“Arizona’s Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is about to become the first law enforcement agency in the nation to deploy a new weapon with the hopes of preventing police involved shooting deaths,” wilx.com reports. “In addition to traditional handguns and Tasers, the sheriff’s office is adding a third weapon to its deputies’ duty belts, a ‘less-lethal’ handgun that can be used as an alternative to real bullets.” Wait, that means . . .

The deputies facing a violent threat will have to choose between a gun, a TASER, the new rubber bullet gun, pepper spray and (maybe) a baton. In seconds. Where will the new less-lethal gun be positioned on their belt? How much training will they have before they deploy with three guns of varying lethality? Why isn’t anyone in the media asking the cops about the potential dangers of his new system? Instead we get the usual cheerleading . . .

The new weapon looks like a flare gun, but fires much like a regular pistol. Laser sighted, it fires rubber impact cartridges at nearly 400 feet per second.

The rubber impact round isn’t sharp, so it’s designed not to pierce the skin. But it would feel like getting hit by an 88 mph fast ball.

“We pull out this device and shoot him with this impact weapon, right then and there, we get instant compliance and then no one has to take a life,” said PCSO Chief Deputy Steve Henry.

Or not.

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36 COMMENTS

  3. Someone gonna shoot an eye out with that thing.
    Wait till a cop gets killed using one.
    Deploy the fuzzy kitten cannon!
    Keep calm and throw kittens.

  4. I think that the mindset of “less lethal” will promote overuse of the new rubber bullet guns. “Just use that, it’s not like someone will die from it.” Until somebody does. Less lethal =\= non-lethal.

    • Totally agree. This option can be a crutch for police to get their way instead of de-escalating a situation. I can definitely see an officer pulling a firearm by mistake, wanting to pull this option, and having to be creative with the paperwork to avoid felony charges.

      • It has happened twice in California. One officer was convicted of manslaughter when he accidentally pulled his pistol instead of his taser and killed a (black) man on a BART platform in Oakland who had been taken down but was still noncompliant. It really did not help the officer’s cause that the victim of his negligence was shot in the back. The local population was up in arms at the time of the incident and of the verdict; they wanted his head on a stick.

  5. I don’t understand why you guys are getting upset about this. It isn’t like baseball players have ever been critically injured or killed by baseballs. And they don’t get to wear the protective hats and pads that the average person can enjoy. Even worse, those nasty pitchers are directly trying to hit them, not miss, unlike the cops who would only be firing warning shots.

  6. I don’t know the velocity/energy of a 12 gauge bean bag round but I suspect it is more than a 400 foot/sec rubber bullet. And I have watched many scenes of people taking multiple bean bag rounds and not going into “immediate compliance”.

    • Not to mention people high on drugs, or even enough adrenaline, are often immune to the effects of these and chemical weapons, which is why the cops don’t just leave the real pistols at the station.

      I can see a tremendous potential for abuse where a cop just gets tired of yelling at some citizen to comply and starts blasting rubber bullets at him. No dead, no foul, right? And THAT lawsuit is going to be easier to fight or cheaper to settle than if he killed the guy.

      And all this is not to mention how ridiculous our uniformed police are beginning to look with their Batman utility belts all loaded up with “marvelous toys”. Only a matter of time before some officer decides it’s unrealistic to attempt to run down the street chasing a suspect with all this paraphernalia on board so he just draws his pistol and drops the sucker.

      • This is the kind of “what if” thinking that antis use against us…. “What if some idiot uses a gun to kill a child?!?! We need to get rid of guns for the children!!!!” Of the 450,000 cops in this country there WILL be some idiot who’se going to misuse a less lethal gun (not to be confused with “less than lethal” or “non lethal”)….

        All that being said, I think this ERIW (extended range impact weapon) pistol idea is stupid. There is a reason why most police depatments that employ ERIWs use blaze orange painted 12ga pump shotguns and not black handgun shaped delivery systems. The system tends to be less prone to “Mehserle Moments”…… And yes I do agree that this thing WILL result in a “Mehserly Moment” exactly because it looks and fells and shoots just like a lethal delivery system..

        • Yup. Cant figure out the added value of carrying ANOTHER handgun that fires a shotgun shell, or something less than same, when you can just as easily carry the standard police express 870 with 3″ mag load of rubber bullets or bean bag rounds.

          Easy to mistake the lead bullet handgun for the rubber bullet handgun in a moment of stress.
          Not so a completely different form factor and manual of arms.

  8. Because dead criminals can’t be incarcerated. No incarceration, means the prison industry will loose money. Dead criminals also can’t be turned loose after incarceration, to continue to commit crimes. Fewer crimes, police industry looses money. Also, dead criminals can’t vote democrat.

    I’m not saying rank and file police want there to be crimes; they don’t. But the industry machine where growth and profit are kings, you know what’s going on behind the scenes.

