Hacker News Reader

Comment by keithpeter | Hacker News Reader

"Taking the threat seriously, armed police then raided Mr Dobbs’ home and shot the 20-year-old between the eyes and in the chest with rubber bullets, breaking bones in his face and bruising his lungs. Images taken after the incident show him with a heavily swollen, bruised and cut face."

UK resident: my memories of seeing television reports of rubber bullets used in Northern Ireland during the troubles suggest that the bullets were designed to be bounced off ground or wall first. That they were primarily a riot control round.

When did the police start using them as direct ammunition? Is that generally regarded as OK?

View on HN

In france at least, they started to outfit many police departments with them, as tit sounds better in the news to say they are "sub-lethal" weapons instead of real guns. It is illegal for them to aim at the upper body or fire below the 7 meters range, though they do it constantly (and even though people already died due to them and lose eyes every year; a rubber bullet going at 360km/h can be quite lethal).

If you are breaching a building rather than controlling a street, isn't your training going to be to shoot someone directly? Since officers are acting on training rather than reflection, isn't expecting them to bounce bullets rather foolish?

I can see why they wouldn't want to come in a building firearms blazing due to a random phone call, though.

Assuming it's the same kind of "rubber bullets" used to neutralize riots, it's completely unsuitable for breaching houses. The min-range is impossible to keep to start with.

Yes, and it's wildly inaccurate as well (even without taking into account that police training is often kept to a minimum so most of them can't aim that well).

But how many people breaching houses have only police training? How many are former military or current reserves?

Are you saying police are being trained to directly shoot people with equipment designed to be used indirectly? Or are you saying they aren't being trained to use their equipment as it's intended to be used at all? I'm not clear what your point is.

My point is that if someobe gets training on how to breach and secure buildings, either in SWAT, or in their previous career in the military, then they will have training which teaches them to aim for center-mass of anyone they perceive as a threat.

Swapping out the type of ammunition isnt going to erase that training and so they would fall back to it in a stressful situation.

I think the answer to both questions is yes. Perhaps you are overthinking this?

Note that in Northern Ireland, when the army killed civilians, individuals responsible were put on trial and even sometimes convicted. The anti-insurgency force was less lethal and more legally constrained than some US police forces.

(Remember that as a UK resident our TV coverage of NI was subject to state censorship, though. "Gerry Adams' words are spoken here by an actor" etc.)

With their shoot-first attitude, you're lucky when they're using rubber bullets.

How accurate can you be with them when you have to bounce them first though? In an emergency situation, you need to be damn sure that the bullet will hit the target after the bounce.

That being said, they should have assessed this situation better and have realised it wat not an emergency situation.

>When did the police start using them as direct ammunition?

In Northern Ireland.

Rubber bullets introduced by the RUC in NI were designed to be ricocheted off the ground to strike legs and knees. They weren't accurate enough for much else.

Later replaced with plastic baton rounds which were fearsomely accurate and were used in direct-fire. Forbidden to aim at head but instead aimed at stomach and let bullet-drop do its thing. Given the majority gender of the 'opposition' you can guess the results.

There was a minimum range ( 25 metres or so ) which could only be violated to save life. Absolutely not permitted indoors.

This is all public-domain.

Thanks dingaling

I had forgotten the batton rounds development.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com