380 or a raven .32acp.

If other people's comments are going to bother you that much, put it away for a couple months. Otherwise, enjoy your low recoil and large magazine capacity.

The FiveseveN has been getting bad and mostly misleading press ever since its inception. Every news reporter likes to talk about its armor piercing capabilities when it only has AP potential when the illegal to sell to civilians AP rounds are used.

Ft Hood did not help matters at all unless you were a FiveseveN salesman. They immediately went from turd status at gunstores to the most sought after pistol. I could not sell them for below cost but then after hood I could sell them for a hundred over MSRP.

It is disturbing that so many at your range seem to be under the impression that guns commit horrible acts of their own accord or that just because some wacko decided that was the gun he was going to use to do a terrible thing. As gun owners they should know that is not how it works but who really knows with all the new jack gun owners these days who do not make use of fine resources like THR and instead continue on in their ignorance but this time they have a gun so they think it is OK.

The fact that your in TX probably has a little to do with it. It's just kind of close to home for a lot people there I would imagine, at other places you probably want get that response as often. Honestly I don't think the Five Seven will be infamous no matter who does what with it.

^^^That sums it up quite nicely.

You'll shoot your eye out with that thing!

...

Just an ever-on-going case of "the bad gun killed the people" mindset, even at the range..

You tried to correct their thinking and you see, first hand, the uphill battle gun rights/owners are in and will be in, for some time to come.

Bad guns kill people, (bad people use guns to kill people) drive drunk and kill people, but everyone understands that it's not the cars fault.. cept maybe Toyota


Ls

It is a mostly unknown gun so I am not surprised since it one famous point of reference for most people was such a well know and infamous incident it attracts attention. As you could tell that was those folks first times seeing one in person at the range, sad that they automatically reference the gun to that incident.

The 5.7x28mm is ballistically well ahead of both the .380ACP and .32ACP, comparing the FN Five seveN to a Hi-Point or Raven is silly and shows a lack of understanding of the subject matter. The mis-information about the Five seveN and it's caliber on the internet remains widespread.

I'm not comparing 5.7x28mm to .380 or .32 ACP. I'm saying that the end result (a fair number of innocent victims murdered or wounded) would not have changed if he had fired the same number of rounds from either of those guns into the same places.

Misinformation or not, a .223 short is hardly an inspiring round, especially when it's shot out of a handgun barrel.

Brassfetcher has that round doing less than 2000 feet a second, penetrating 9 inches and opening to a mighty .312

9 inches of penetration and .312?

Actually, calling it an overhyped .32 ACP might not be a bad comparison.

According to the reports, the vast majority of the wounds were very low on the victims. Below the waistline low, in most cases. Either Haji was shooting from the hip, or he was deliberately shooting to cause pain and suffering rather than death. If he'd been shooting CoM the outcome would have been different, as well.

Which flavor did brasscatcher check? Reports have indicated that recent SS195 is very weak, as in barely cycle the action weak.

If I am ever attacked by ballistic gel or wet phone books I will be sure to defend myself with something other than 5.7x28mm, otherwise it's performance in the real world would seem to suggest it was very effective.

They used SS195 and SS197, the SS197 got to 10 inches and was the one that expanded to .312. I've no idea when brassfetcher did their testing but they're usually very thorough and both rounds gave similar velocities.

Below the waist could also indicate a poor grip, unfamiliarity with the gun (many people seem to shoot off vertically when transitioning from a very angled grip like a glock to a more upright grip such as a 1911), or any of the reasons you mentioned. Also, waist level shots, while not a CNS hit, certainly have a high chance for eventual death, considering how much blood flow is through the pelvic region and the chance for sepsis.

In response to Ruggles:

Real world performance seems to indicate that most rounds over .22 CB caps have the potential to kill or seriously wound with proper placement. Also, most real world uses of the 5.7mm are not 1 round, but rather many shots in rapid succession. I know of very little evidence that this round provides a 1 stop hit with any degree of certainty.

I would be comfortable with a pocket pistol in .32 ACP with 7 or 8 rounds if the weather/clothing dictated it, I imagine a 20 round pistol would certainly make up for lack of individual stopping power with quantity.