  9. Jesus, what next? Do people think if they keep adding crap to a cop’s belt things will get better? Well, if cops can’t move then I guess they can’t get involved in stuff. Which is good, because more and more cops are forgetting how to do anything but use various bat-belt items. Used to be that a police officer knew how to fight. But you’re not supposed to do that anymore, I guess.

    Seriously, how many incidents could be stopped by this particular “weapon” that could not be dealt with using a TASER?

    • Hannibal, how about if we walk this thing back quite a bit farther. How about the “cop” using the same optimal situational awareness the rest of us are supposed to practice to avoid lethal confrontations where possible? How about the same rational “reasonable man” decision making criteria the rest of us are held to – on the street and in court when the court is not stacked with hoplophobes and liberal freedom haters…

      How about all “cops” being held accountable for every choice and action, just like the rest of us. I suspect that would pretty much eliminate the “excessive use of force” without a new do-hicky on their belts. 🙂

    • Used to be that a police officer knew how to fight.

      ^^^^^^This. When I was a callow yoot in Da Bronx, all the big tough Irish cops carried a nightstick, a blackjack and a .357 Mag revolver. They rarely needed their revolvers, but they did know how to use them. And, damn, could they fight, and they knew it. Their nightsticks were highly persuasive, too. The nightstick could deliver a blow to one’s hindmost part that was momentarily paralyzing, and if they went upside one’s head it was lights out. Do not ask me how I know this.

  10. ”we get instant compliance and then no one has to take a life…..”
    AND THEN THE SMILING GOLD TOOTHED THUG FIRES BACK WITH REAL BULLETS.
    Idiots!
    ______#Coplivesmatter

  11. Not a fan of this idea at all. I’ve been hit by a lot of fastballs in my life, and none of them disabled me or left me in a particularly good mood. I don’t see how this adds any value over a taser.

  12. Nothing wrong with the weapon, as long as people understand it is an Offensive, not a defensive weapon.

    When someone is coming at you to kill you is NOT the time to trust to a rubber bullet. You draw your glock and drill him in the chest till your pistol is dry and reload it quickly.

    If you got a guy standing there threatening to “shoot somebody” or waving a knife around but basically a threat to himself and mostly nobody else…

    Give him the 88 fastball.

  15. I think I have seen some photos of the less than lethal rubber bullets at close range penetrating someone’s skull and putting them in a coma.

  16. “But it would feel like getting hit with an 88mph fastball.”

    Hope they plan on shooting for the head then. While a HBP never feels too great, most just sting for a second or two, if at all. Doubt these rubber bullets would do much to sway a determined individual.

  17. How about instead of spending tons of money on more useless gizmos, the PD spends it training their employees better? Gun training is clearly inadequate, Taser training is useless, empty hand skills get worse every year, and baton skills have become a lost art. Police employees are very quick to go to the lethal option because they aren’t confident using their other tools. Train people better and watch how fast things change.

  18. This is a stand-off weapon, but will undoubtedly be used just like a Taser–point blank–where it can cause real damage. Why don’t we just give all cops Phasers set on stun instead?

  20. I’m still waiting for the coverage of the black cop in Park Forest,IL who repeatedly shot a 95 year old WW2 vet with bean bag rounds-killing him. At a senior assisted living residence. And the cop was not billed. “HE scared me”…I can see getting shot in the eye being “less lethal”. Why nothing could possibly go wrong… Geez what’s wrong with pepper spray or a taser?

    • It doesn’t fit the narrative of white-on-black hate crime. I don’t see the MSM covering that one any time soon. They have a major confirmation bias when it cones to that sort of thing.

      • It was covered in Chicago Dave-I’m referring to TTAG. This was 18 months or 2 years ago. Pathetic too. Ruled “justified”-yes 95 years old…

  21. Taser was billed as a ‘less than lethal’ (now admitted to be ‘less lethal’) alternative to a firearm.
    But in practice, it’s a really fun tool for sadists to torture people with. And if the victim tries to grab the torture weapon, you get to shoot him with a real Glock. Doesn’t get any more entertaining than that.

    What makes the rubber bullet gun any different?

  22. It continues to bother me black criminals commit violent crimes and lash out at officers, only for the rest of the black community to cry foul when the officers retaliate.

    I’m not racist. Don’t even go there. I just see Black Lives Matter as the boy who cried wolf, when so many instances of “racist hate crimes” turn out to be justifiable homicides against violent black aggressors (Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Jamal Clark, to name a few), not to mention the violent race riots in Ferguson.

    Martin Luther King was a great man, and did great things for racial equality in America. It is a terrible dishonor to his memory when 13.2 percent of the US population commits 52.5 percent of the murders and comprises 39.4 percent of the prison population. And they wonder why so many black men are shot by police officers??? If they commit most of the violent crimes, of course there will be more of them on the wrong side of the law!

    Again, I’m not racist, but with civil rights come civil responsibilities. It certainly doesn’t give anyone the right to assault a police officer.if 13.2 percent of the population would just stop killing each other, they would reduce our murder rate by half.

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