FN Five­Sev­en SS197SR 5.7x28mm ammo test in Clear­Ballis­tics gel

• Re­port rights in­fringe­ment
• pub­lished: 09 Oct 2014
• views: 54286

Some­one loaned me their FN Five-sev­eN and a box of SS197SR ammo to test out. The Five-sev­eN is a very in­ter­est­ing pis­tol, so I hap­pi­ly agreed. In this video I am test­ing the SS197SR hol­low­point ammo. There are var­i­ous types of ammo of­fered in the 5.7x28mm cal­iber; some are legal and some have been de­clared il­le­gal for civil­ians or re­strict­ed for law-en­force­ment use only. The SS197SR is one of the few legal of­fer­ings and, at least ac­cord­ing to wikipedia, one of only two com­mer­cial­ly-avail­able hol­low­point de­signs. They are rated at 2,000+ fps but that ap­pears to be when using them from a P90 with its full-length bar­rel. From the Five-sev­eN pis­tol, ve­loc­i­ties of about 1700 fps are more typ­i­cal. But, I can't tell you ex­act­ly, be­cause my chrono­graph re­fused to reg­is­ter the ve­loc­i­ties of these shots! Look­ing at other tests by other testers I've found them list­ing speeds of around 1,700 fps. The SS197SR in this test was not a great per­former, be­cause the bul­lets didn't per­form as de­signed. Mean­ing -- they didn't ex­pand. In­stead, the nose of the bul­let got smashed in on im­pact with the gel block, and the bul­lets then ap­pear to have tum­bled to a stop. Now, that'd be su­perb per­for­mance from an FMJ, but is not the ideal from a hol­low­point, es­pe­cial­ly a frag­ment­ing hol­low­point like the Hor­nady V-MAX (which is the type of bul­let that SS197SR uses). Pen­e­tra­tion depth was ex­cel­lent, rang­ing from 12" on the low end to 15.75" at the deep­est. But only one of the six bul­lets I test­ed ex­pand­ed, the oth­ers all de­formed. In com­par­i­son to an­oth­er small-cal­iber gun, I had pre­vi­ous­ly test­ed Gold Dots in .22 Mag­num from an NAA Black Widow mi­ni-re­volver. The Gold Dots all pen­e­trat­ed to about the same depth, and cre­at­ed sim­i­lar nasty dam­age cav­i­ties in the shal­low­er por­tion of their trav­el range, but -- the .22 Mag­num Gold Dots all ex­pand­ed. Only one out of six of the SS197SR ex­pand­ed. Based on that par­tic­u­lar per­for­mance, I didn't ob­serve the FN de­liv­er­ing no­tably bet­ter per­for­mance than the mi­ni-re­volver did. Much high­er ve­loc­i­ty, yes, but in terms of ac­tu­al dam­age done to the tis­sue sim­u­lant, they seemed to be very much on par with each other. Note: I'm not mak­ing any claims for these videos other than that these are the re­sults I achieved, in my own test­ing, from the stat­ed pis­tol(s). I have no in­ten­tion to make a blan­ket en­dorse­ment or in­dict­ment of any prod­uct, only to re­view and re­port what I found in a given in­stance. Ob­vi­ous­ly it is in­cum­bent upon each in­di­vid­u­al to con­duct their own re­search and make up their own mind about which de­fen­sive am­mu­ni­tion is best for their own pur­pos­es, in their own firearms. Also keep in mind that in­di­vid­u­al firearms can be per­snick­ety; my gun may feed a par­tic­u­lar round con­sis­tent­ly where­as yours might not work as well with those rounds, so -- please con­duct your own test­ing be­fore trust­ing any par­tic­u­lar ammo. If you like what you see, sub­scribe to the chan­nel, and also visit the blog at www.​shootingthebull.​net.