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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.'"
Plastic bullet hits woman in eye, she dies:
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2004/10/22/postgame_police_projectile_kills_an_emerson_student/
Set this variable speed bullet to "slow" and I bet it more than stings if it hits you in the eye.
and people wonder why i got sick working there.
there was (may still be) a lot more information about this online, especially as a bunch of civilians rather joyfully volunteered to subject themselves to it at a "non lethal weapon fair." of course the device was only set to its lowest setting and it was a prototype. the people got a nice sunburn and i believe they all worse eye cover and stood facing a certain "safe" angle.
this device doesn't worry me, it keeps me awake at night. imagine being disabled and in a crowd somewhere when a riot breaks out and this device is used. it is scary enough being in a crowd when a riot breaks out...you factor in the people being fried and "compelled" to run by that sensation to their skin/eyes and i consider that inhumane on many levels. i've been on crutches and in a wheelchair for a bad injury. in a crowd, here in the US i almost got knocked down and there wasn't a riot or anyone frying my skin. falling down in a mosh pit at a concert and getting trampled is pretty scary...i'll pass on this "non-lethal" device and just take a real damn bullet to the head any day. i even signed a piece of paper saying i would so i have to shut up and do the i can neither confirm nor deny now.
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.
Oh, of course not. What shit -- anyone "compliant" who doesn't meet a cop's standard of humanity will be met with taunting or other abuse designed to escalate the situation to one where the cop can call "resisting", then all bets are off. They can afford to pick a fight with anyone at any time and come out "clean".
And in California, our idiot voters a few years back voted in a law that allows taking your DNA as part of "processing" if you're arrested for anything (yes, the bastards think we're anything more than meat or vegetables), this without even being indicted or convicted.
Of course, if you're eventually not convicted of anything, you can "apply" to have your sample destroyed. Note -- you can "apply", not "fucking force the shits to verifiably destroy". What are the odds they'll really do so. Of course, in the meantime, they'll have used it to see if they can connect you to anything else, even the gumball you might have stolen fifty years ago.
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?
Actually, the names are chosen by PR jackasses to "sell" the operation to the american public (and, to a lesser degree, encourage the participating servicemembers to be more enthusiastic about the op). I was with the 7th Light Infantry Division in December 1989. Most of us were sitting around planning for xmas leave, when we were put on alert. We packed our gear, drew weapons, ammo, bayonets, and E-tools*, and sat around in the assembly area waiting for something to happen. After 36 hours or so of being "ready" , we were trucked over to the air force (to wait AGAIN), and flown in to Panama to back up the initial assault force for what we had been told was operation BLUE SPOON. But a funny thing happened on the way to the air force base--- it had suddenly become operation JUST CAUSE. I can tell you that we, the grunts with the rifles, had a serious case of the eye-rolls when we heard about that. Fucking stupid-ass political hack generals.
* the infantry was sometimes a rough place, even in the all-volunteer 80's. Bayonets had been taken away from the infantry after a few incidents of them killing one another in drunken altercations. Infantrymen, being a strange combination of thickheaded and resourceful, switched to fighting each other with E-tools (entrenching tool = folding army shovel, with a serrated edge). This prompted them to confiscate the E-tools and lock them up with the bayonets and rifles. I'm not sure if all this helped, as guys just resorted to whatever deadly personal items they had handy, but at least it introduced some variety to the infantry murder rolls.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Oh, spare me the blanket generalizations.
"Same group"? What same group? Slashdot is a mass of unrelated people with opinions ranging from "pirates should walk the plank" to presenting sharing other people's property as some great fight for freedom. I'm in the former camp, for example. In regards to guns, again, you have the full spectrum, from people who are rabidly against guns, to people whose gun is their penis size symbol, whith some more sane shades in between. When it comes to Taser, you have again a whole range from people who think they're the greatest thing ever, to people who think they're a sign of the apocalypse. Again, with a lot of shades in between, it's not a dichotomy.
There is no "Slashdot crowd".
Besides, here's a fun, if more advanced concept: people can also
1. have wildly different opinions on different issues. Or
2. judge them differently, by how they fit a bigger concept.
E.g., if you judge both by how the powerful guys (government, corporations, etc) use them to bully the small guys, you have entirely different worries about the two issues. I haven't yet heard of anyone using a P2P program to torture, but the Taser for example has occasionally been used for torture or intimidation. Honestly, I can't imagine an oppressive regime's police going to a demonstration and shouting "disperse or we whip out the laptops with BitTorrent!" So from the point of view of, basically, how it affects your liberties, the concerns about the two are wildly different.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Oh, of course not. What shit -- anyone "compliant" who doesn't meet a cop's standard of humanity will be met with taunting or other abuse designed to escalate the situation to one where the cop can call "resisting", then all bets are off. They can afford to pick a fight with anyone at any time and come out "clean".
You don't know what you're fucking talking about, and I find you offensive. Maybe this happened to you, or somebody you know, and it's gotten you irked. But I guarantee that I know more cops than you do, and *never* -- not once -- has this happened in my personal experience as an ex-police officer.
I'm not suggesting that it doesn't happen in the whole wide world, but using words like "anyone" and stating definitively that the defacto method for police of dealing with people is to trick them into resisting arrest, is ignorant and frankly tin-foilish.
As a rule (and I mean that -- rule), you use the least force necessary. If they are being arrested, you want to get them into the van/car and off to the station quickly and cleanly, and with the least paperwork. Resisting arrest entails additional paperwork, and if there's one thing cops hate, it's that.
So shut your stupid fear-inciting mouth, and start commenting on "facts" that you actually know something about.