As part of their violent clampdown on protests against racism and police brutality, US police forces have been routinely firing rubber bullets at unarmed demonstrators, from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, Phoenix to Nashville. These so-called nonlethal or less lethal weapons have become a standard tool of US policing, along with tear gas and pepper spray, used freely against protesters and journalists alike.

It’s not just the United States, either. French riot police used the projectiles on a huge scale in their response to the “yellow vests” protest movement. By May 2019, police violence had blinded twenty-four people and left 283 more with head injuries, most of which were caused by rubber bullets.

This will come as no surprise to people in Northern Ireland, the world’s first laboratory for the use of rubber and plastic bullets. During the Troubles, these supposedly “nonlethal” weapons killed seventeen people, including eight children between the ages of ten and fifteen.