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Archive 1

Less-lethal weapons?

Seventeen people have died as a direct result of, or due to injuries sustained by, these rounds in Northern Ireland since 1969. Need for an edit methinks?

I don't think I understand your point. The article states that rubber bullets seldom kill and aren't intended to, but cautions that they can cause serious damage and there have been exceptions. Is there a problem?--Kizor 17:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

They are claimed not to be intended to kill, but since they frequently do, and are still in use, it must be more accurate to say that they are intended to have a lower fatality rate than conventional bullets. ---Dagme (talk) 23:19, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Merge to Rubber/plastic Bullet

Agree to the Merge, under one of the names Rubber/plastic Bullet which names the object. Non-lethal is rather questionnable and doesn't describe an object and is rather controversial. --[1] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.170.2.61 (talk) 09:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC).

References/accuracy

Article needs proper referencing and review for accuracy. There are sources indicating use of rubber bullets outside of the UK before 1970s (with fatality in the US in 1971)[2]. And this ammunition is used around the world, so the the article should not be focussed on the UK. I'm be looking into review of this article. Bwithh 18:27, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

And there's almost this whole section about wooden bullets in an article entitled "Rubber bullet". Bwithh 18:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Nepalrubberbullets.jpg.JPG

This picture clearly shows snap caps, not rubber bullets. There is no rubber in these cartridges, instead the blue part is plastic. Also, the rear of the casing clearly shows no primer, but a spring loaded striker buffer istead. This picture should be moved to that article instead. The US DOD picture caption is clearly erroneous. --85.156.238.205 22:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought it was clear cut enough and just removed it. --85.156.238.205 22:42, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


These are not "snap caps" nor are they "rubber bullets." These are plastic "short Range Training Ammunition" (SRTA) with a muzzle velocity of well over 4000 feet per second. They are intended for use for marksmanship training on ranges with limited down-range "danger space" as the velocity of the low-density plastic projectiles drops off rapidly in comparison to metal bullets.

At close range they are highly lethal, and have never been intended for use against people for any training or "less lethal" purpose.

The above person simply has no idea whatsoever about this subject.


These are nothing of all above. These are 5.56mm blank cartidges for the Steyr AUG used by the nepales army for markmanship training. 194.24.158.73 (talk) 21:52, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


Picture removed as having nothing to do with "rubber bullets." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.56.167.18 (talk) 05:03, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

With respect, the US Department of Defense says these are rubber bullets, as in this link, from the picture page, http://www.defenseimagery.mil/imagery.html;jsessionid=C0D7981427CC824D43B07904F24A005D#guid=8144f5b20914e31115f7a32dc084719a3f0e0bb7 --GRuban (talk) 05:11, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Why are these things blue? In this neck of the woods, blue is inert. There are various sorts of "inert", especially for missiles that might have complex internal electronics, but blue means inert, means doesn't go bang.
I think these are drill rounds, not any sort of projectile. I'd be surprised (and slightly appalled) if they had any sort of explosive primer in there. That's a training accident just waiting to happen. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:58, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

potential references

I don't have time at the moment to flesh this all out, but this article is hurting badly for good references. I found an article at Nature.com about rubber bullets and ocular injuries. If someone can go through the bibliography they used, you could probably find even more good sources. Ocular rubber bullet injuries at Nature.com. AliveFreeHappy (talk) 18:13, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Rubber bullets have killed many people and continue to do so. See the examples, studies, reports, etc. listed here:
http://www.google.com/#q=rubber+bullet+deaths --Timeshifter (talk) 16:06, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

(unindent). I may or may not have time to edit the article, but I can add some possibly useful info and references on this talk page for others to use somehow in the article.

Popular Mechanics article by David Hambling (emphasis added):

"Over the years the IDF has experimented with different types of less-lethal ammunition for standard military rifles. These have included plastic slugs and bullets made of compressed sand that disintegrates on impact without breaking the skin. These do not appear to be in general use, and the standard crowd-control ammunition is a large rubber-coated steel bullet fired from a special launcher. This can penetrate the skull, causing lethal injuries."

