New Rifle Tech Offers Variable Muzzle Speed

Ponca City, We love you writes "A gun that fires variable-speed bullets that can be set to kill, wound, or just inflict a bruise is being built by a Lund and Company Invention, a toy design studio that makes toy rockets powered by burning hydrogen obtained by electrolyzing water. The company is being funded by the US Army to adapt the technology to fire bullets instead. The new weapon, called the Variable Velocity Weapon System or VWS, lets the soldier use the same rifle for crowd control and combat, by altering the muzzle velocity. It could be loaded with 'rubber bullets' designed only to deliver blunt impacts on a person, full-speed lethal rounds, or projectiles somewhere between the two. Bruce Lund, the company's CEO, says the gun works by mixing a liquid or gaseous fuel with air in a combustion chamber behind the bullet. This determines the explosive capability of the propellant and consequently the velocity of the bullet. 'Projectile velocity varies from non-lethal at 10 meters, to lethal at 100 meters or more, as desired,' says Lund. The existing VWS design is a .50 caliber (12.7 mm) rifle weapon, but Lund says the technology can be scaled to any size, 'handgun to Howitzer.'"

Comments

Set rifle to stun!

[ArcherB]

Great, a rifle with a stun setting!

I would not want to be the guy that tests the low setting (or the high one for that matter) to make sure it isn't fatal!

Phazers set to stun...

[Anonymous Coward]

So... hopefully no one forgets to flip the switch from kill to stun.

Re:Phazers set to stun...

[Robotech_Master]

Yeah, this kind of gun is an accident just waiting to happen.

So much for "don't point your gun at something you don't intend to kill."

Overuse again...

[neapolitan]

We had those growing up -- we called them BB guns.

4 pumps would not hurt a girl.

10 pumps to use on family members.

15 pumps for neighbor's kids

20 pumps for the kill.

Seriously though, I shudder with all of the implications of "nonlethal" technology in police hands. It rapidly leads to overuse. Remember the bean bag to the head that killed the girl celebrating the Red Sox victory? The current rash of taser (over)use?

Re:Overuse again...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

taser misuse is drastically overstated. i'll grant there is probably isolated cases of cops abusing their powers, but they would do that taser or not. they are just bad cops, taking the taser away changes nothing.

I disagree. For example, in the instance of the elderly woman in the retirement home that made a big splash in the press, I seriously doubt the cop would have hit her with a baton or shot her with a pistol. The fact that is was a taser and just for "disabling without hurting" probably made a large difference in the way he made his choice.

That is not to say I don't think non-lethal options such as a taser are a bad idea or cause more harm than good; only that we should consider whether this new technology will cause more harm or good and whether training will change that.

Re:Overuse again...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

...all police get to experience the taser and pepper spray before they are issued the gear, so they know it hurts like a motherfucker.

Sorry, but this is completely untrue. I know a number of police officers and my brother used to be one. I just double checked with him. He was issued police grade pepper spray but neither he nor any of the other cops he knew had tried it on themselves. A couple of them had tried stun guns on themselves, but just horsing around, not as part of training.

i can't find the specifics of the case you are talking about, but i'm assuming since you didn't state she died, that she didn't. until you post a link to a news article i'm going to point out even old grannies can wield a knife.

Strangely I assumed typing "elderly woman taser" into Google would bring up the article. Instead it seems to bring up articles about dozens of different incidents. a good one is this one here. The woman was in a wheelchair and was wielding weapons, but since she was elderly and immobilized, without tasers they could have simply waited her out or used a different non-lethal solution instead of tasering her over and over again until she died. Read that article and tell me if you honestly think the cops would have killed her if they did not have tasers.

i will say one thing though. private security shouldn't be issued tasers. all the cases i can find where it was really misused has been private security guards.

Amnesty international's report on taser abuse lists hundreds of deaths, but the vast majority seem to be police (not private security) using them on people who did not pose an immediate threat to the officers or others.

Really, I think tasers can be a great benefit to law enforcement. I just think they have been deployed without proper training or guidelines for when they can be used, and this has lead to overuse and abuse. The same problem is a very real concern with other, new, less-lethal technologies.

Oops

[Enderandrew]

While this may seem like a great idea, I think the concept encourages the use of weapons in crowd control more. When that weapon used in crowd control can become lethal through carelessness, you're just waiting for disaster.

There have to be better means of crowd supression rather than using weapons that can be lethal.

Re:Oops

[kylemonger]

Yah, but at least there can be accountability with weapons like these. This is preferable to the agony ray that has no lasting physical effects, allowing cops/soldiers to plausibly deny using it to make some poor saps dance and scream for their amusement. What I'm worried about is a handheld version of that.

Re:Wikileaks says Army prototype has 16 settings:

[Farmer Tim]

Seems appropriate: safe non-lethal weapons are pretty much science fiction.

Oh, good.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

More 'non-lethal' force options - to use against 'undesirable' expressions by the domestic populations of 'liberal democracies' - that have lawfully assembled against the wishes of their 'representatives'.

This is worse than the sub-harmonic puke-ray, or the microwave brain-fryer.

Welcome to the movie, "Brazil."

