The Vortex Gun Coming Soon To a Protest Near You

An anonymous reader writes "Vortex technology has been used in everything from rocket-powered fire extinguishers to Nerf guns, but neither of those things are capable of giving the beat-down to hapless protesters. By giving spinning vortices an electric charge, though, pepper spray can be sent over 150 feet at between 60 and 90 mph. A vortex gun uses a pressure wave and a carefully designed barrel to fire donut-shaped rings of air that can hold themselves together over long distances. The military (starting with the German military during World War II) has been running experiments with using vortex canons to knock things over, but it's not a particularly efficient or effective way to go. What the gas rings can be used for is transporting other gasses (like pepper spray or tear gas or pesticide) long distances with a decent amount of accuracy, holding their cargo inside the calm center spinning vortex."

Comments

Great, what we really needed

[Opportunist]

Another gun that lowers the inhibition of police to shoot at protesters.

Re:Great, what we really needed

[GmExtremacy]

Exactly. Cops are perfect beings, unlike normal humans. They've never done anything wrong. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

Re:Great, what we really needed

[Gideon Wells]

Yes, cops would never pepper spray point blank at protesters who are already effectively subdued.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4

Re:Great, what we really needed

[jpapon]

Cops doesn't hesitate to fire lethal weapons at a violent protester.

Uhh, yeah they do. If cops fired lethal weapons into crowds whenever there was a rock thrown at them, there would be many more casualties in protest situations. Non-lethal weapons were designed and are used specifically for stopping violent protesters without having to use lethal force.

I'm not saying use of non-lethal weapons isn't abused, but come on. Very few (if any) cops want to be the guy who shot his sidearm into a crowd of protesters. Even if they don't wind up being prosecuted, it would make their life very shitty for a while.

Re:Great, what we really needed

[epyT-R]

what? talk about misrepresenting the truth. police lobbies are no better. they are pushing to make filming officers in public illegal so that the police can make up events in politically convenient ways. that way beat officers can play up the 'serve and protect' image while acting out their high school bullying days with state backing.. yeah, no thanks. at least with criminals, I know what they want, so they're easy to avoid. the bully cop just wants to get away with doing as little work as possible while having fun at citizens' expense when the opportunity arises. woe unto you if he's bored and/or lazy and you're the easiest target, or if your situation forces him to do some extra paperwork because he's just as likely to 'serve and protect' you right into an arrest. ..and yes this is a lot more common than police (or their sackriders) will admit because police work attracts bully mentalities, crusaders, and other mental delinquents. in cases like OWS, these mentalities go way overboard and more often incite violence than quell it.

I don't know whether OWS is behaving like you say en masse, but the cops (and by ext public officials) are no better, and these new 'non lethal' weapons just loosen the ropes on these guard dog mentalities even more..

Re:Great, what we really needed

[Fjandr]

I'd disagree. I would suggest they possess slightly less conscience on average given that they voluntarily choose to engage in highly dangerous work which requires training in violent/hostile/confrontational positions. Their training is to take command of any situation through means of psychological and physical intimidation, followed by force if necessary. Positions which involve power and control attract people who desire power and control for their own sake, and those people are usually the last ones who should actually have it and the first to abuse it when they do.

Positions where the members who hold them are held to far less account than they otherwise would in general attract those who are more likely to abuse power if they have the opportunity. It's hard to make a case that, in general, police are held to higher standards of accountability than the average person. It doesn't matter if you're talking about speeding or murder, police have a network which will seek to protect them, even in cases where it is crystal clear they have exceeded their authority. Your average person on the street has no such support network, so the situational pressures that work against abusive behavior act more strongly on the average person than on the average police officer.

