Talk:Rubber bullet

Merge?

I suggest rubber bullet and plastic bullet should be merged. Any comments? -- FirstPrinciples 12:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Rubber bullets are not the same as plastic bullets, neither of which are the same as metal bullets. They have unique, but related histories. I think the catetory less-lethal weapons adequately combines both of these catetories. As long as there is enough cross-linking between the two entries, it should be fine.

I'd support a merge of both to baton round, which would give a clearer history of their closely related development. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:50, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Support merge to baton round. Ben Aveling 13:46, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Sorry I missed the discussion. In any event, I support the do not move conclusion, but wanted to add some additional perspective. Overall, I suspect that there's some confusion (and conflation) between munition functions, brand (or type) names, and construction materials.

For example, I've generally considered the old (1970s) era UK rounds, commonly referred to as "Baton", as a class of NL's where the engagement mode was skip-fire. Granted, I believe that this later changed, but the 'baton' name stuck around, but skip- vs direct- engagement modes is what can & should be used in discussions to differentiate Type A from Type B.

Likewise, for plastic-vs-rubber (and foam), I don't really see the material selection as being a particularly useful reason to differentiate C from D: following design intent is probably more beneficial to understanding the different types than what material happened to be used to implement the design intent. For example, a lets-dip-it-in-plastic to make the steel ball bearing look like its made out of rubber is 100% perception, not something that reduces injury risks.

Finally, brand/type names and common names can cause confusion too - another factor to strive for clarity on. For example, the US Military M1006 (and its cousins) are commonly known as the "foam baton", but is significantly different in design intent and employment than the old UK baton rounds - this unfortunate use of the "baton" in the name will trip some people up into confusing the two.

Hope this is food for thought and offers some insight into options on how the information could be organized. -hh (talk) 15:47, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Move to baton round.

This pages seems to be mainly about baton rounds, rather than being specifically about the rubber baton round (AKA rubber bullets). For accuracy, given that most baton rounds aren't rubber, I suggest moving this page over the top of the existing page Baton round (which is currently a list of different types of baton round) and leaving a redirect from here. Note that this will require admin support because we don't want to lose the history of this page (by moving just the content) but a non-admin can't simply move this page, because the destination already exists. Given that a merge has been discussed already and seems to have broad support, see above, I'm going to list this at Wikipedia:Requested_moves/Technical_requests#Uncontroversial_technical_requests Ben Aveling 14:12, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 31 May 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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• Rubber bullet → Baton round
• Baton round → Baton round (disambiguation)

– Page is mainly about baton rounds in general, not specifically about rubber baton rounds, aka rubber bullets. Destination page already exists but is very stubby. Ben Aveling 14:10, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:36, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Note: Target or "new" titles cannot have non-redirected content unless they are also to be renamed. This request has been modified to reflect that fact. P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 03:03, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

• Text and cited sources discuss rubber bullets, making that object the article subject and the term the primary name for the object and for the article. Baton round page is not a stub but a disambig for term without clear primary topic. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 20:22, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
  • While the current Baton round describes itself as a disambig, it's really just a list of different types of Baton rounds, of which rubber is just one type, and not the most common. It's not a straight move, it is going to need a merge. But it needs to start with a move to keep the history. Ben Aveling 23:25, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
• Comment the article seems to be mostly about actual rubber bullets, but IMO a complicating factor is it seems to me this is one of those cases where we have to ask what to when a WP:common name is misleading and where were have two very similar items. It's very common for the media to talk about police or whoever using rubber bullets for crowd control. Yet our article implies, and from some independent reading I think this may be true, that in much of the developed world actual rubber bullets aren't very common for that purpose any more. Instead plastic bullets are generally used and so a lot of the time when the media or whoever are talking about rubber bullets, they're probably referring to plastic bullets. And while there are some differences hence why plastic bullets are preferred, functionally they are similar and their risks etc also similar e.g. [1]. For that reason it may be worth merging the 2 articles and discussing the differences and similarities as needed. Possibly it may make sense to merge wooden bullets into here as well but probably not bean bag rounds. Nil Einne (talk) 15:29, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose I don't think rubber bullet is the primary topic for "baton round", because other varieties of baton round exist. PrussianOwl (talk) 02:42, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose The article appears to be about rubber bullets in particular rather than about baton rounds in general. Karlshammar (talk) 03:50, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose - Article is more about rubber bullets, and baton rounds can mean a variety of things (hence the disamb. page) Ed6767 (talk) 10:46, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment It's not ideal to have a disambig page for what are ultimately different types of the same thing - better to have a primary page to collect what is common and have the other pages talk about what is specific to each type. Ben Aveling 01:20, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Reading the room, I'm going to suggest there's CONSENSUS TO NOT MOVE, on the grounds that while this page does have material that better belongs at Baton round the bulk of the material on this page is agreed to belong here. Regards, Ben Aveling 12:56, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.