--Timeshifter (talk) 15:54, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

This page needs a picture of rubber bullets wounds, to show what damage such a weapon can do. Elecnix (talk) 04:14, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

redirect/Disambiguation

I got to this page looking for the 10cc song "rubber Bullets." A Page for the song exists, but it's not given the suffix (song) and there is a redirect set up to direct searches for "rubber bulletS" here. I don't know how to go about fixing this, and haven't the time to read up how to. But I thought it best to point out the problem. D.C.Rigate (talk) 04:31, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

 Done There is now a hatnote disambiguater on the top of the article. Chances are that someone searching for Rubber Bullets is looking for the song and someone searching for Rubber bullets is looking for the ammunition. Marcus Qwertyus 05:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Image is inadequate

This picture provides absolutely zero context for someone trying to determine the size of the shell. We need another picture which shows how big or small these are. Even if someone took the picture next to a ruler. 74.178.230.234 (talk) 23:11, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I'll happily re-photograph some, but I'm slightly concerned that one editor to this article has a track record of blatantly mis-using images to push a POV.
Rulers aren't clearly visible at small sizes. What would you like as a size context? Coke can? CD ? .303 / .45 ACP rounds ? Andy Dingley (talk) 23:19, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
There's the traditional strip of alternating black and white inch-long sections. Easily knocked up with a printer. But as you suggest the fizzy soft drink can is a largely universal size and unlikely to be questioned as to its identity.GraemeLeggett (talk) 23:36, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
For eBay I use a $2 bill, but no-one believes it's real! Andy Dingley (talk) 23:40, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
I think a Coke® can would be perfect to demonstrate this. Incidentally, my previous insertions into the caption[3][4] were merely intended to provoke a response such as the one I've just now gotten. Look, I know nothing about weapons, and I really had no idea if that "bullet" was 1 cm long or 1 ft. long or what. My motive was just to resolve this problem, and while it may have come across as dickish, I don't see why it should be characterized as POV. Anyway, I look forward to the new picture. 74.178.230.234 (talk) 14:56, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

How do they work?

This article completely ignores the technical aspect of the subject. It should describe, at least briefly, the principles which allow projectiles made of soft materials to be fired from conventional firearms. ---Dagme (talk) 23:23, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

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meaningless text with inadequate sourcing

"Often they were fired directly at people from close range, which resulted in three people being killed and much more badly injured." Source: [5]

To editor Andy Dingley: The part of the sentence up to the comma is fine. The next part (three people) does not appear in the source; in fact the source links directly to a list of 17 people killed. The last part (much more badly injured) is incomprehensible. If it refers to the number of injured people being large, it should be "many more", not "much more" by the rules of English usage (see [6] for a beginners' explanation). If it refers to the seriousness of injury, it is necessary to say what the seriousness is being compared to; i.e., more badly than what? All the source (which doesn't strike me as reliable anyway) says is "These weapons were to result in a number of deaths and serious injuries." Zerotalk 22:56, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
This page has been badly hacked around since the content was written, so don't expect the citations to still line up with the content they originally supported.
The problem with rubber bullets is that they failed to work as expected. Making them from rubber doesn't make them less lethal, it's about the energy they're fired at. So a solution was to instruct their users to not fire them directly at people, but to always bounce them off the floor in front of a group. This was unworkable in practice: either by accident or intent, they were fired directly - at which point the injuries they caused were more serious than was desired (in Whitehall at least). Separately there was also the problem that a bouncing bullet could ricochet and hit the wrong target. There were instructions that the bullets were only to be fired at groups, not individuals, so that they'd at least hit someone within that group. It was unclear what was supposed to be done about a high risk individual, such as someone with a petrol bomb. As NI often presented riots taking place only feet away from innocent bystanders, the problem of uncontrolled ricochets was a very real one: Emma Groves must be linked from here, although even that has been lost (as I said, this article has been trashed).
This section is poorly worded and needs rework - as I say, it has been hacked around a lot since first written, I suspect it was better back then. The point is though that for the rubber bullet era injuries, these injuries were worse than expected. There were not any more of them - the bullets were always intended to injure those they hit. Now, should this be phrased as "much more badly injured" or "many more badly injured"? I didn't like your first change to "many" because it's too easy to read it as the total injury count having increased (it didn't - the bullets were intended to injure). But should the wording be in terms of "the injuries became worse" or "the bad injuries became more common"? Please reword it - even restore your original change, if you want, but please bear in mind that we're trying to convey an increase in seriousness, not simple number. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:47, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Excellent source

This open-access journal article is a review of 26 studies on the impact of rubber/plastic bullets. It contains a huge amount of reliable relevant data. Here is an example of a derivative press report about the article, though citing the article directly is fine. Zerotalk 23:11, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

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