LRADs are not designed to cause permanent damage. They are explicitly designed under the intention of being a way to disperse a crowd without long term harm.
There hasn’t been much research on long term health impacts, but it’s not a tool to maim people.
I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to realize loud noise = hearing loss.
Just intuitively, I know many people with degraded hearing from concerts. And that hearing is gone, that’s how hearing loss works.
I think the people who designed these weapons aren’t anywhere close to stupid enough to think these won’t cause long term damage. Which means that the only explanation is they INTEND for them to cause long term damage.
Check out the link I posted. It’s from a physicians group focused on human rights.
> I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to realize loud noise = hearing loss.
Being a doctor and understanding that the levels people are exposed are not maiming if the thing is used “by design” should carry some significant weight in how you think about this.
They are designed to produce sound pressure levels that cause permanent hearing damage from short exposure, which makes them maiming weapons. There is no safe way to use an LRAD. Anybody who uses an LRAD is evil. Stop making excuses for despicable behavior. Deliberately causing hearing damage is no better than smashing people's fingers with hammers.
Risk of instantaneous noise-induced hearing loss: 120dB(SPL)
A sonic weapon must cause pain to be effective. Any sound that reliably causes pain is capable of causing instant hearing damage. Therefore any sonic weapon is necessarily a maiming weapon and is designed as such. There is no hyperbole.
As LRADs are less ethical than CS gas, the true design intent is likely to produce something that looks insignificant on video recordings so it can be used as extrajudicial punishment of undesirables with less risk of public outcry.
this. and let's not forget that these....officers always receive the best, most top notch training to use these things safely. (/s)
yet another reason to ensure footage looks like 'nothing terrible happened to these people' as expertly trained cop uses a weapon of war against civilians.
There hasn’t been much research on long term health impacts, but it’s not a tool to maim people.
https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-c...