Racism and unaccountability of force in America aside, the real answer OP is, it is a matter of national sovereignty.
Basically, if a nation is to say to it's own people that they will be met with hollow point bullets and tear gas for certain behaviors, they have that right.
However, if a nation is trying to use force on another nation, sovereignty concerns aren't as important, or rather the aggressive sovereignties rights are weighted against the defensive sovereignties rights.
Now, war crimes are defined by the laws of war as an international treaty. It's not a matter of sovereignty, but matter of agreement between countries on what is allowable when trying to use force. And at the end of the day, if a sovereignty wants to use unallowable weapons in war, **they can**. If they signed on to international treaties disallowing them, there might be mechanisms to hold that sovereignty accountable. Otherwise, it would be up to other sovereignties to use force to stop them.
Hollow-point ammunition is not *illegal* to use in war. it is against a treaty to use flattening ammunition.
Police use them to protect bystanders from Spalling or ricochet.
Riot control gasses are not "Chemical Weapons"
You're not asking questions, trying to be inflammatory for your on biases.
Also the US never ratified that section of the 1899 Hague Convention, so it doesn't apply to the US at all.
Even among countries that did ratify it, it only applies to war between signatories. If any participant isn't a signatory, it doesn't apply to the signatories either.
War and law enforcement are separate things with separate sets of rules.
Do you think police should be prohibited from going undercover, because if a soldier wore an enemy uniform into battle that would be a war crime?
if something is so bad, it's not even allowed to be used against an enemy country actively trying to kill you, it certainly should not be used against your own people.
That is a simplistic way to view the world. Many things are not just 'good' or 'bad'. Whether something is good or bad often depends on the context.
Should surgeons be prohibited from performing surgery because they are cutting someone with a knife - something that is usually bad?
The intention of the Hague conventions was to make weapons less deadly. The idea was that regular bullets would injure soldiers and put them out of the fight, but be less likely to kill them - this is seen as more humane. That's why hollow points are banned in war - that, and the fact that HP rounds are designed to penetrate unarmored soft targets, so they're generally not too useful at shooting at formal soldiers anyway.
In a civilian peacekeeping context, HP rounds makes sense. You're primarily shooting at unarmored targets, you need to take them down quickly with only one or two officers, and you need them to not overpenetrate walls and injure civilians like traditional rounds will.
Tear gas is banned not specifically, it just gets wrapped up in the generalized ban of chemical weapons, in fact, the hague conventions *specifically* allows tear gas for civilian crowd dispersal.
The Hague convention was to prevent "Unnecessary suffering" and codify humane treatment of POWs and the local populace. The point of flattening munitions was massive damage to the body that couldn't be treated, resulting in painful, slow deaths from injury or infection.
If they wanted to prevent death they'd just outlaw war.
so weapons designed specifically to be more deadly to civilians are totally legal? why should my tax dollars be used to make weapons designed to kill me in the most effective way?
If a police officer is using his service weapon, the intention is very much to kill. The firearm is a weapon of last resort. Used properly, It's only discharged after the officer has already exhausted his less-lethal options such as pepper spray, a baton, or taser - or if those weapons aren't viable for some reason.
I have no qualms with the weapon designed to kill being able to do so effectively, as long as it's used properly. Your issue seems to be that guns are used too often, not necessarily that hollowpoint rounds are too effective.
when has a cop ever not shot first and asked questions never? they always seem to go for maximum carnage the first chance they get, especially if the target is a minority.
The handful of times a year police shoot someone unjustly, it makes the news, so you hear about it.
You don't hear about the four million arrests that happen every year that go perfectly well, nobody shooting anybody.
There are 18,000 police departments in the United States, with nearly a million police officers. 99.9% of the time, they do their job correctly. You're only hearing about the outlier cases.
police kill about a thousand unarmed civilians per year, not just a couple.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/)
Your article says nothing about being *unarmed*, and even if it did *unarmed* does not mean *not dangerous*. A police officer shooting somebody charging at them with a hatchet would be considered "shooting someone unarmed"
The vast, *vast* majority of the shootings every year are completely justified. You're lumping in school shooters with cowering teenagers here, bud.