Re:Oh, good.

[afidel]

Eh, almost all manufacturers and professional groups in the US now refer to them as less-lethal not non-lethal. This is in acknowledgment that anything propelled by a non-trivial amount of powder has the power to kill, even bean bags and rubber bullets or tasers. You still don't point them at someone who is complying with the law and you only use them after other tactics have proven in-effective and there is a significant risk of injury to the officer or others. I don't think the VAST majority of officers are any more likely to pull their gun just because it has some half-assed stun setting, though I guess they might pull it in the same type of situation where they would pull a taser today, one less piece of equipment to carry.

Re:Oh, good.

[Jarjarthejedi]

Or, more realistically, more force options, to be used properly and improperly as befits human beings who are far less than perfect.

Something abused != Something bad. That is the more tired and idiotic argument of the 'all weapons should be lethal' crowd.

This is going to be an interesting innovation if it works as advertised. Should especially make the more dangerous situations (capture alive and hostage) easier to deal with since the soldiers will have guns that can shoot to kill or injure, allowing them to fire into situations they normally couldn't.

Re:Oh, good.

[Jafafa Hots]

Yeah. Our military is moving from war fighting to crowd control.

Which means our military is increasingly seeing it's own populace as being the target, not an enemy nation.

It's even reflected in operation names. Used to be operation names were designed to mislead (or not lead, at least) the enemy should the enemy become aware of them - Operation Market Garden, Operation Overlord. The point was that the operation name was chosen with its impact on the target of that operation in mind.

Now we have names like "Operation Enduring Freedom."

Just who is the target of that name? Just who is it intended to mislead?

Re:Oh, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically, you think people you disagree with have no right to free speech?

Re:Oh, good.

[Cruciform]

You still don't point them at someone who is complying with the law...

Once you have enough laws you can point them at anyone.

Re:Oh, good.

[jesterzog]

This is going to be an interesting innovation if it works as advertised. Should especially make the more dangerous situations (capture alive and hostage) easier to deal with since the soldiers will have guns that can shoot to kill or injure, allowing them to fire into situations they normally couldn't.

You might be right for soldiers since they tend to have different objectives and priorities, but I'm not as sure about this for civilian police forces. Most police forces which I know of are trained that if they're going to shoot at all, they should be shooting to kill. There's generally good reasoning behind this too, because you probably shouldn't be shooting someone at all unless you or someone else is in immediate and serious danger from them. If that's the case, why put the outcome in doubt by trying to be non-leathal about it and making it much harder to avoid screwing up?

Irrespective of the mode, you're still propelling a projectile at someone. It's either going to kill them, hurt and stop them, hurt them without stopping them, or not affect them at all. If you're trying to tune things to get a specific outcome (hurting and definitely stopping) instead of one of the extremes, it'll be much harder to get it right and you're at a higher risk of screwing things up. The speed of the projectile certainly won't be the only deciding factor.

Re:Oh, good.

[catmistake]

There's a problem with "non-lethal." The problem is that, such as with Tasers, they are used far more often than philosophically intended. If Tasers were only used as proscribed, (i.e. as a substitute for a gun) they'd be great, but because of the "non-lethal" label, they get overused in situations when a gun would never be appropriate (such as when escorting a political protester from a public gathering, or shutting up a smart mouthed and cuffed suspect).

Re:Oh, good.

[atamido]

Tasers are also intended to be used as a substitute for nightsticks. Shocking someone is generally considered quite a bit safer than beating them into submission using a heavy stick. Considering the wide range of uses they cover, I believe they're use is a good thing.

This compares in stark contrast to these new VWS. They sound significantly more dangerous than a taser, and the chances of shooting someone with the wrong setting or ammunition is quite a bit higher.

Pick up a taser and you know the result. Pick up one of these and the results may be quite a bit different.

Re:Oh, good.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

That's a problem that is caused by the ideology of the Egyptian state (a certain religion, 3 guesses which one, same reason they refuse to let atheists get a job), not by the guns used the egyptian state uses to enforce it's religion on it's victims.

In saudi arabia the "morality police" who have been accused of anally raping people with sticks for not going to the mosque one of the 5 required times per day will probably get access to these guns.

The problem is the ideology, not the guns. As was aptly demonstrated yesterday, a bulldozer can be an effective weapon too, you can't forbid weapons. And yes, at least with these guns those people, even those oppressed, will live to see another day as opposed to dieing.

Re:Oh, good.

[jahudabudy]

It's funny, but I just read this ON CNN.com. Obviously, one dude is not "all cops", but the really interesting part is the departmental response. Can you really wonder why the average citizen might hate/fear cops when the balance of power is so completely skewed, and it is obvious that cops protect their own? I mean, I can at least try to protect myself against the average asshole who assaults me, but not a cop. My word against his 2 cop buddies that he was illegally tazing me? Uh huh. And while you say you have never seen a cop behave inappropriately (and throw out some weak "we're too lazy to do the necessary paperwork" bullshit as a reason!), it's obvious some do. So every time I encounter a cop in a less than friendly setting, I am encountering an armed person that can kill or severely injure me and most likely get away with it. And any attempt to defend myself will, again most likely, screw up my life completely. And all I have to do is somehow piss off this stranger that is already predisposed to distrust and dislike me.