Police work does not primarily involve protecting other people. That is a secondary effect of how modern police organizations operate, almost universally. Their primary purpose is to investigate crimes after the fact, and courts have routinely held that police officers have no duty, whatsoever, to protect anyone. Their secondary objective, in practice if not in theory, is revenue production. This can clearly be seen by looking at organizational and funding choices of police departments across the country (talking from a US-centric point of view here). Those are: traffic fines and civil asset forfeiture. The departments which focus on those items are almost never cut.

free speech

[girlintraining]

They're coming up with ever-more creative ways to hurt peaceful protesters -- and let's be honest: Most of the time, they provoke, prod, cajoule, and taunt these people until one of them out of the dozen, hundred, or thousand there snaps, then they point and say "See! See! We're justified" and open up unholy horror on everyone nearby, including journalists, children, and anyone else, then seize or destroy the evidence of what went down, counting on their purchases media contacts to portray their victims as all manner of bad. But whether it's rubber bullets or real ones, the fact is this is a business of causing pain and misery... and it is because the people its being inflicted upon had the audacity to say "I think we can do better than this."

I am the last person to suggest violence as a response to improper government action: I live in a democracy, and one of our main pressure valves to prevent violence is peaceful protest. They're busy stuffing that up now, and just like every other country that has tried it in the past, eventually public sentiment is going to shift. It'll be fine one day, and the next shit will be on fire and they'll be declaring martial law, and the bought-off press will be busy with headlines like "How did this happen?" ... Well, it happened because you stupid bastards didn't do your job and report the truth. It happened because people don't like being silenced.

It happened... because human nature isn't all that different from an animal: Keep poking it with a stick and eventually it will stop hiding in the corner and come sink its claws and teeth into you. And why? Because it didn't have a choice.

Re:free speech

[PeeAitchPee]

Most of the time, they provoke, prod, cajoule, and taunt these people until one of them out of the dozen, hundred, or thousand there snaps

Not that I agree with deploying this type of technology against peaceful protesters, but what you're describing sounds * exactly* like the Occupy movement's tactics to provoke the police to assault them, thereby ensuring the incident ends up all over the news. Just sayin'.

Re:free speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Recent videos show that no excuse is needed, any longer, for completely unprovoked pepper spray attacks (as well as bludgeoning) by senior police officers on completely peaceful protestors.

I too believe in peaceful protest. THAT SHIP IS SINKING OR SUNK. Our political power, at this point, is limited to refusing paychecks (not following unethical orders.) The police, themselves, must stop using violence in their daily jobs. The use of pepper spray to hurt people who are not hurting you, is wrong. The use of a vortex cannon to squirt that pepper spray is no more, nor less, wrong.

The US government system is so corrupt that the corruption is "trickle down" and I, for one, am having more trouble with corrupt corporations at the personal level. And hearing stories about corruption.

A stolen credit card number? "No problem, provide us a list of suspicious charges. Oh, this suspicious charge on your list...you actually made."

"I did? Sorry, they're hard to understand, these cryptic entries."

"Too bad. Our policy is to force you to pay for all the fraudulent charges, if even one of those charges is mis-identified."

"Fuck!" (My honest friend's story.)

Re:free speech

[girlintraining]

The police are outnumbered by the citizens they protect a thousand to 1 at least and they can only be effective if the majority of those citizens trust them and cooperate with them. The social contract that all officers of the law have with its citizens is this: "We trust you, you protect us." It's a simple, straight-forward principle that depends on the officer's ethical conduct being at all times impeccable. Any unethical behavior observed and the officer should be quickly stripped of rank and authority to maintain public trust.

That isn't happening anymore. Our country now has mock trials where they declare the officers innocent, or that the protesters were engaged in vague-sounding crimes like "resisting without violence"... which in most of those cases can be rightly called, "speaking one's mind." Officers seize and destroy evidence of their own misconduct. They preferentially attack people on the basis of race, sexual orientation, ethnicity (perceived or actual), or on social class. These are not isolated cases: They are widespread issues that regularly receive attention in the press, though heavily edited, redacted, and spun to appear less severe than it is. It does not take anyone long on google to find a current, relevant case of significant police misconduct involving many officers, often an entire department or city of them.

