Emedinews:Insights on Medicolegal Issues:What are Rubber Bullets?

Rubber bullets were introduced in the US to quell anti–war and civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s. They were reintroduced in the late 1980s. Rubber bullets describe about 75 types of "less than lethal devices" that are designed to deliver a stinging blow that incapacitates but do not kill or penetrate flesh as regular metal bullets.

• The first less–than–lethal bullets appeared in the 1880s when Singapore police shot sawed–off broom handles at rioters. By the 1960s, riot control police in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong were using wooden bullets. The Wooden bullets still in use today are called "knee–knockers.
• British colonists replaced the wood, which could shatter and possibly penetrate, with rubber. By the 1980s, they switched to more accurate plastic bullets, solid polyvinyl chloride cylinders about 4 inches long and 1.5 1/2 inches wide.

They are most often used by individual police officers to subdue armed, mentally ill people. The bullets are supposed to be shot at the lower half of the body; but have also accidently killed people. Numerous groups from the European Parliament to Human Rights Watch have called for a ban on plastic bullets.