And why does the military not like that?
Geneva Convention.
I just want to clear up one misconception. It’s true that tear gas was developed during wartime - but it was not intended as a military weapon. It was designed for training.
Back in World War I, countries were using poisonous gas as a military weapon. Soldiers had to be trained on anti-gas protection. But for obvious reasons, you couldn’t dump a bunch of poisonous gas on your own trainees. So non-lethal gases were developed for anti-gas training. They were intentionally made unpleasant enough that soldiers took their anti-gas training seriously but they were also designed to cause no lasting harm.
After the war, tear gas was adopted by some police departments for crowd control . But it has no real use as a military weapon. Military weapons are not designed to avoid lasting harm.
Just for the heck of it.
You can see how much farther round nose or unexpanded hollowpoints penetrate in ballistic gel.
This is an argument that’s commonly brought up but I don’t think it’s a good one. The reason tear gas is banned under the Geneva Convention is because you can’t tell the difference between tear gas and chemical weapons on the battlefield so it’s better for everyone if there is never anything that looks even remotely like a chemical weapon anywhere near a battlefield.
Given that there’s (currently) no risk of American police deploying actual deadly chemical weapons, this motivation doesn’t apply to domestic policing.
The logic behind the distinction, according to one report, is that once riot control agents were used as a weapon by nations in war, the fight could escalate to include more dangerous chemical weapons, like nerve gas.
That’s possible. The 1925 Geneva Convention does not go into great detail about the gases banned. It may be true, as you say, that mustard gas and tear gas can look similar - I don’t know. Tear gas is specifically legal when used for riot control. I’m sure it can cause asthma attacks and burns eyes and mucous membranes. I presume it is used appropriately. Is anything in the original article factually wrong or misleading?
I remember reading that, had Britain’s back been against the wall during a German invasion in WWII, Churchill was prepared to authorize the use of chemical weapons. Desperate times…
That seems to me where a lot of these issues arise. Officers are enforcing a curfew, but what is the legitimate reason for having these curfews? If people want to protest peacefully at night, let them. If they start looting and burning things down, then arrest the specific individuals who are looting and burning things down and let everyone else continue to peacefully protest. How hard can that be?
For me, and I’m not certain that it’s true, it seems that the chance of lawlessness goes up the later it gets. This is the same reason that we close public parks at night. Even the protest organizers were asking to protesters to clear out at nightfall rather than provide cover for the bad element that was just there to cause problems.
After the second or third night of shit getting stirred up late it makes sense for the cops to say “OK, we’re good until 9 pm and then most of the peaceful people have left”. Back when this happened the cops actually gave them another hour after curfew to ensure people had time to back down.
What exactly is a peaceful protest? I tend to think of it as getting a permit, gathering on a public place with signs and a bullhorn, or if taking to the streets getting a parade permit and the cops can redirect traffic and so forth.
Blocking interstate highways, major intersections, places of business seem rather aggressive protests.
But because they aren’t armed with molotov cocktails it is peaceful. Its just passive aggressive violence. It is a violation of law that the cops have every right to disperse.
And the protesters like it. Its what they want the cops to do. Gets on the news.
So was this, right?
I am not saying every single use of tear gas is ok or dispersing every protest ok. I am saying that it is a legitimate non-lethal riot control technique. I am sure there are abundant examples of tear gas being used inappropriately, as there abundant examples of a peaceful protest denigrating into riot where it was used appropriately.
Obviously, you haven’t actually watched any coverage.
And you used denigrating in an amusingly wrong way,
What in the world is passive aggressive violence? It sounds like the kind of excuse the police would use to justify using regular violence.