The social contract of "We trust you, you protect us" is broken. And that's a problem. That's a big problem. That is in fact a super huge democracy-threatening problem... because if people don't assemble to protect out of fear, then that anger with the status quo isn't visible. We (as a society) don't know there's a problem, can't address it, and so the anger builds and builds until we start getting gunman in the bell towers, people marching into classrooms and blowing away everyone they see... We get sporatic acts of seemingly random violence because these individuals feel they cannot be heard. And then we have a society living in fear, more fear, terrible amounts of fear.

And protracted anxiety and fear destroys economies, governments, and institutions. Democracy depends on freedom, and freedom depends on the confidence to use those freedoms. I cannot find anyone above the age of 21 who thinks they have the freedom of speech they were told they had in school. I have trouble finding anyone who's willing to attend a protest for something they believe in and support out of fear of "getting a record" or "getting on a list". They well and truly believe their livelihoods would be threatened by engaging in activities protected by the highest law in the land, activities that our founding fathers and every reputable scholar on the subject of civil liberty and democracy says are essential for the functioning of this society.

F*ck terrorists: We've got a much bigger problem. We're rotting from the inside out.

Re:free speech

[Entropius]

If you're going to trust your police with guns then you need to be able to trust them not to use them in response to provocation. If you can't find someone that you can trust not to start shooting at people taunting them, then you should just take the guns away from them -- or arrest them for assault.

The Arizona Criminal Code says, plain as day: "the use of force or deadly force is not justified in response to verbal provocation alone".

I'm no fan of some of the shit Occupy has pulled -- in particular, squatting on public land in such a way that it reduces the value the public can get out of it. (I think a lot of their demands are naive and silly, too, but that's neither here nor there, since if being wrong negated the right to free speech we'd have to close all the churches -- and the Capitol, for that matter.) But the police get trigger-happy when provoked then you need some better police.

(NB: Provoking them in a manner that makes them unable to do legitimate police work is a different story.)

Re:free speech

[Anonymous Coward]

It is only going to get worse. Europe had life very cheap for over a millennium from the fall of Rome and the tiny dukedoms and duchies. A starving person stealing a loaf of bread? It was likely they would get beheaded, hanged, or just hacked to death. Just being homeless was grounds for being thrown in the clink, shipped off to a penal colony, or perhaps just killed outright. Peasant results were always unsuccessful, and resulted in a ton of people being burned at the stake if they were leaders, or just run through and left where they were.

The only reason that this brutal way of life isn't with us now is because of the plague. With the Black Plague taking out the backs for nobles to flail, they actually had to make concessions (Magna Carta) in order to keep order (this after they realized that they were running out of peasants to kill.)

Same thing is happening now. Higher populations end up with brutal police states. I'm not going to be surprised if our kids are living in one room places like the main character out of Fifth Element, with the spots on the wall to put your hands during the random shakedowns, with permits required to ever leave a city, and with long prison terms being the norm (because there is a whole industry around locking people up.)

People talk about revolution? In reality, revolution as we know it is impossible. What ends up happening is that there is a crackdown, a lot of people tortured and killed, the regime in power tightening its grip making life harder for everyone else, and things going on. A crowd protesting in the streets? A helicopter gunship full of napalm or high rpm chain guns is inexpensive, will take care of the job, and there will be no successive protests afterwards. Libya was overthrown not because of internal politics, but because the US invaded and bumped off its leader. Without external influence, what will happen in most countries is what is happening in Syria -- towns and villages turned into craters, and actually more stability for the people in charge since all the revolutionaries showed themselves and were killed.

With the advent of social media, it is trivial for governments to take out would-be firebrands. Someone becoming popular with their speeches? A quick overnight disappearance takes care of that.

One can credit the black plague for the Western Renaissance, but future generations won't be that lucky.

Re:"Starting with the Nazi military during WWII"

[Anonymous Coward]

The nazi scientists are all dead or senile, that's why NASA hasn't been doing much except reruns ;).

