Plastic bullet

thumb|300px|Left and right: composite plastic/aluminium plastic baton round projectile from L21 round and case of L5 round.

Plastic bullet can refer to:

Plastic baton round: a large, blunt, low-velocity projectile fired from a specialized gun, intended as a less-lethal weapon for riot control and an alternative to rubber bullets.

Plastic bullets are generally used for riot control. Some plastic bullets are intended to be aimed at the ground so as to ricochet into the target; others are intended to be fired directly at a person.

Plastic baton rounds were invented by British researchers to provide a more accurate alternative to rubber bullets, and were intended to be fired directly at rioters in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.

An unrelated blunt, low velocity, small-calibre handgun bullet made of hollow plastic is sometimes used for short-range target practice (see recreational use).

History

The plastic baton round was developed in the UK by Porton Down scientists and intended for use against rioters in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, first used there in 1973.

The first version was the L5 Plastic Baton Round (PBR, commonly called plastic bullet). It was created to replace rubber baton rounds (rubber bullets), which had been used in Northern Ireland since 1970 and which were withdrawn by the end of 1975. Rubber bullets were meant to be fired at the legs of rioters or the ground in front of them. However, they were often fired directly at people from close range and sometimes at the totally innocent. The use of rubber bullets in Northern Ireland resulted in at least three people being killed and many more badly injured. weighed , was diameter and 'rather over' long. The new plastic bullet was a similar size to but lighter than the rubber bullet, but the considerably longer range of the plastic bullet— against —implies an appreciably higher muzzle velocity. An analysis made in 1976 concluded that the plastic bullet would prove to be more dangerous than the rubber bullet it replaced, especially if used abusively at short distances.

The final variant of the L5 plastic bullet—the L5A7—was introduced in 1994. The L5 was replaced by the L21A1 in 2001. The L21 plastic bullet was fired from a new launcher, the HK L104A1 riot gun, a rifled weapon which gives greater accuracy when used with an optical sight than the smooth bore weapons used to fire the earlier L5 rounds.

Usage—plastic baton rounds

Use in Northern Ireland

{| class="wikitable floatright" style="text-align:right;"

|+ Numbers of rubber and plastic bullets fired in Northern Ireland 1970–1981

! Year

! Rubber bullets

! Plastic bullets

| 1970 || 238 ||

| 1971 || 16,752 ||

| 1972 || 23,363 ||

| 1973 || 12,724 || 42

| 1974 || 2,612 || 216

| 1975 || 145 || 3,556

| 1976 || || 3,464

| 1977 || || 1,490

| 1978 || || 1,734

| 1979 || || 1,271

| 1980 || || 1,231

| 1981 || || 29,665

! Sub-total

! 55,834 !! 42,669

|- style="font-size: normal;"

! Total

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="2" | 98,503

The British Army in Northern Ireland was issued with plastic bullets in August 1972, the intention being to replace the use of rubber bullets, and first used by them in February 1973; Shortly after their introduction it was discovered plastic bullets were lethal at certain ranges. Rubber bullets had been withdrawn from Northern Ireland by the end of 1975.

Most of the deaths were allegedly caused by the British security forces misusing the weapon, firing at close range and at chest or head level rather than targeting below the waist.

The first person to be killed by a plastic bullet was 10 year old Stephen Geddis, who died on 30 August 1975 in hospital, two days after being shot by the British Army in west Belfast.

In 1982, the European Parliament called on member states to ban the use of plastic bullets. However, they continued to be used by the British security forces in Northern Ireland. In 1984 the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets was founded, calling for plastic bullets to be banned in Northern Ireland. One of its founders, Emma Groves, had been permanently blinded in 1971 when a British soldier shot her in the face with a rubber bullet. During rioting in July 1997, a 14 year old boy was struck in the head by a plastic bullet and spent three days in a coma.

From 1973 to 1981, just over 42,600 plastic bullets were fired in Northern Ireland. By 2005, 125,000 baton rounds had been fired, most of them plastic bullets.

Plastic bullets were approved for policing in England and Wales in June 2001. Plastic bullets were also authorized for G8 summit protests in Gleneagles, Scotland in July 2005. A plastic bullet was successfully used to disarm a hostage taker armed with a machete in Dorchester, England in November 2002.

In September 2004, seven picketing shipbuilders were injured in a tear-gas and plastic bullet assault in Cadiz, Spain.

In 1990, Kenyan riot police raided a room at the University of Nairobi beating students with batons. A fleeing female student was shot in the stomach with a plastic bullet.

Venezuelan police and soldiers fired plastic bullets at student protesters in Caracas in December 2010.

Foam-tipped plastic bullets were employed by U.S. Marines in a trial in the Iraq War but were determined to be ineffectual.

Usage—penetrating plastic bullets

Use in Israel

Israeli plastic bullets are not baton rounds and are capable of penetrating all body tissue.

In August 1988, the Israeli army began using plastic bullets for crowd control by the military administration of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin explained the plastic bullets were intended to cause more injuries to Palestinian rioters. Army commanders hoped that their use would reduce Palestinian stone-throwing, however this did not happen during the first month of their use in which Israeli plastic bullets killed eight Palestinians.

According to Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) officials, the plastic bullets can only be fired in single shot mode and not in burst mode.

21,000rounds of plastic bullets were sent to Kashmir in 2018 for riot control. A anonymous source at the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs claimed that the use of plastic bullets is based on the list of non-lethal weapons approved by the United Nations peacekeeping standards for crowd control.

Design

The original UK plastic bullet deployed in 1972 weighs around and was intended to be effective at a range of .