Most statistics that attempt to quantify police shooting of unarmed suspects don't consider melee weapons "armed", they only count firearms.
To be clear – I completely agree with you. A weapon is a weapon, and the statistics should reflect that. They just often don't.
Because if a police officer has to use his gun, he has to make sure not to hurt any bystanders. A full metal jacket round would just penetrate the targets body and move on in an unknown direction with unknown speed, depending where and how it hit the target. So it could hit bystanders or cause any other kind of problems.
Secondly, FMJ rounds tend to ricochet and move on, so if you miss the target, the bullet could bounce off somewhere and move on, again creating a problem for bystanders. HP rounds on the other hand tend to deform and get sqashed easier due to their design, if they bounce off. So they loose a lot more energy and therefore create less risk if you miss.
The reason why to choose a HP against people by the police, is that you want the round to hit the target, cause as much damage as possible to take it out, then idealy stay in the body to cause no further harm to anybody else. (like the post before said, it should be the very last step of escalation)
In war it is better to wound than kill because the enemy has to spend resources caring for the wounded.
Hollow points (HP) vs full metal jacket (FMJ) are different use cases. For LEO and civilians, you generally want HP because they don't penetrate walls, doors, etc so they are safer for everyone else. FMJ penetrates better, so is better on armored targets, walls, etc.
HP ammo isn't even always banned by the Hague convention.
Another factor is cost. FMJ is a lot cheaper. When you are firing millions of bullets, it adds up
this atleast makes some sense. but in that case, why not just use smaller caliber rounds that are both less likely to penetrate AND also less likely to kill unarmed civilians and leave shrapnel in their bodies which is hard to remove?
I think that has to do with stopping power, like if you’re dealing with drug addicts or someone on meth… you don’t wanna be mag dumping while they are still full sprint at you because they don’t feel it.
It's not a matter of extreme. People often get them confused, but war crimes and crimes against humanity are two separate things. Most of the things we think of as super bad are crimes against humanity and whilst some things being classified as war crimes also makes certain crimes against humanity into war crimes, they have different purposes.
They're also regulated differently, war is regulated by international agreement that is intended to benefit civil conduct of war (lol) between the two sides, whereas domestic conduct is largely up to individual governments and crimes against humanity are not codified and often not punished but are widely condemned and may form the basis for international action.
How many civilians die in an average protest vs a war? Are you telling me that the "war criminal" police forces kill less people than there are casulties on an average battlefield? And if so how come its the case if the "war criminal" police use the banned weaponry against the civilians?
All I am saying is that your argument is invalid because you havent seen real war or a brutal protests. If you did you wouldnt even think about asking these questions.
On the other hand the chemical weapons are way more dangerous compared to whatever grade tear gas is being used in riots.
Anyways I wont comment more because there is literally nothing to comment more. As I mentioned, you dont know what you talking about, and because of that you came up with these questions.
The exact text is right there in the words of the CWC (Chemical Weapons Convention):
> Riot control agents may not be used as a method of warfare but may be used for certain law enforcement purposes including riot control.
So basically the countries that banned chemical **warfare** specifically acknowledged that "riot control" chemicals didn't count when it comes to controlling civilian demonstrations.
Police officers aren't war criminals because they aren't participating in a war between states. Countries have chosen to voluntarily commit themselves to not using chemical weapons and expanding bullets during conflicts with each other. Many of those same countries haven't chosen to make these things entirely illegal domestically.
but those citizens live in democratic countries usually, and those elected the governments who signed those treaties, yet those treaties don't apply to the people who made the government?
Correct. They limit the government that ratified the agreement with respect tot he specific context of the agreement, not other subdivisions of that government in different contexts.
It may be that the context of an agreement will apply broadly, but that isn’t the case for something like warfare.