Go Ahead. It won't make any difference.

[rbrander]

Typical of a certain mindset that sufficient force will stop a demonstration.

And it will, of course. ONE demonstration. But if you don't want another twice as big, you can't stop it with force.

Ghaddafi used anti-aircraft ammunition on human bodies. That tidied up the whole street in jig time. But where is he now?

Re:Go Ahead. It won't make any difference.

[Sique]

It worked for him for about 40 years. And it seems to work for Bashar al-Assad right now.

Dangerous Denial Of Brutality

[Web Goddess]

Police are supposed to be trained officers. They are being provoked by taunts? Throw those goddamn police out of their jobs, with a black mark on their records. What you say is (trolling?) bullshit. I have seen numerous videos of peaceful people blindsided by police with pepper spray and bludgeons. Overwhelming force, yet the police are provoked by taunts? You live in a world of hypocrisy and denial, previous poster.

Re:Dangerous Denial Of Brutality

[PeeAitchPee]

Wow, such vitriol directed towards someone that might have a different perspective than you. Yeah, I've seen the UC YouTube video, and I've also read stories about Occupy camps rigging booby-traps when threatened with eviction, throwing human shit at police, cursing at them, daring them to attack, threatening lawsuits, etc. As with most things, the truth is most likely somewhere in the middle, unless we choose to wear blinders that let us think one side can do nothing but good and the other is always wrong.

Re:Dangerous Denial Of Brutality

[tqk]

Wow, such vitriol directed towards someone that might have a different perspective than you. Yeah, I've seen the UC YouTube video, and I've also read stories about Occupy camps rigging booby-traps when threatened with eviction, throwing human shit at police, cursing at them, daring them to attack, threatening lawsuits, etc.

The protesters are civilians. Police are supposed to be trained professionals. If you're a cop at a protest, you're wearing a face shield and helmet, you're armed and dangerous, and you can change out of your uniform at the end of your shift. Why care about what's thrown at you by civilians? It's your job to take it and react reasonably. It's what you were hired for. If you can't handle that, you're in the wrong job.

Why any policeman would think it's reasonable conduct to pepper spray a line of kneeling civilians is beyond me. I'd be looking around for a rifle if I saw that happening.

Re:Dangerous Denial Of Brutality

[gman003]

Have you *seen* the stuff they're packing? Kevlar body armor, riot shields, fall face masks... anything short of a rifle or a molotov cocktail isn't going to significantly hurt them.

If your job is cashier at McDonalds, you're expected to be able to handle some irate customer yelling at you without flipping out. If your job is programmer at Ubersoft, you're expected to be able to handle a moronic boss yelling at you without losing your shit. And if your job is police officer armed up and suited for a riot, you're expected to be able to handle people yelling at you and tossing rocks without bringing out the shotguns and chemical weapons.

The police don't need better weapons. They need better brains. Problem is, between shitty funding, politics, and a fundamentally broken sense of justice in America, most of the police don't actually know how to handle this sort of thing. They're just as scared as the protesters are, but hey, they've got a badge, and someone handed them a billy club and a can of OC, so they're going to use it the same way any undertrained, terrified person would.

Re:Go Ahead. It won't make any difference.

[tsotha]

Don't kid yourself. Daffy would still be in power if the Europeans (with American support) hadn't pushed him out. His response to protests and then later outright civil war was working very well.

Pissing people off

[Omnifarious]

Getting people to disperse in a matter that will piss them off will only work if they wake up in the morning and think "Gosh, I'm kind of embarrassed I was there at all.". Otherwise, it will just make them angrier. And it may not even get them to disperse and go home like you want them to in the first place.

The people who work at firms who make stuff like this should be ashamed of themselves for the world they help create.

But, of course, there are enough people on Slashdot who think that might makes right, and that authority is always correct (most of whome paradoxically are against 'big government') that I suspect these people feel not a glimmer of guilt.