Talk:Riot gun

Merge

The term 'riot gun' is more commonly used to denote a police or combat shotgun, designed for heavy firepower, especially useful against groups of people given their typical cylinder bore (no constriction of the barrel) barrels which cause maximum dispersion of the shot load.

The device pictured here is one of a number of crowd or riot control devices, not strictly a 'riot gun' in its common meaning.

Ithaca, Winchester, Remington, Mossberg and several other companies make combat and riot shotguns which have often been supplied in great numbers to standard units of police forces due to their relatively low cost as compared to higher-end combat shotguns like Bennelli or Beretta.

This entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_shotgun is more accurate, and the'riot gun' entry should simply be a referenced different version of this entry, 'gun' being short for 'shotgun' in this instance.

• Strongly agree with merging these two articles; my impression is that the "Riot Shotgun" article is more informative but has less technical detail - can someone with more expertise on the topic try to collate them? --HAdG (talk) 00:54, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
• Agree with the redirect. This page actually seems to be an amalgam of riot shotgun and less than lethal, as both are commonly used for riot control. Thus, the article's information, IMO, should actually be distributed between the two articles; shotgun-specific information goes into riot shotgun, most of the rest into less than lethal.
• I think that "Riot Shotgun" should redirect to this article, with the two articles subsequently merged. I've only ever heard the term "Riot Gun" in relation to police-issue (or style) pump-action shotguns; the tear-gas launchers etc should really be considered Crowd Control devices, IMHO, although I have no problem with them remaining on the page with the shotgun information as well. Commander Zulu (talk) 04:22, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
• I have moved Less-lethal launcher back to Riot gun, which is more easily understood. I have put in a hatlink to handle the "riot shotgun" meaning. There are many sorts of devices describable as launchers. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:22, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Barrel Length

• Barrel length has no effect on patterns. Choke determines the spread. Barrel length only affects velocity. 68.75.171.218 02:46, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Image in lede

• Removed the image, due to the fact that it was very poorly made, and looked way too cartoony. 68.98.50.49 07:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
• I restored the image, because it is better than no image at all. Anthony Appleyard 09:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

What is with the crappy image? Looks like something my kid would draw in school. Fatekeeper (talk) 17:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

only smoothbore riot guns may be sold to civilians

Please provide some context. For they layman it's totally unclear why. Are they less dangerous? Shinobu (talk) 14:28, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Two reasons. First, smoothbores won't activate rifle grenades, which use an inertial lock that relies on the spin of the rifling to activate the grenade a fixed distance past the point of firing. This, combined with the 3mm difference in diameter, prevents you from stuffing a 40mm grenade into a 37mm launcher and using it. Another issue in the US is the National Firearms Act; riot guns must be large bore, and anything over 0.5 inches (about 12.5 mm) with a rifled barrel is considered a "destructive device" and subject to the same restrictions as other class III firearms, such as machine guns. scot (talk) 15:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

This is not correct. The US law doesn't care about rifling so far as "destructive device" status is concerned. Any weapon with a bore over 0.500 inches is considered a destructive device, but can be exempted if "suitable for sporting purposes" or not likely to be used as a weapon. This is why one can buy a .700 Nitro-Express or .950 JDJ rifle as an ordinary Title 1 (no NFA registration or taxes required) rifle. And also why the "Street Sweeper" revolver-system shotgun and USAS-12 shotgun could be re-classified as destructive devices (requiring registration with BATFE, and payment of the $200 transfer tax for subsequent transfers) in 1994. 37mm are not considered destructive devices because they are not intended to be used as weapons; a 37mm smoothbore launcher in combination with an anti-personnel round such as a baton or bean bag cartridge constitutes a destructive device per ATF Ruling 95-3.

37mm launchers are smoothbore because they have always been smoothbore. The first launchers were marked as "1.5 inch" and were used for tear gas rounds that did not need rifling to function. Rifling would have simply meant additional unneeded expense in production. Subsequent rounds were developed to function in the existing smoothbore launchers, so there was no demand for a rifled launcher in the US. Some foreign launchers, the British military L127A1 and police L104A1, use a rifled 37mm barrel for greater effective range with plastic-bullet "baton" rounds and would be considered destructive devices in the US. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.175.221.121 (talk) 17:25, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Stun amunition

• What the heck is "Stun Ammo"? I don't know of any kind of real-world ammo that is actually called that. 17:02, 1 February 2009 User:71.17.188.132

"Non-lethal"

I work in law enforcement. We stopped calling these "non-lethal" weapons about a decade ago. A "non-lethal" round fired from a 37mm or 40mm launcher to the head, spine or kidneys can instantly kill a person. A better term, the term that we now presently use, is "less-lethal". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.188.200.200 (talk) 07:02, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

External links modified

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External links modified

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To add to article

To add to this article: the general range of velocity of a riot gun when firing a tear gas canister. Why is this basic information not already contained in this article? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 11:53, 25 September 2020 (UTC)