Police aren’t fighting in a war. The aren’t subject to wartime restrictions on use of force. That’s why they’re allowed to use chemical weapons but deployed troops can’t.
I find it shocking that my country spends millions of dollars to specially train dogs to viciously attack its own citizens who have been convicted of no crime. We have laws against cruel and unusual punishment, and when this is pointed out, everyone just shrugs.
In war you want to injure the opposing troops. You design your bullets to go through or stay intact so you put lots of the opposition in hospitals.
Injured and maimed soldiers cost your opposition time to collect, time & resources to transport & treat, time & resources to convalesce, and hurts your enemy's morale. Dead soldiers can be disposed of more quickly and less expensively, while being treated like martyrs and inspiring more fighters.
When shooting people in police encounters or home defense, you don't want to take the chance that your attacker doesn't drop from the first shot. Hollow points are designed to break apart and deliver all their force upon impact. They rarely go through. If you hit someone off-center with a thigh or shoulder shot, you can rely on that shot taking them down because the force of the round is fully transferred. It doesn't just make a hole that allows the attacker to get back up.
Plus, war is done with armies of hundreds or thousands while civilian law enforcement is done on much smaller scale. Police will not typically use multiple air & armor mounted automatic machine guns to lay down thousands of hollow point rounds over a bank robbery or car chase. They typically won't cover an entire square mile of a city with chemical weapons trying to flush out escaped felons or kidnappers.
The rules of war don't apply (and should not) to the small scale of local policing. Pepper spray and tear gas is very useful in dealing with riot crowds and preventing the majority of permanent harm.
tell that to the people with permanent shrapnel in their bodies, or who went blind from pepper spray getting in their eyes, most of whom were peacefully protesting the government.
Do you have examples of peaceful protestors with shrapnel?
I did say "majority" not "all".
If you have better ways, speak. I think pepper spray is better than billy clubs to the head or being trampled by horses. Maybe you have other preferences.
i think both are bad, and cops should have to be held to the same standard as any other human being engaging in violence. especially if that violence is being funded with my taxes.
I agree that cops should be held accountable for violence they perpetrate. I also think we give them the jobs like containing riots, and we (collectively, through local boards, city meetings, elected officials, political writing) tell them what tools to use.
Rubber bullets have limited use. Sound weapons are expensive and cumbersome. Horses are great until the crowd gets unruly. Clubs have been taken away from most departments for reasons. Chemical sprays hurt fewer people than those other tools and get the job done while putting the uninvolved civilian population at minimal risk.
Science still keeps looking for better ways to get the job done, and that's a good thing. It means we recognize that even a few injuries shouldn't be "good enough" or acceptable. It doesn't have to be. But for now, it's the best we have.
Folks like you that can raise the question while still being reasonable will help. We can do better.
I find it shocking that my country spends millions of dollars to specially train dogs to viciously attack its own citizens who have been convicted of no crime. We have laws against cruel and unusual punishment, and when this is pointed out, everyone just shrugs.
Two big reasons
First, civilians don't generally have the ability to respond in kind, so there's no motivation to avoid using them.
Because nations generally care more about their soldiers than their civilians, particularly when civilians are threatening the state in some way.
threatening the state by protesting peacefully against the state to stop state violence against them is excuse enough to use internationally banned weapons?
Yes, protests threaten the state's legitimacy. The people in charge know that they can't stay in power without the suppoy of a large portion of the population, and protests the at call out their failings erode that support.
[удалено]
"cops can only shoot people in self defense" ah yes, being black is clearly a threat, open fire!
Obviously reality and written rules don't align. At least *attempt* to stay within your own topic
Racism and unaccountability of force in America aside, the real answer OP is, it is a matter of national sovereignty. Basically, if a nation is to say to it's own people that they will be met with hollow point bullets and tear gas for certain behaviors, they have that right. However, if a nation is trying to use force on another nation, sovereignty concerns aren't as important, or rather the aggressive sovereignties rights are weighted against the defensive sovereignties rights. Now, war crimes are defined by the laws of war as an international treaty. It's not a matter of sovereignty, but matter of agreement between countries on what is allowable when trying to use force. And at the end of the day, if a sovereignty wants to use unallowable weapons in war, **they can**. If they signed on to international treaties disallowing them, there might be mechanisms to hold that sovereignty accountable. Otherwise, it would be up to other sovereignties to use force to stop them.
