Tasers can cause heart attacks, tear gas can cause asphyxiation, I don't even have to get into what those extendable metal batons can do.

Does everyone remember that one week where Biden was advocating that cops shoot people in the legs and libs were a little confused on how to message that? Half were ignoring it and the other half were trying to earnestly say shooting people in the legs would save lives (it wouldn't).

Fun fact there's no reliably non-lethal way to shoot someone with a firearm. If you're shooting someone, you're attempting to kill them. People have watched way too many movies where the Terminator or whatever will shoot someone in the thigh with expert accuracy, leaving their target in pain and immobilized, but alive. Yeah no. People are twitchy and don't have perfect accuracy. You're trained to fire at center mass not because that's the best location to shoot a person, but because that's where you're most likely to hit. If you're aiming for a leg you might as well be aiming at their groin, the ground, or even their head. And even if by some miracle you do manage to hit precisely in the leg as a non-lethal technique, good job you just lacerated the target's femoral artery and they'll bleed out in 3 minutes.

I fucking hate cops

I wonder if cops would accept this kind of rhetoric if I shot them.

Yeah, that reporter got shot from less than 10m away that might have shattered bone or severed arteries. For comparison the recommended minimum range for civillian variants is 18 meters.

I long ago when I was a cop defending shitlib preferred the term "less lethal" because although they're not likely to kill they certainly still can. I think it's still pretty accurate.

Neither are tasers and tear gas, the company that makes tasers even calls them ”less lethal” instead of non-lethal

Rubber and Plastic Bullets were invented by the British forces for use in Northern Ireland and killed 17 people, over half of whom were children, while seriously injuring over 615 people between 1988-98 including permanent blindness and loss of eyes.

I've never head them referred to as 'non lethal'. Always been 'less than lethal'.

They are still projectiles hurled at great speed via a timed and controlled expulsion of gasses. You're gonna get fucked up if you're on the receiving end.

Not guaranteed dead, just probably dead, instead.

I’ve started seeing “less than lethal” more and more for that reason I assume.

There's a plot point in The Last Castle where the prison warden wants to take out a prisoner who is protesting against their treatment. Rubber bullet to the soft spot on the side of the head.

I call them still-lethals for that reason

It's non-lethal in the same way pellets or even smaller calibers are non-lethal. Just look at this:

This is the caliber needed to kill the animal with a single bullet at center mass. For .223 LR, you can reliably kill rats at center mass but can't reliably kill squirrels at center mass. That's fucking it. It doesn't mean squirrels are somehow impervious to .223 LR or that you can't kill a squirrel by aiming at its head or that a squirrel can survive getting mag dumped or the squirrel would survive getting shot by a .223 LR at less than 5 yards. It just means if a rat gets hit by a .223 LR and it wasn't at its tail, the rat is completely fucked while a squirrel may or may not immediately die.

Going back to rubber bullets, I'm pretty fucking sure they're good enough to reliably kill rats. And those "uh aktually, you're suppose to aim for the ground and let it bounce up to hit people instead of aiming at people directly" rounds are good enough for squirrels and rabbits.