5 ms·

>Are chemical irritants preferable Absolutely. You can heal from those. LRADs are maiming weapons designed to cause permanent damage. Under any reasonable lega

• kortilla 2y ago
  LRADs are not designed to cause permanent damage. They are explicitly designed under the intention of being a way to disperse a crowd without long term harm. There hasn’t been much research on long term health impacts, but it’s not a tool to maim people. https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-control-weapons-acoustic-weapons/ https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-c...
  • mrob 2y ago
    They are designed to produce sound pressure levels that cause permanent hearing damage from short exposure, which makes them maiming weapons. There is no safe way to use an LRAD. Anybody who uses an LRAD is evil. Stop making excuses for despicable behavior. Deliberately causing hearing damage is no better than smashing people's fingers with hammers.
    • kortilla 2y ago
      They are not designed to cause hearing damage and the link I posted saying as much is a from a physicians org for human rights. Speaking in hyperbole is counter productive to thoughtful discussion
      • mrob 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure#Examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure#Examples Threshold of pain: 120-140 dB(SPL) Risk of instantaneous noise-induced hearing loss: 120dB(SPL) A sonic weapon must cause pain to be effective. Any sound that reliably causes pain is capable of causing instant hearing damage. Therefore any sonic weapon is necessarily a maiming weapon and is designed as such. There is no hyperbole.
  • int_19h 2y ago
    160 dB way over hearing safe. Most rifle rounds are in >140 dB territory, and that is quite sufficient to give you permanent hearing damage.
    • Aloisius 2y ago
      That's peak power at 1 meter for a large LRAD, not what someone 75 or 100 meters away experiences.
      • mrob 2y ago
        There will be some attenuation, but the output is focused into a beam, so you don't get the usual inverse square falloff with distance.
        • ty6853 2y ago
          You do, there is just a greater gain factor constant.
    • numpad0 2y ago
      The point is that LRADs are supposed to be an ethical alternative to guns and gases, as far as the original design intent is considered...
      • mrob 2y ago
        As LRADs are less ethical than CS gas, the true design intent is likely to produce something that looks insignificant on video recordings so it can be used as extrajudicial punishment of undesirables with less risk of public outcry.
        • fazeirony 2y ago
          this. and let's not forget that these....officers always receive the best, most top notch training to use these things safely. (/s) yet another reason to ensure footage looks like 'nothing terrible happened to these people' as expertly trained cop uses a weapon of war against civilians.
  • consteval 2y ago
    I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to realize loud noise = hearing loss. Just intuitively, I know many people with degraded hearing from concerts. And that hearing is gone, that’s how hearing loss works. I think the people who designed these weapons aren’t anywhere close to stupid enough to think these won’t cause long term damage. Which means that the only explanation is they INTEND for them to cause long term damage.
    • kortilla 2y ago
      Check out the link I posted. It’s from a physicians group focused on human rights. > I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to realize loud noise = hearing loss. Being a doctor and understanding that the levels people are exposed are not maiming if the thing is used “by design” should carry some significant weight in how you think about this.