Wooden bullet

Last updated

Wooden bullet
BULLET (FindID 774971).jpg
A wooden bullet shaped object. It is smooth all over and brown in colour.
Type Non-lethal weapon

Wooden bullets are wooden projectiles designed to be fired from a gun. They are intended to be used as less lethal weapons for crowd control by enforcing pain compliance at a distance. [1] They have been known to raise large welts or bruises on their targets. [1] [2]

Contents

History of use

During the Second World War, some German troops were equipped with wooden bullets, [3] while British troops were trained with wooden bullets to avoid the cost of metal bullets.

German troops in the Second World War were used to launch rifle grenades, the rounds being hollow and made of softwood, designed to shatter on impact and were actually blanks not real shots. Rumors that the tips were poisoned to cause infection were false, and so were the rumors that the tips were colored differently based on what poison was in the bullet, while in reality, it was to differentiate which grenade was to be launched from that blank. [4]

Wooden bullets were also used by British troops in Hong Kong. [2] During a 2014 protest in Missouri following the shooting of Michael Brown, the police fired wooden bullets at protesters. [1] During the 1999 WTO anti-globalization movement in Seattle, the police shot wooden bullets at protesters. [5]

A team of research engineers in Wisconsin used 12-foot-long (3.7 m), 15-pound (6.8 kg), 2-by-4 pine bullets propelled at 100 miles per hour (45 m/s) by an air cannon to test the resistance of tornado shelters made of wood. [6]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Jon Swaine (12 August 2014). "Missouri police fired wooden bullets at crowd during protest over teen's death". The Guardian.
  2. 1 2 "LESS LETHAL FORCE: Proposed Standards for Massachusetts Law Enforcement Agencies" (PDF). American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
  3. ↑ History: Wooden Bullets, Trailblazersww2.org
  4. ↑ Pike, Travis (24 January 2025). "The Tall Tales of Wood Bullets". GAT Daily (Guns Ammo Tactical). Retrieved 24 September 2025.
  5. ↑ McNichols, Joshua (19 November 2019). "A cop shot this wooden bullet at me at the WTO protests in Seattle. Here's the story it tells". Kuow.org. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  6. ↑ Barry Adams, On Wisconsin: Wooden bullet helps researchers make affordable shelters, Madison.com, 11 May 2014
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.