re non lethal alternatives to handguns holland cs colostate edu douglas craig holland writes what about guns with non lethal bullets like rubber or plastic bullets would those work very well in stopping an attack doug holland any projectile traveling at or near typical bullet speeds is potentially lethal even blanks which have no projectile can cause death if the muzzle is in close proximity to the victim i have heard of rubber or plastic bullets being used effectively during riot situations where the intent is crowd control rather than close range self defense i ve also seen reports of deaths caused by them the british in northern ireland use of a firearm for self defense is appropriate and lawful only in the gravest of situations at that point i consider deadly lethal force to be a proper reaction and so does the law furthermore use of less effective but still potentially lethal force has its own set of problems it may well take more applications of the less effective force to stop the incident this places all parties at some risk the victim because the attack has not stopped and the assailent since the aggregate damage done by the multiple applications may well be more deadly michael phelps external mjp vnet ibm com internal mjp bwa kgn ibm com mjp at kgnvmy and last but not least a disclaimer these opinions are mine
