Can Rubber Bullets Kill You? Three days into the London riots,
British Prime Minister David Cameron authorized Metropolitan
Police forces to use rubber bullets as an emergency crowd
control measure, a move which has raised controversy due to the
weaponry’s dicey reputation. Classified as “nonlethal” or “less
lethal” weapons, along the same lines as chemical irritants and
stun guns, rubber bullets -- which typically consist of a
40-millimeter metal shell coated in rubber -- are meant to
incapacitate targets without causing serious injury or death.
But since their early use in the 1970s, medical professionals,
human rights groups and government officials have criticized
rubber bullets, also known as baton rounds, because they say the
so-called nonlethal weapons can kill. The British government was
one of the first to deploy rubber bullets on a large scale --
and see resulting casualties -- during clashes with the Irish
Republican Army. From 1970 to 1975, the British military fired
off 55,000 rounds of 5.9-inch