P7000 Pistol
Well now, this is an interesting concept. Basically the P7000 is a 1911 style pistol with an open top slide, similar to the Beretta 92 design, chambered in 7x23mm aka 7penna, a proprietary cartridge.
Talk about a solution looking for a problem.
You see, 7mm is an awfully small bullet to fire out of a handgun. Currently the ammunition is offered in two flavors, 77gr LRN or a 46gr... brass bullet. WTF? Okay, this is a real dumb ammunition design, because with small light bullets you are relying on expansion and frangmentation to damage your target. Brass won't expand or deform much, if at all, and my problem with the lead is below.
They claim the 46gr bullet can hit 1740 FPS, which means the 77gr LRN would be a lot quicker than you want to be firing lead bullets. IIRC, it's best to jacket bullets that you plan on sending down the barrel much over 1300 FPS because the lead will foul the barrel horribly and yield poor accuracy. Harder alloys can hit higher velocities without that problem, but they also don't deform much at all.
A suggested use for this pistol is self defense. Other than pocket pistols and the FN FiveseveN, this is about the last handgun I would choose for self defense. I'd take a full size 9mm over it any day, and you know how I feel about the 9x19mm cartridge in handguns. The only real use I can see here is competition and varminting.
Okay, next gripe. It's a single stack, from what I can tell. Why not stagger stack or even double stack it with such small bullets? The 1911 grip has room for very close to double stack, at the least. 13 rounds of 7penna doesn't trump 9 rounds of 45 ACP, that's for damn sure. Maybe if it held 20 rounds I'd like it more.
It sure is pretty, though a straight mainspring housing would look a lot better, and it could use a high grip safety. It's also very expensive. Suggested retail is, I think, 1560 Euro; that's about... 1900 US dollars? Something like that? It would be more but the Euro dropped 6-7 cents against the dollar after Italy made its Lira comment. Ha.
Whoa, shit, I was wrong. Its suggested retail is 1800 Euro, which is over $2200 at current exhange rates. Jesus. If you're interested in learning more (and seeing the pretty picture), read
here. And Defense Review has a
piece on it, which has a slightly different point of view from mine on the handgun.
Bottom line is I could buy a pair of 1911s semi-customized to my hands (and by my hands...) and a dozen mags for less than $2200 that would be more effective for self defense every day of the week and twice on sunday. This looks like a toy for people who are uninformed on the facts of self defense cartridges or don't mind buying a fairly useless pistol to add to the collection. I might consider it if I had the money, because as much as I talked shit about it, if someone handed me one I sure wouldn't turn it down.
Like the FN FiveseveN, the most alluring aspect of the pistol is that it is unique. It offers little else.