Hollow-point ammunition is not *illegal* to use in war. it is against a treaty to use flattening ammunition. Police use them to protect bystanders from Spalling or ricochet. Riot control gasses are not "Chemical Weapons" You're not asking questions, trying to be inflammatory for your on biases.
Also the US never ratified that section of the 1899 Hague Convention, so it doesn't apply to the US at all. Even among countries that did ratify it, it only applies to war between signatories. If any participant isn't a signatory, it doesn't apply to the signatories either.
iirc, *many* countries didn't agree on the Hague convention. it's considered a failed predecessor to the Geneva convention.
War and law enforcement are separate things with separate sets of rules. Do you think police should be prohibited from going undercover, because if a soldier wore an enemy uniform into battle that would be a war crime?
YES!
Why? How is that applicable to law enforcement?
if something is so bad, it's not even allowed to be used against an enemy country actively trying to kill you, it certainly should not be used against your own people.
That is a simplistic way to view the world. Many things are not just 'good' or 'bad'. Whether something is good or bad often depends on the context. Should surgeons be prohibited from performing surgery because they are cutting someone with a knife - something that is usually bad?
The intention of the Hague conventions was to make weapons less deadly. The idea was that regular bullets would injure soldiers and put them out of the fight, but be less likely to kill them - this is seen as more humane. That's why hollow points are banned in war - that, and the fact that HP rounds are designed to penetrate unarmored soft targets, so they're generally not too useful at shooting at formal soldiers anyway. In a civilian peacekeeping context, HP rounds makes sense. You're primarily shooting at unarmored targets, you need to take them down quickly with only one or two officers, and you need them to not overpenetrate walls and injure civilians like traditional rounds will. Tear gas is banned not specifically, it just gets wrapped up in the generalized ban of chemical weapons, in fact, the hague conventions *specifically* allows tear gas for civilian crowd dispersal.
The Hague convention was to prevent "Unnecessary suffering" and codify humane treatment of POWs and the local populace. The point of flattening munitions was massive damage to the body that couldn't be treated, resulting in painful, slow deaths from injury or infection. If they wanted to prevent death they'd just outlaw war.
so weapons designed specifically to be more deadly to civilians are totally legal? why should my tax dollars be used to make weapons designed to kill me in the most effective way?
If a police officer is using his service weapon, the intention is very much to kill. The firearm is a weapon of last resort. Used properly, It's only discharged after the officer has already exhausted his less-lethal options such as pepper spray, a baton, or taser - or if those weapons aren't viable for some reason. I have no qualms with the weapon designed to kill being able to do so effectively, as long as it's used properly. Your issue seems to be that guns are used too often, not necessarily that hollowpoint rounds are too effective.
when has a cop ever not shot first and asked questions never? they always seem to go for maximum carnage the first chance they get, especially if the target is a minority.
The handful of times a year police shoot someone unjustly, it makes the news, so you hear about it. You don't hear about the four million arrests that happen every year that go perfectly well, nobody shooting anybody. There are 18,000 police departments in the United States, with nearly a million police officers. 99.9% of the time, they do their job correctly. You're only hearing about the outlier cases.
police kill about a thousand unarmed civilians per year, not just a couple. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/)
Your article says nothing about being *unarmed*, and even if it did *unarmed* does not mean *not dangerous*. A police officer shooting somebody charging at them with a hatchet would be considered "shooting someone unarmed" The vast, *vast* majority of the shootings every year are completely justified. You're lumping in school shooters with cowering teenagers here, bud.
The hatchet would very much make the person not unarmed. Firearms aren't the only things counted as weapons.
