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9News US Correspondent Lauren Tomasi hit by rubber bullet during Los Angeles protests
(www.9news.com.au)
this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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Rubber bullets are lethal at that range. Not "less lethal"; lethal. And that cunt cop 100% knows this. It's in the training. This was attempted murder of a member of the press.
Ok.
So, when people throw around the phrase 'rubber bullet'... it tends to conjure in most people's minds... a projectile, made of rubber, that is about the same size as a bullet.
They are not the same size as a bullet.
They are the same size as a grenade launcher round, between 30mm and 40mm, generally speaking.... which is about 3x to 5x the size of most actual bullets from a pistol or rifle, albeit not travelling as fast as either of those.
They also tend to have a metal inner core.
So its more like a slug round from an 8 to 4 gauge shotgun, with rubber coating, were you to roughly extrapolate existing shotgun gauge size/naming conventions:
Also, the actual usage manuals for these things state that... you are not to fire them directly at someone closer than approximately 200-400 feet, what you are supposed to do is fire them at the ground at a shallow angle, such that they bounce or ricochet upward at a shallow angle...
... because there is so much energy in one of these rounds that they need to be dissapated by that bounce, otherwise they are quite likely to cause serious injury or even kill someone.
That is to say, 'less than lethal' means 'potentially lethal' when used improperly, and cops routinely use them improperly all the time.
This cop who fired that round, at that range (under 200 feet, under the minimum safe distance for any kind of firing)... not only was he too close to safely fire the thing at all, it looks like he just fired it directly at her, between her knees and hip, without a bounce.
When cops say, when people say cops 'need better training', the technical details I have just outlined are part of that better training... which, in practice, they disregard all the time.
Similar wild deviations exist between manufacturer suggested usage guidelines for tasers, and how they are routinely, actually used by cops.
Another example of intentional bullshit perversion of proper use procedures is the cop 'at ease' stance, where elbows are bent and each hand is roughly up at each pectoral... this is a common, general 'idle' stance... and it often is used to obscure the view of chest mounted body cams.
In conclusion: Yes, this absolutely was an intentional attempt to murder or grievously injure a journalist, basically 2nd degree attempted murder if this was done by not-a-cop.
This is incorrect, but a very widespread misunderstanding.
What you are calling a misunderstanding is based on.... not citing manufacturer guidelines, nor police training documents.
Skip-firing is (correctly) declared too dangerous because of the potential to ricochet into the head, which can be lethal.
The older, 'less lethal', 40mm rubber rounds, police were using 5, 10+ years ago?
Yeah, their official training docs did state that you should skip-fire them, because the older rounds were of a much more primitive design, and would in fact cause greivous injury when used in direct fire, ie point at what you want to hit.
The cops did not want to give up their toys, so they invented a new official usage doctrine that 'made them safer', while also not really following it in many cases.
This resulted in, within the last 5 to 10 years, the development of 40mm launchers and projectiles that are of a bit more advanced design, with lower muzzle velocities, which are now marketed with the phrase 'Direct Impact' somewhere in the name or description of the thing.
And these are not really 'rubber bullets' either, they are basically a dense foam that deforms much more than an actual bullet would.
So ... I don't know if you can identify exactly what weapon and round was used in this instance.
If it was an older models, and many police agencies often keep many older models around, then uh yeah, those things are unsafe to use in the manner depicted.
If they are the newer models, then it was used in the 'correct' manner, as described by modern mfg guidelines and training/usage manuals.
So... yeah.
This is all rather complicated because ... well just in general police are secretive and lie all the time about how they actually do things, and different police agencies have different loadouts and gear, there is not 100% standardization across every city, country, and federal LE agency... and the same variation applies for usage doctrine, both theorertical and actual.
I'll admit that my info is maybe a bit out of date, but not fundamentally wrong: if we could identify the exact weapon and round used, that would be helpful.
EDIT:
So uh, in addition to ... large sized 'less lethal' impactor rounds giving people heart attacks with a chest shot, breaking limbs, permantly blinding someone or literally killing them with a headshot...
Exploding testicles.
A good number of cases of men being hit in the crotch, and yep, ruptured testes, blew apart your balls.
Fun Stuff!
Kinda makes you wonder why the manufacturers would design a weapon that needs to be shot at the ground for an inaccurate bank shot rather than just ramp down the speed of the projectile.
You can see the cop aims low. His intent was to harass and drive away. A real chud.
There have been cases of reporters getting hit with plastic or less-lethal rounds in the head... With a helmet on... And being brain damaged for life.
The reporter must be made of steel because she laughs it off but those rounds can blind or break bones.
She's laughing it off because she is relatively young, in good shape, has media training... and is in all likelihood currently in shock, flooded with adrenaline.
Within 6 hours she will have a bruise the diameter of a soccer ball, and she almost certainly has a or multiple fractured bones, though they are likely hairline, fissure or impacted partial fractures, not complete breaks.
EDIT: Reporter must be made of steel you say?
She's also working for a right leaning network.
Ah, I missed that, my default human empathy response still generally doesn't like seeing people shot for no good reason.