Using any of them in war is far too likely to lead to escalation. Someome on the receiving end of it doesn’t necessarily know what they’ve been attacked with, and seeing that the other side is using chemical weapons will retaliate with their own more serious ones. Civilians are unlikely to bring their own nerve gas to protests, so this isn’t a concern in civilian contexts.
Killing your enemy is usually necessary in war, but torturing them isn’t. As such, using weapons that are only intended to cause pain is just wanton cruelty rather than simply a means to the ends of winning the war. Police theoretically don’t want to be killing or permanently disabling people, so again this isn’t applicable to civilian contexts.
They are wildly uncontrollable. The carveouts for civilian use of tear gas and the like in the Geneva conventions require them to disperse quickly because of this.
It’s not unfounded. To be clear I don’t think that police should be allowed to use such weapons, but there are reasons that it’s considered more serious in warfare.
A few reasons.
Using any of them in war is far too likely to lead to escalation. Someome on the receiving end of it doesn’t necessarily know what they’ve been attacked with, and seeing that the other side is using chemical weapons will retaliate with their own more serious ones. Civilians are unlikely to bring their own nerve gas to protests, so this isn’t a concern in civilian contexts.
Killing your enemy is usually necessary in war, but torturing them isn’t. As such, using weapons that are only intended to cause pain is just wanton cruelty rather than simply a means to the ends of winning the war. Police theoretically don’t want to be killing or permanently disabling people, so again this isn’t applicable to civilian contexts.
They are wildly uncontrollable. The carveouts for civilian use of tear gas and the like in the Geneva conventions require them to disperse quickly because of this.
It’s not unfounded. To be clear I don’t think that police should be allowed to use such weapons, but there are reasons that it’s considered more serious in warfare.
Okay so abhorrent but reasonably abhorrent.
That’s a good name for this timeline: Reasonably Abhorrent.
Also, a sweet metal band name.