“Certainly an alternative to live ammunition can be warranted, but the problem here is that [less-lethal weapons] are often deployed without a full understanding of their potential health effects. … There is no such thing as a perfect weapon, and weapons designed to be non-lethal can end up having lethal effects or infringe on people’s rights to speak out and assemble.” – Physicians for Human Rights’ Rohini Haar in The Eternal Search for a Gun That Doesn’t Kill [via wired.com]

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51 COMMENTS

  1. Aw… A commie rioter from Berkley doesn’t want to get tazered and water cannoned the next time her black block goes out to smash things.

    But she’s right. Using tear gas and tazers against rioters is silly. Lead works far better.

    • I am a strong proponent of water depending on the temps. If they riot when it’s 25 degrees out, just water the rioters like a lawn sprinker would. After 10 minutes of freezing, they’ll leave quickly.

  2. Yup. Less lethal can be lethal.
    How does that interfere with a right to assemble? It would and should interfere with mobs and rioting but not simple assembling.

    She one of those smashing windows and beating people unconscious = peaceful protest types?

    There’s a whole generation out there who thinks they have the right to hit others without being hit back. The bitchiest little bitch bullies.

    • One thing I have noticed in the last 10 years or so is this. Blatant bad behaviour in public has really ramped up. Then when someone calls attention it, and names it for what it is, THEY are called a “bully”, when in reality, the bullying is being done by the person that started it. This goes on a lot.

    • How does a non-lethal weapon prevent assembly? In case she hasn’t seen the news in the last 5 years, it hasn’t prevented even rioting, which in her mind is most likely peaceful assembly.

      • It’s the language of the left, looting the local pharmacy and burning it to the ground = peaceful assembly, killing an infant = choice, etc. It’s like euphemisms on steroids.

      • I don’t know of any recent cases, but back in the ’50s and ’60s, they used to use water hoses, dogs, and other potentially dangerous techniques on people protesting peacefully for racial equality.

  3. Berkeley. ‘Nuff said. She just doesn’t want to get tazered the next time she and her black block go out to shout down a gay conservative.

    • You squids and your tendency towards to overkill. You don’t deal with rioters using a Trident for the same reason you don’t spank a baby with an axe.

      • serge. You trying to be the voice of reason just doesn’t work. Overkill is your trademark.

        That and helicopter rides.

        • “If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? Of course not. You’d paddle it. There can be circumstances when it’s just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an axe. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him…but to make him do what you want to do. Not killing…but controlled and purposeful violence.” ~Robert A. Heinlein

    • jwm,

      I would argue that a firearm is, in the strictest of terms, a compliance tool when someone uses one against humans.

      The compliance that the user demands falls under one of two categories, as expressed in the voice of the person deploying the firearm:
      (1) Leave me alone.
      — or —
      (2) Give me what I want. The “what” could be your money, your car, your body (rape), or your life (psychopath, stalker, megalomaniac, terrorist, etc.)

      Obviously, application number 1 is almost exclusively righteous self-defense … and application number 2 is almost exclusively evil attack.

      With that understanding in mind, the only thing a firearm needs to be able to do is render the recipient incapable of attacking or resisting. Thus, Star Trek phasers set to “stun” would be the near perfect “firearm” for almost every application. The only application where a true Star Trek stun-gun would come up short is in criminal applications where the attacker literally wants to kill the victim. And that would be a good thing if all “guns” were truly incapable of killing.

  7. How about “The Eternal Search for Physicians Who Don’t Kill” ?
    Careless, lazy, incompetent and stupid “healthcare professionals” kill over 1,000 Americans every day.

    • Thanks, beat me to it. I always wonder if doctors against guns are deliberately deflecting attention away from their own horrible record, or they really are unaware that they kill more people than died in several wars, every year.

      That’s one of the fields I can’t wait to see replaced by AI. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll save at least 300,000 people every year.

      • While the old joke “What do you call the person who graduated bottom of their class from medical school?” “Doctor” is both rather cynical and entirely true I don’t think AI will replace clinicians for a few reasons. 1. Who do you sure when it gets it wrong? The programmer? 2. Garbage In, Garbage Out. The language of medicine is highly technical and rather different to common English. Most of a clinicians job involves soft interrogation and translating lay speak into useful information. How do you code a translator/learning engine to get from “it feels like stabbing/cramping pain in my right side that comes and goes” to “it is a periodic pain that lasts for 5-8 minutes at a time, radiating from the right flank into the groin” and decide that such pain is consistent with renal colic and is likely caused by a kidney stone padding down the ureter? If you think that cognitive bias in clinicians plays a part in misdiagnosis and medical errors (and it does) how do you mitigate programming bias in the AI? We are taught that roughly 80% of diagnoses can be made from taking a comprehensive history which of the most subjective post of the whole process and the part that an AI would be least likely to handle well/ any better.

        I would hope those that wield medicine incompetently, carelessly, negligently or criminally would be held to amount in the same way as someone wielding a weapon in a similar manner.

  8. Link to quoted article:
    https://www.wired.com/2017/03/eternal-search-gun-doesnt-kill/

    It’s important to note that she’s referring to the use of “less than lethal” alternative weapons by police, not citizens. History shows us that governments often use weapons to stifle free speech and assembly – from fire hoses to machine guns. The existence of less-than-lethal weapons doesn’t change anything.

  9. We don’t want to kill you, as that would leave us with a useless corpse we’d just have to bury any way. We just want you to submit. Then we can put you to work.

  10. “There is no such thing as a perfect weapon”

    Yes there is. His name is Chuck Norris 🙂

  13. The author is misinformed. There is a perfect weapon with both lethal and less than lethal capabilities. The M2 machine gun. It is lethal to the person being struck by the round and less than lethal to the person standing next to the person struck by the round.

  14. HOW MANY LETHAL AND NON-LETHAL WEAPONS USE PATIENTS HAS DIPSHIT dr. HAAR SEEN THAT SHE’S COMPELLED TO WANT TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM?

    If we can only keep ‘doctors’ the F out of it there MAY be less killing required.

  15. >>and weapons designed to be non-lethal can end up having lethal effects

    And they do. Kills with 10×28 ammo are not uncommon.

    ed: you might want to provide a link to the article in top post, ’cause those comments are between sad and hilarious.

  16. If I point my Mossberg at a home invader, request that he vacate the premises and he complies, then it’s an effective, less than lethal weapon.

    If said invader refuses to comply and I put nine holes in him, then and only then does it become a lethal weapon.

    Firearms are versatile that way. They don’t need to be used in a lethal manner unless such use is required. It’s generally up to the thug whether or not he wants to die.

  17. Lethal weapons ensure that most of us give due contemplation to the finality of the thing before making further rash decisions; and that fact, in itself, is a non-lethal attribute which cannot be understated. Is there not sufficient anecdotal evidence that the mere presence of firearms is preventative? And that those who fail to understand this truth do nothing to advance the gene pool anyway?

  18. “…There is no such thing as a perfect weapon”

    Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

    The perfect weapon is the one that works when needed, the one that stops the threat.

    I am unclear, however, if the authors goal is highlight the body count of the police or the lack of training in the police that contributes to the body count. The article seems to be more about some tv show and less about how the police do what they do with the less-than-lethal weaponry available to them.

  19. Damn now I feel silly for putting in all that effort to find a round with good stopping power. Note I realize I should have been looking for a less effective aka lethal round. 22 short, custom 28 gauge loaded with feathers and a paper wad.

  21. “There is no such thing as a perfect weapon…”

    Except a 1911 of course.

    Oh no he di’int!

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