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Thailand's "Q" Banks on Rubber Bullets
redwolfoz writes "ABC News reports that Thailand's answer to 'Q', the legendary inventor of gadgets for movie spy James Bond, is busy at work at his warehouse on the edge of the country's capital. Workmen inside are trying out the latest inventions of retired Major Songphon Eiamboonyarith, who runs defence contracting firm Precipart Co. The range includes umbrellas that shoot rubber bullets, bullet-proof baseball caps and a hand-held device to fire a man-sized net 10m to stop a villain in his tracks."
Not if it's a grazing shot to begin with. Besides, even if you're right, mild brain damage or a hemmorrage (chance of death) is preferable to a bullet in the skull (you're dead before you know what hit you).
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
I think I can make a potato gun do that.
Man in tuxedo walks up to the bar, orders:
...the name is Band...Rubber Band..."
"...Vodka Martini, shaken, not stirred...
Yeah, so i'm a dork. Join the club.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
why should a rubber-bullet gun be disguised as an umbrella ??
A rubber-bullet gun is for deterrence, and should look like a shotgun, or something even more evil.
An advancing police line armed with umbrellas will most likely not cause a crows to disperse.
More likely, the umbrella is quite lethal, in the assassination meaning of the word, but since this is a PG rated story, it's been modified A-Team style.
Everyone's gotta have a hobby.
Mr. Songphon's happened to be killing.
o well.
Bullet-proof is rarely what its called, a standard kevlar bullet-proof vest will stop many smaller caliber shots, but you can still get killed, even if the vest isn't pierced, if your hit in the chest with a powerful enough shot, even if the vest stops the round you can still die from hydrostatic shock, the same goes for the kevlar vests with metal inserts, they my stop powerfull rounds, but if u look at the after photos from testing, you can see the plates of metal with large(2 or more centimeter) deep depressions, it may not penetrate, but that much force hitting you in the chest is enough to cause quite a bit of damage
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
"My father was a soldier. He used to give me manuals on explosives and guns."
Talk about the gift that keeps on giving, "hey what did you get for x-mas??" "My dad gave me that new transformer!" "That's nothing my dad gave me books on how guns and explosives work! I cant wait too try them out!"
Songphon says in three months Precipart will deliver to police in the south the firm's first armoured tuk tuk, Thailand's popular indigenous three-wheeled motorcycle taxi.
1. I suppose he is going to cover up the sides of the tuk tuk, because it makes no sense to have just an armored canopy and open sides. If he seals it up it won't even be a bicycle anymore, but will be like an armored car, except with only 3 wheels. How original.
2.In reference to the umbrellas: "They are designed for police use in hostage situations," says Precipart consultant Sanpetch Putarak, a retired wing commander
The prototype umbrella is pink. How many police officers would normally be walking around with pink umbrellas?
3. Police are expected to have things like rubber bullets. Is the umbrella used to surprise the one or people who don't know that police are armed?
4.The armored "tuk tuk" is equipped with a machine gun. Do you really need a web launcher in addition to that?
However he DOES have one good idea. He plans to make walking sticks which fire rubber bullets. I like this idea. When you run out of bullets, you can just whack people with the stick.
Maybe I just haven't thought about it enough, but why not pepper-spray paintball guns for riot control or other situations where you just want to incapacitate? You'd get decent physical range, with an automatic firing version excellent coverage.
.50s in the windows, guards with M-16s, all putting out 100s of rounds a minute of a chemical irritant instead of lethal bullets, risking a military conflict..
Regular mace or pepper spray requires you to be too close, "tear gas" or whatever they shoot in a gasseous cloud is too broad and not specific enough.
Paintballs hurt like a sonofabitch, a repeater could deliver a lot of them at a good distance to clothes, faces, hair, etc, adding some longer-term deterrant effect as well (have to change clothes).
From my experience, though, you'd have to "fix" the firing mechanism, since jams and fuckups with a tear-gas paintball would be a bit more than just an inconvenience. I'd make the paintball payloads more like conventional bullets, cased in a plastic cartridge. This'd solve a lot of feed issues as well as allow for more traditional box magazines. I'd also use conventional gunpowder propellant for higher velocities, larger payloads than CO2 can deliver.
It might actually be possible to make a paintball cartridge a standard weapon could use.
Of course the magic part is probably whatever membrane you use for the irritant payload. It has to be strong enough for firing and to really hurt on impact, but it also has to be soft enough to break on softer surfaces as well as not cause soft-tissue injuries other than bruising.
A weapon like this would really seem to be a natural, especially in situations where you want to deliver a lot of firepower in civilian environments -- think of defending an Embassy with this --
Anyway, why haven't they done this yet?
Villain Supply is the answer
All this feel good bullshit about non-lethal means of controlling people being nicer and show that the authorities are really nice guys is a trick.
More non-lethals controls are still controls and actually lead to an increase in the state powers and ability to surpress protests and dissent!!
The easier it is for them to package it to the masses as a good, nice, humane thing, the easier it will be for them to get away with putting down people and their voices.
As if we need more that these days.
Wax on, wax off baby!