Happy Shooting With Laughing Bullets

No joke: A military-funded firm investigated a laughing bullet – a non-lethal round with a payload of laughing gas that presumably leaves the target bruised but giggling. And if that idea sounds funny, wait 'til you hear the one about setting your M-16 to stun.

Fired from a normal gun, the soft round collapses on impact, as I noted over on New Scientist's technology blog. And out would come a chemical agent. "Essentially this non-lethal weapon will allow the military to punch,' slap and hit an individual repetitively from a distance and in a manner, which provides no injuries", claims the 2002 proposal by Victorville, California's Agentai Inc.

The chemical aspect of the idea is what makes it unusual, of course. But the idea of just being able to load a clip of non-lethal rounds into a standard rifle is where makers Agentai see the big money-making opportunity:

Such a technology will provide great benefits to the Security Forces since during their interventions incapacitation of individuals will be induced with no injury or body damage. Once the action/ idea of this new technology is widely presented, demonstrated and accepted by the Police Forces, Security Personnel and Security Forces, a vast ammunition market will open up. This provides for a great commercial opportunity, which can later extend to the entire ammunition world market. Different designs and optimizations can be developed to produce a new line of non-lethal bullets serving all needs and scope

I can see that a lot of people might find the idea tempting. To be able to "punch, slap and hit an individual repetitively from a distance" might be a useful capability: Hey look, I just move my finger and Mister Nine Millimeter beats up the bad guys for me. But there are some problems.

First, previous studies have failed to turn up ammunition which can be safe at point blank range and effective at any distance.

Second, using the same weapon for non-lethal and lethal rounds is an accident waiting to happen. You only meant to knock the guy down and you put a live round though his chest…the police use separate shotguns with distinctive markings for beanbag rounds to avoid this sort of accident.

Third, you know you're firing non-lethal, but to everyone else –
bystanders, the watching media, and the bad guys – it looks like you're firing live ammo. Get set for instant escalation, special reports in
CNN and the rest of it.

Naturally, this has been tried before. The Israeli Defense Force used
5.56mm PVC training bullets ('ROTA') against stone-throwers during the
Intifada. Although they are only intended to incapacitate, a study by Physicians For Human Rights found they could cause serious injuries.

A 1997 US Army study looked at the prospect of turning a standard assault rifle into a riot-control weapon. Called "Venting Propellant Gases to Obtain
Nonlethal Projectile Velocity." the study found that pluggable holes in the barrel "might reduce the muzzle velocity to nonlethal values." The idea seems to have been that you could just unplug the holes to set your M-16 to stun.The initial trials were successful and indicated that the idea was feasible. But it does not seem to have progressed to the stage of testing the effects on a human target. Good thing: to me, a pointed steel-jacketed bullet sounds unsafe at any speed.