in 2008 i wrote a reasonably extensive overview of police less-lethal weaponry. I'm working on a new one for a new era. (old one focused more on tasers than tear gas, for example, based on what I was running into at demonstrations in the US). I'll post some findings as i go.

Baton rounds and impact munitions generally kill people on a somewhat regular basis. A 2017 study found that shots to the head and throat killed the most people. This study, however, included a lot of literal rubber-coated bullets, which are not prevalent in the US at this time.

in the US at least, most impact weapons are "baton rounds" fired from 37mm and 40mm grenade launchers and beanbag rounds fired from 12ga shotguns. A 2000 study that focused slightly more on weapons like this found that it was shots to the chest that killed the most people.

basically, baton hits your chest, cracks your rib, rib pierces your heart or lung. bad times. Hard to say which is more common, since data is sparse, but it's safe to say that getting hit in the chest, throat, or head sucks.

Less-lethal munitions are (almost?) universally designed to be fired at someone's abdomen and legs, to prevent permanent injury or death. Local use of force guidelines given to police dictate this. Some are meant to be fired at the abdomen, some "below the waist, avoiding groin."

This is not followed. Police are fucking demons (that's the technical term for them) and will do whatever they want with impunity until we overthrow their reign.

But even if they wanted to follow the rules, they can't: a study shows that less-lethal launchers lose accuracy FAST in stressful situations, especially over the Y-axis. They can usually hit their target, but functionally have little control over WHERE they hit their target.

anyone who geeks out about this shit, or has recommendations of where to look for more information, or has pertinent war stories from the streets during the uprising, please get in touch, I'm trying to make this reasonably exhaustive and useful.

accuracy study: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2019.1626916?journalCode=terg20

2017 study that includes some munitions not used commonly in the states: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/12/e018154

don't have a link to the 2000 study in front of me, it'll be in the final