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

Re:"Starting with the Nazi military during WWII"

[Anonymous Coward]

ya funny how tech that was designed for the nazi saucer craft is now being used to suppress free speech isn't it...WONDER are nazi scientists cheeringy et?

Great, what we really needed

[Opportunist]

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

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

[Bacon Bits]

Actually university police often are sworn police officers, making them peers to your municipal police department and giving them the ability to pursue, detain, and arrest. Many universities also operate security guard branches as well, and they are typically not sworn officers. However, those guys you see driving around in school-colored vehicles with CAMPUS POLICE emblazoned on the side are typically, in every respect, real police officers. Additionally, they almost universally have an understanding with municipal departments to work together cooperatively, so if they find themselves in a corner case (occurred on campus, detained off campus) they can simply contact dispatch and request a municipal officer.

Re:Great, what we really needed

[sco08y]

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.

Not to mention, they are human beings and, with normal human variance, possess a conscience, possibly even slightly more than the average citizen given their affinity for a dangerous job that primarily involves protecting other people.

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

[Entropius]

Nonviolence comes from all sides acknowledging a non-aggression principle: you don't use violence against me or my property, I won't against you. The traditional role of police is to respond to violence with overwhelming violence (or the threat of such): you punch me or smash my shit, they'll arrest you, and if you punch them too they'll come with guns.

But using weapons like this against peaceful protesters isn't what the police are for -- it's using violence against the nonviolent, and the victims (like any other victim of unprovoked aggression) have the right to respond in kind. Bullets, microwave-oven HERF guns, take your pick.

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

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

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.

"Terror" is the strategy for those with no other options. The best weapon against terror is blind and principled justice for all.

Re:free speech

[girlintraining]

There's so much I could say to this, but I'll try to be brief: There has never been a case of a political movement who's platform ended with "... and to achieve this, let's piss off a bunch of people with shotguns while we remain unarmed." The Occupy protests were creative and (when started) legal. They later had what they were doing declared illegal at the behest of the Department of Homeland Security, who whispered "terrorist" into the ears of dozens of municipal leaders, who then closed and locked the doors to city hall and passed all manner of legislation in any way they could to give the DHS the ability to coordinate directly with local law enforcement, who then turned hostile. When the protests started, the police didn't interfere. They didn't really have much to say beyond making sure the protesters and the general public near them were safe and living in sanitary conditions... a few arrests here and there, but nobody was making a big deal about it. It was just "the cost of doing business" in a democratic society. Then the goddamned gustapo showed up, ordered them to roll in the tanks and start with the mass arrests and surveillance.

No, there was no provocation from the protesters... in fact, I've never once seen a historically accurate account of any protest who's stated goals were to get tangled with the police, who have a 1,500 win, 0 loss record against protest movements.

Re:free speech

[paiute]

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

"one of them" = police plant in the crowd, you mean

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.

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.

Re:"Starting with the Nazi military during WWII"

[ZankerH]

The German Wehrmacht (and the other regular branches of the German military in WWII) had little to do with the Nazi party. The only "Nazi" military was the Waffen-SS, whose notable accomplishments include running death camps and overall pathetic performance in actual combat. The American stereotype of branding anything related to Germany in the 1933-1945 era as "Nazi" is just wrong.

Re:"Starting with the Nazi military during WWII"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ze German Wehrmacht (und ze other regular branches of ze Heer in WWII) had little to do mit ze Nazi party. Ze only "Nazi" military vas ze Waffen-SS, whose notable accomplishments include running ze death camps und overall pathetic performance im actual combat. Ze American stereotype of branding anything related to Germany in ze 1933-1945 era als "Nazi" is just wrong.

Re:"Starting with the Nazi military during WWII"

[Nidi62]

The German Wehrmacht (and the other regular branches of the German military in WWII) had little to do with the Nazi party. The only "Nazi" military was the Waffen-SS, whose notable accomplishments include running death camps and overall pathetic performance in actual combat. The American stereotype of branding anything related to Germany in the 1933-1945 era as "Nazi" is just wrong.

