Originally posted by Zenic
Weapons arn't created for a "Right Way" Period.

Secondly, the reason America has rioters is because we can, its a right we have, something called Freedom that this administration has constantly tried to undermind.

Bull#. Americans do not have the right to riot.

Riot-A wild or turbulent disturbance created by a large number of people.

Now tell me, where in the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, are we granted such a right?

We are allowed peaceful gatherings, not riots. I've seen a couple of riots, and there has never been anything peaceful about them. Cars tipped over, fights breaking out everywhere, people throwing stuff through windows.

As for the weapon at hand, I'd rather be shot with it than with a bullet.

i think the weapon will be used properly. the weapon will only be used to keep trouble away........not to kill people.

Originally posted by Mr No One
Any weapon created can be used "the wrong way." The same can be said for any invention. Every medicine, every technological advance, everything can be twisted in some way. Does that mean we should stop improving? No. We just have to do the best we can to maintain intended purpose.

Pencils:
- Can stab people in their eyeballs
File Cabinets:
- Can be dropped on people's heads
Televisions:
- You can put someone's head through one of these
Canned Soup:
- Can be served hot to old ladies with strychnine garnered from apple seeds
Cars
- Can run over old ladies
Paper Clips
- These can be unwound and put into people's eyeballs
Styrofoam Cups
- If you feed these to dogs, they can get sick
Paper
- You can make a really sharp paper airplane that can poke someone's eyeballs out
Kitchen Knife
- Sometimes the kind of knife that is supposed to be used to cut bread is also really good at cutting other stuff, like vegetables or people's heads.
Boots
- Steeltoe boots help construction workers conserve toes, but they can also be used to smash people's heads.
Computer Keyboards
- Man, you can smash someone's head with the keyboard and then strangle them with the cord.
Plastic Trash Bags
- These can be used to take out the trash or suffocate people.
Soldering Iron
- You could get a soldering iron nice and hot and then put it in somebody's eyeball

Niiiiiinety nine ways to diiiiiiiie.
I could kill someone 18 times with my pinky finger before they hit the ground!
phjear!!

Seriously , as one who has had an EEG (nerve test) done on my legs, when they hook you up to the electrodes and start zapping you with the juice, taking it higher and higher until your limbs are flapping with every jolt like you're epileptic, you start wishing that they'd just shoot you in the head with a gun and get it over with.

If this 'peaceful' weapon causes pain anything like that, you'd give up your water and your waste and eventually make up state secrets or tell them whatever you thought would get them to stop. You could easily end up drooling in the corner, or completely comatose, even dead if you have the wrong sort of pre-existing conditions.

This is a dangerous weapon of potentially lethal control to be used on individuals or groups that are stridently or violently resisting being subdued. The potential for its mis-use on a peacefully and lawfully protesting populace, especially in today's nationally divisive political climate, is way too high for me to be in favor of its domestic distribution.

Maybe some super heavy-duty ear protection would help defend against it. Or maybe the vibrations are on a level that transcends normal hearing and penetrates the body directly. This is a scary weapon, and the people on this thread in favor of its use (figurative cattle waiting to be figuratively prodded with it?) are scarier still.

Yah. I recall it looks like a troop carrier with a dish on top and uses focused microwave beams that can put groups of people temporarily down and out.

Dallas

Yes, the technology was being developed in 2003.

What's new is the public's growing awareness of the effects that these 'non-lethal' (they do everything but kill you, most of the time; the rest of the time, they kill you), weapons have. Add to that the growing realization of the potential for application by the government in efforts to control domestic dissent. I saw the article then, and it was about military use in crowd control in foreign countries like Bosnia. This thread has, in contrast, explored what these weapons are capable of doing to a person, and how they might be misused to control public opinion.

The real danger lies in who is behind the weapon. Can you picture W (is for ?) turning to extra tricky Dicky and saying, I'm really f-ing tired of all these protesters, let's just blast 'em with that pulse-plasma gizmo and see if that shuts 'em up fer awhile. That's what we'd do back in Taxus, that's fer sure, ayup. Not that that would happen, of course.

Weapons like this are not for domestic use, and shouldn't be used on any crowd of civilian demonstrators, anywhere. Mobs attacking military installations, maybe. Pepper spray swabs and tear gas and billy clubs and strap ties are enough to handle most civil unrest. During riots, there are rules of engagement and lethal force can be authorized under them. That means real bullets. At that point, I think these 'non-lethal' weapons could be just as damaging, and more painful, than a well placed bullet. Here's a quote from that article to support this.

"On the counter-personnel front, the technology is only marginally more tame. Nonlethal, after all, does not mean nonviolent. Although information here remains scarce—and the directorate won't share details—the pulsed-energy projectile rivals the Active Denial System pain beam in its sci-fi promise. The weapon will fire a pulsed (in brief shotlike bursts) deuterium-fluoride laser that will produce an ionized plasma on whatever surface it hits. That in turn will cause both pain and a kinetic shock, and could literally knock people off their feet.

Another counter-personnel system, the veiling-glare laser, is designed to produce fluorescence in the human eye, inducing a whiteout effect, blinding individuals for brief periods. Acoustic devices that produce low-frequency, incapacitating sound are also being investigated as counter-personnel weapons."

I think the research is useful, but the products are potentially more dangerous to us than to the enemy.




[edit on 26-4-2005 by Icarus Rising]

Personally, I still like the device that puts out low-frequency noise that makes the whole crowd poop themselves. Now THAT's non-lethal.

Zip