I am not disparaging the 5.7x28 round, only asking that it be recognized for what it is, not what it purports to be. 5.56mm rounds seem to have a real lack of stopping power due to a lack of upset/fragmentation below 3000 fps.
If you don't get the upset/cavitation/fragmentation out of a small caliber round, it really does not do any better than a .32 H&R Magnum and only slightly better than a .32 ACP. Out of all the .22 caliber rounds in a handgun I will say it appears to be the best choice for self defense.

While I am not impressed with its ballistics or the two I have seen in action have keyholed and double fed, I always push my acquiantances buttons with the advertisment in the gun rags...

The ladies home companion.

Whenever they see that they get all worked up, it makes me giggle.

Strange, I would think that a poor feeding situation would be the least of this gun's worries, bottlenecks usually are pretty reliable.

it's performance in the real world would seem to suggest it was very effective.

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The agencies that have adopted it, and had occasion to use it, would disagree with you.

I have long been JONESING for a PS90 (or heck, an FN P90).

I don't know.... for some reason I felt compelled to share that.

EdLaver, I understand your frustration; I would be annoyed to hear people voicing their opinions aloud of a firearm I'm using. I guess that's what you'll get for having a "controversial" firearm. I remember when spending some time with my G19 at a public range a couple days after the Virginia Tech shooting, some recognized my model Glock as "that model that killed all them kids in Virginia". I really wanted to clap and tell them they "won the prize!" but figured what they were doing was simply human nature.

Once the connection between your FN and the Fort Hood shooting dims, you'll still always have "that gun designed to defeat body armor", sorry to say. There will always be those whose filters between their minds and mouths malfunction.

Ed,

You should have asked anyone who made that comment if they had a Glock 19. I bet out of all those people who asked, at least 1 or 2 would, and that was one of the guns was used in the Virginia Tech shootings, where almost 3x as many people were murdered.

Or, if any of them owned AR's which was what the DC sniper used.

How many people are killed by AK-47s? Not only here, but our troops overseas? I've never been at the range where there's been an AK and people walking around going "That's the gun terrorists use." or "That's the gun gang members use." Some people are just stupid. I've never heard of anything like that in the gun culture around here. Maybe I'm lucky or maybe gunners here are smarter?

It's ironic in that the 1911 and 1911-type handguns have undoubtedly been responsible for millions of deaths worldwide, yet people would not even dream of saying anything bad about them in that regard.

I think that the Five-seveN started out with a bad reputation from the gun-control crowd, and that reputation was solidified (for better or worse) by the events at Fort Hood. As you said, it could have been any weapon that the guy used, but unfortunately it was this one.

You can either accept that this particular weapon will for some time be at the forefront of peoples' minds or you can put it away or get rid of it. There's really nothing else you can do unless you think that engaging in argument and possibly alienating people (who, to be fair, have already unknowingly pissed you off) is the right thing to do.

If people at the range were saying things like that then I would have to imagine that they were all people just renting a gun for an hour or so and not actually gun owners. People who watch the news and want to feel empowered by firing a weapon without actually appreciating the right they are excersizing.

People at rental ranges are generally amusing, in a harmless way. The serious shooters tend to gravitate to places they can shoot whenever they like without hourly fees and asshat rangemasters.

But ...

That's a bad ass gun, that's the one that killed those people at that Army base

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is beyond stupid, attributing actions to tools is a sign of a serious disconnect from reality, and should be slapped down as rudely as possible to jar the speaker back into the real world.

I have been in to many debates regarding the 5.7x28mm to keep going in yet one more. I guess we all have our difference levels of evidence we require to put our faith in something, rather it be firearms or something else. If you would equate the ballistic and terminal performance of the Five seveN with a Walther PP in either .32 or .380 then I guess you have not.

Moving on....

that's why I shoot at a member's only range. No range masters with stupid remarks and interjections about things that don't concern them.

You yourself understand that it's not the gun that's "evil", it's the person who holds it and does evil with the gun. That's all that matters anyway.