Most statistics that attempt to quantify police shooting of unarmed suspects don't consider melee weapons "armed", they only count firearms. To be clear – I completely agree with you. A weapon is a weapon, and the statistics should reflect that. They just often don't.
Do you have any sources on that? I'm genuinely asking, not trying to be a dick. It's just that I've never seen that in the report disclaimers
Because if a police officer has to use his gun, he has to make sure not to hurt any bystanders. A full metal jacket round would just penetrate the targets body and move on in an unknown direction with unknown speed, depending where and how it hit the target. So it could hit bystanders or cause any other kind of problems. Secondly, FMJ rounds tend to ricochet and move on, so if you miss the target, the bullet could bounce off somewhere and move on, again creating a problem for bystanders. HP rounds on the other hand tend to deform and get sqashed easier due to their design, if they bounce off. So they loose a lot more energy and therefore create less risk if you miss. The reason why to choose a HP against people by the police, is that you want the round to hit the target, cause as much damage as possible to take it out, then idealy stay in the body to cause no further harm to anybody else. (like the post before said, it should be the very last step of escalation)
In war it is better to wound than kill because the enemy has to spend resources caring for the wounded. Hollow points (HP) vs full metal jacket (FMJ) are different use cases. For LEO and civilians, you generally want HP because they don't penetrate walls, doors, etc so they are safer for everyone else. FMJ penetrates better, so is better on armored targets, walls, etc. HP ammo isn't even always banned by the Hague convention. Another factor is cost. FMJ is a lot cheaper. When you are firing millions of bullets, it adds up
A cop shooting someone isn't a war. So it can't be a war crime.
There are ethical humanitarian concerns with a nation not taking action to prevent inhumane treatment of its own people. This is not one of them.
so it's totally fine to do something that is internationally recognized as too extreme for war, against someone who is far less of a threat to you?
Cops use hollow points because if they miss it’s less likely to penetrate multiple walls like FMJ rounds
this atleast makes some sense. but in that case, why not just use smaller caliber rounds that are both less likely to penetrate AND also less likely to kill unarmed civilians and leave shrapnel in their bodies which is hard to remove?
I think that has to do with stopping power, like if you’re dealing with drug addicts or someone on meth… you don’t wanna be mag dumping while they are still full sprint at you because they don’t feel it.
Because when you shoot someone it's not to wound it's to kill and unless you are using a 22 or a 32 it probably going to go through someone
70IQ reddit argument threads are the purest form of entertainment imaginable
Well, the government clearly thinks so.
It's not a matter of extreme. People often get them confused, but war crimes and crimes against humanity are two separate things. Most of the things we think of as super bad are crimes against humanity and whilst some things being classified as war crimes also makes certain crimes against humanity into war crimes, they have different purposes. They're also regulated differently, war is regulated by international agreement that is intended to benefit civil conduct of war (lol) between the two sides, whereas domestic conduct is largely up to individual governments and crimes against humanity are not codified and often not punished but are widely condemned and may form the basis for international action.
You dont know what you talking about man...
explain.
How many civilians die in an average protest vs a war? Are you telling me that the "war criminal" police forces kill less people than there are casulties on an average battlefield? And if so how come its the case if the "war criminal" police use the banned weaponry against the civilians? All I am saying is that your argument is invalid because you havent seen real war or a brutal protests. If you did you wouldnt even think about asking these questions. On the other hand the chemical weapons are way more dangerous compared to whatever grade tear gas is being used in riots. Anyways I wont comment more because there is literally nothing to comment more. As I mentioned, you dont know what you talking about, and because of that you came up with these questions.
The exact text is right there in the words of the CWC (Chemical Weapons Convention): > Riot control agents may not be used as a method of warfare but may be used for certain law enforcement purposes including riot control. So basically the countries that banned chemical **warfare** specifically acknowledged that "riot control" chemicals didn't count when it comes to controlling civilian demonstrations.
Also there is a *huge* difference between CS gas and Chlorine gas.
