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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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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I'll admit that my info is maybe a bit out of date, but not fundamentally wrong: if we could identify the exact weapon and round used, that would be helpful.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.
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