In this context imagine the terrible nature of... plastic bullets...

If you can't imagine that, you are probably not alone. The very name conveys "harmless" "toy" "make believe"... It doesn't suggest "atrocity" "inhuman" "lethal"... Unless we imagine someone with a toy gun trying to stage a crime--plastic bullets and all--it might be difficult to imagine how the bullets would even make it into the news (unless they triggered a school suspension under the zero-tolerance wave, or were highlighted on an annual "worst toys for Christmas" list).

But plastic bullets are in fact lethal--not artificial, or harmless, or toy-like. Not the make-believe ammunition that comes packaged with a toy gun, they are instead a very real weapon used by police in places like Northern Ireland. In that one place alone, they have caused numerous cases of serious injury or death throughout the history of their use. And governments have been urged to discontinue their use as a means of "crowd control," as they are used for example in Northern Ireland.

New Plastic Bullet

Older Rubber Model

Plastic bullets (or "baton rounds" as they are also called) are large, hard plastic projectiles that are shot out of guns like other bullets. They are almost twice the thickness of a typical broom handle, and about 4 in. (or about 9 cm.) long. Introduced in the past few years into the British police arsenal as reportedly a "less lethal" alternative to the previously used "rubber bullets" (hockey puck-hard rubber projectiles), they have in fact been argued to be even more lethal than their predecessors despite their lighter makeup.

Meanwhile, it is difficult to find even a single reference to "plastic bullets" or "baton rounds" in the U.S. press in recent years. They aren't used by U.S. police (at least in the form used by British police in Northern Ireland) and it is likely that even their very name suggests "non-story" to the average news editor. In an age when it has been suggested the operating motto of news selection is "if it bleeds, it leads," a headline dealing with "plastic" anything (except maybe for bodyparts of the "stars") hardly seems headed for media coverage.

Plastic bullets are, nonetheless, deadly. And they are in fact used--in places like Northern Ireland. Clearly to understand how and why they are a human/social problem calls for an awareness and an understanding of their context. Strangely, in our "global world order," with 24hr a day, up-to-the-minute news from all over the world, we can still be so unaware of such contexts, and a label like "Plastic Bullet" can remain even less consequential to us than, say, "toy gun."