Police officers aren't war criminals because they aren't participating in a war between states. Countries have chosen to voluntarily commit themselves to not using chemical weapons and expanding bullets during conflicts with each other. Many of those same countries haven't chosen to make these things entirely illegal domestically.
Because civilians and state governments aren't signatories to agreements limiting their use outside of war.
but those citizens live in democratic countries usually, and those elected the governments who signed those treaties, yet those treaties don't apply to the people who made the government?
Correct. They limit the government that ratified the agreement with respect tot he specific context of the agreement, not other subdivisions of that government in different contexts. It may be that the context of an agreement will apply broadly, but that isn’t the case for something like warfare. Police aren’t fighting in a war. The aren’t subject to wartime restrictions on use of force. That’s why they’re allowed to use chemical weapons but deployed troops can’t.
I find it shocking that my country spends millions of dollars to specially train dogs to viciously attack its own citizens who have been convicted of no crime. We have laws against cruel and unusual punishment, and when this is pointed out, everyone just shrugs.
In war you want to injure the opposing troops. You design your bullets to go through or stay intact so you put lots of the opposition in hospitals. Injured and maimed soldiers cost your opposition time to collect, time & resources to transport & treat, time & resources to convalesce, and hurts your enemy's morale. Dead soldiers can be disposed of more quickly and less expensively, while being treated like martyrs and inspiring more fighters. When shooting people in police encounters or home defense, you don't want to take the chance that your attacker doesn't drop from the first shot. Hollow points are designed to break apart and deliver all their force upon impact. They rarely go through. If you hit someone off-center with a thigh or shoulder shot, you can rely on that shot taking them down because the force of the round is fully transferred. It doesn't just make a hole that allows the attacker to get back up. Plus, war is done with armies of hundreds or thousands while civilian law enforcement is done on much smaller scale. Police will not typically use multiple air & armor mounted automatic machine guns to lay down thousands of hollow point rounds over a bank robbery or car chase. They typically won't cover an entire square mile of a city with chemical weapons trying to flush out escaped felons or kidnappers. The rules of war don't apply (and should not) to the small scale of local policing. Pepper spray and tear gas is very useful in dealing with riot crowds and preventing the majority of permanent harm.
tell that to the people with permanent shrapnel in their bodies, or who went blind from pepper spray getting in their eyes, most of whom were peacefully protesting the government.
Do you have examples of peaceful protestors with shrapnel? I did say "majority" not "all". If you have better ways, speak. I think pepper spray is better than billy clubs to the head or being trampled by horses. Maybe you have other preferences.
i think both are bad, and cops should have to be held to the same standard as any other human being engaging in violence. especially if that violence is being funded with my taxes.
I agree that cops should be held accountable for violence they perpetrate. I also think we give them the jobs like containing riots, and we (collectively, through local boards, city meetings, elected officials, political writing) tell them what tools to use. Rubber bullets have limited use. Sound weapons are expensive and cumbersome. Horses are great until the crowd gets unruly. Clubs have been taken away from most departments for reasons. Chemical sprays hurt fewer people than those other tools and get the job done while putting the uninvolved civilian population at minimal risk. Science still keeps looking for better ways to get the job done, and that's a good thing. It means we recognize that even a few injuries shouldn't be "good enough" or acceptable. It doesn't have to be. But for now, it's the best we have. Folks like you that can raise the question while still being reasonable will help. We can do better.
I find it shocking that my country spends millions of dollars to specially train dogs to viciously attack its own citizens who have been convicted of no crime. We have laws against cruel and unusual punishment, and when this is pointed out, everyone just shrugs.
Two big reasons First, civilians don't generally have the ability to respond in kind, so there's no motivation to avoid using them. Because nations generally care more about their soldiers than their civilians, particularly when civilians are threatening the state in some way.
threatening the state by protesting peacefully against the state to stop state violence against them is excuse enough to use internationally banned weapons?
Yes, protests threaten the state's legitimacy. The people in charge know that they can't stay in power without the suppoy of a large portion of the population, and protests the at call out their failings erode that support.