Re:Oh, good.

[FiloEleven]

Your exchange with GP brings to light an interesting issue. The biggest difference between you, "jahudabudy", and GP "maypull" is that maypull knows a bunch of cops and you apparently don't. I think that has a lot to do with your differing perspectives. Maypull has seen police officers in all sorts of situations other than that of an arrest, traffic stop, questioning, etc. (let's ignore that he was a cop for illustrative purposes), whereas you have not. More importantly, the cops know maypull and have seen HIM in all sorts of situations other than that of an arrest, traffic stop, questioning, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is this: as long as police officers are nothing more than law enforcement whose main interaction with the public is when a call goes out or when they see something they don't like, the image you have (of a power imbalance that can screw up your life on first contact) will be the prevailing one. If the police officers are active members of the community who get to know the citizens in their jurisdiction, the uniform becomes much less of an unwelcome presence--you see instead a friend (or acquaintance) who can help you out when you need it, and they see someone they are familiar with and are less likely to need to bring their authority to bear.

There is undoubtedly resistance to the idea of just walking up to an officer and having a chat, at least where I live. Some of that, I think, stems from the fact that the cops are usually in their cars rather than on foot. More comes from our modern lack of community where we live surrounded by strangers. I don't think there's an easy answer to uprooting the mistrust in police, but I'm betting that what I described above is the biggest part of the problem.

I can see it now...

[lazycam]

It seems to me that having such a variable weapon option will empower a future officer or national guardsman to exercise a bit less restraint when engaging criminals or rioters (specifically peaceful ones). I can already hear in my head the following court defence: "Well, see your honour...The gun was set to crowd control. Not to kill. So it really was not my fault right?" When you point a weapon at someone, you have to be conscious of the fact that that individual could die. Anyone with gun training know that, or should anyway. I feel very uncomfortable with people relaxing that view. I know they mentioned the Army was interested, but I am just looking forward into future issues. Just my two cents...

Impossible to identify non-lethal attacks

[Alex Belits]

With such a weapon the supposed target would never be able to distinguish between lethal and non-lethal attacks, and any mistake can turn out deadly -- you will either have a cop unknowingly shooting lethal bullets, or fleeing person returning fire with a regular gun, believing that cops are trying to kill him. Or both at the same time. The right thing to do is to go into the opposite direction -- making lethal and non-lethal weapons so different that it will be impossible to take one for another even from a distance. Like the difference that exists now between a gun and a club, or between uniforms and equipment of soldiers (who always shoot to kill) and riot police (that is expected to never use anything deadly).

Life or Death Violation of K.I.S.S.

[djmoore]

I'm going to assume that the military is looking into this simply because they look into everything, not because they actually plan to deploy it. It's a terrible idea.

1. See the incident a few weeks ago where a soldier was firing machine gun blanks into a crowd during a demonstration. He swapped mags--but unfortunately, the fresh mag was not filled with blanks.

2. A tactical shooting instructor I once had, a cop, told us about the bean-bag shotgun he kept in his patrol car. The barrel was wrapped with blue tape, and there was a strict policy, as "leave without pay and a reprimand in your file", against ever loading it with anything other than beanbag rounds. In a crisis, if you grabbed the blue barrel, you had to be certain you would be firing beanbags, not lead.

3. When you point your gun at a person and pull the trigger, you must be very certain about what the gun will do. This adds a whole 'nother level of complexity to what should be a simple, reliable design. Not only will soldiers and cops inadvertently fire this thing on "kill" not "stun", but there's also a question of whether or not it will fire at all--just as bad if the cop needs to make a bad guy stop.

4. When a bad guy sees a gun pointed at him, he needs to be certain that if he doesn't do as he is told, he will die. I don't want bad guys to see this gun, and decide to take a gamble that it's only set to stun.

5. Americans have, and should have, a deep suspicion towards inappropriate force being exercised under color of law. The way to deal with this is through the Second Amendment, which properly exercised results in soldiers, cops, and civilians[1] regarding each other with mutual respect and caution. If you can't trust your military or police, the answer isn't to give them weak weapons--the answer is to disband them, by force if necessary, and organize trustworthy forces.

[1] NB: Technically, the police are civilians (see for example Robert Peel #7), but I hope this gets my point across. I wish I knew a word for "out of uniform, unbadged civilians", but nothing comes to mind.

Apples and ordnance

[Mr2001]

the same group of people who enthusiastically defend peer-to-peer file-sharing because of its myriad legal uses condemn less-lethal weaponry because some (not all) police officers will use them unethically

Don't you think weaponry should be held to a higher standard of scrutiny than file sharing?

I mean, when P2P is misused, what's the worst that can happen? A copyright holder misses out on a few bucks that he may or may not have ever gotten anyway. He lives on to fight another day, and he can even sue the pirates for damages if he manages to track them them down.

If a police officer misuses "less-lethal" weaponry, however, someone ends up in the hospital -- or the morgue. His family might have some legal recourse, but that won't ease his suffering or bring him back from the dead.