Even the Wehrmacht had to at least toe the party line. If I remember correctly, Rommel, arguably the best general of WWII(on either side) was punished for not being a Nazi. It is important to remember that the assassination plot that came closest to killing Hitler was planned out and executed by Wehrmacht officers. But yeah, your average Wehrmacht grunt was not a Nazi. And the Waffen-SS actually had a fairly strong reputation on the Eastern front, and were known as very effective and fierce fighters.

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

[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:Dangerous Denial Of Brutality

[girlintraining]

I'd be looking around for a rifle if I saw that happening.

I hope you consider a camera first. Whether it is justified or not, shooting or threatening another person with a gun over a threat or use of violence doesn't make you any better than they are. You shoot that officer and your life is over, he's elevated to martyrdom by Homeland, and thousands more will suffer under 'enhanced' police powers to keep that from happening. If you want to make a difference, you take a good picture of him. You make sure that picture of what he's doing gets in front of every person in his community. Everyone he's supposed to be responsible for protecting. You make sure they know that man cannot be trusted. You make sure his personal, home mailbox is so choked with letters from concerned citizens he has to pay to keep a special PO box just so he can get mail. You make sure the police department is spending more than his salary paying off journalists to paint him in a good light, paying more to squelch the letters to the editor, and still more because every person in that community files a complaint for every single thing he does. You make him ineffective, gimp, useless -- a liability to the department he works for.

You make it so bad even his coworkers groan whenever they have to work with him. That's how you fight back: You don't pickup a damn weapon, you bury the bastards in their own bureauacracy. You make them beg to have everyone who sends a letter put on a special rectal exam at the airport list -- and each time they cross the line to protect this jerk, you're right there with a camera. You're right there with a letter, a pen, a microphone, a megaphone. You stay peaceful, you stay civil.

And after you've done all of this... Then you sit down with 3 other people who feel the same way you do and you say, "Okay, here's what we're going to do..."

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.

Re:"Starting with the Nazi military during WWII"

[Nidi62]

Didn't he also kind of screw the pooch on the whole D-Day thing?

No, he didn't. The Germans had several Panzer units stationed only a few miles from the coast in France. However, Hitler would not allow them to be released because he was convinced the invasion would be at Calais, where the Channel is actually the thinnest. By the time he allowed the tanks to be released, the Allies had already established a beachhead and moved inland. Had they been released when the request was made, the landings would have failed.

Re:"Starting with the Nazi military during WWII"

[hairyfeet]

That's why we need more money spent on cloning tech dammit, we're out of Nazis! Everybody knows we kicked them Ruskies only because our Nazis was better than their Nazis, and now we're all out of Nazis! We'll start with a dozen copies of everyone on Operation paperclip and go from there, starting with a dozen Von Brauns, that'll show the world who leads in Nazis!

Re:"Starting with the Nazi military during WWII"

[Chrisq]

Although Waffen SS did include camp guards ....

its all that black leather and tight trousers

Re:"Starting with the Nazi military during WWII"

[PopeRatzo]

I speak English without an accent though.

That's what they all say. My wife sounds like Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, but she thinks she speaks unaccented English.

When she writes a math paper, I have to go over it and put in all the articles before she submits it. Slavs are allergic to "the" and "a".

Re:"Starting with the Nazi military during WWII"

[hairyfeet]

Damned Ruskies! I bet you're just laughing your asses off ain't ya? First we help you and the damned Limeys out in WWII only for you to get half of Europe, what did we get? Nothing, not a damned thing! Hell the tea swillers even stabbed us in the back and went with that Frog metric system! Then you build all these kick ass fighters for dirt cheap that can land on a fricking two lane while our MIC give us these technocrappers that have so many bugs you can't turn the damned things to the left without screwing up the stupid computers so now you can crank out a dozen SU27s for the cost of a single F35 and they still can't make the damned thing work!

We should have listened to our greatest Hero, the great General Patton, hired them damned Nazis, put their asses in Sherman tanks and rolled right into Moscow! Would have showed your asses THEN huh? Instead that pussy Truman gives it all back, hell we didn't even keep the car building Nazis, bet they wouldn't have built no damned pintos or k cars that's for damned sure!