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High Technology Weapons - FN303

The FN303 is a semi-automatic, less-lethal riot gun designed and manufactured by Fabrique Nationale de Herstal. The projectiles of the FN303 have been specifically designed to break up on impact, reducing risks of penetrating injuries. Typical operating scenarios include domestic violence intervention, marking violent suspects, and building surveillance.

Ammunition

The FN303 fires a spherical, fin-stabalized projectile. According to Fabrique Nationale, the fin-stabalized design provides greater accuracy than a standard paintball round. The forward half of the sphere is a non-toxic, granulated bismuth shell designed to fragment on impact to prevent penetration damage. The rear half of the sphere contains one of several color-coded liquid payloads:

While they have given it a fancy name, the FN303 is really just a glorified paintball gun. One thing to note if you have never been hit with a paintball round, an additional aspect to the derrent nature of the FN303 is that getting hit by a paintball round hurts like hell. Any weekend paintball enthusiast will tell you to wear layers of clothing and body armor otherwise you'd be covered in horrible bruises after a paintball match. Since most suspects would not be wearing body armor, this gun will make most people collapse in terrible pain after being hit just a couple times in certain areas of the body. It would no doubt make as an effective weapon as a beanbag gun, but probably with less damaging consequences. Improperly designed and loaded beanbag guns are like being hit with a potato gun, which can break ribs, especially if any previous and recent injuries exist. And if ribs are broken in certain ways, the lungs or the heart become compromised, causing internal bleeding and possibly even death. This is because beanbags are not designed to break up on impact, making the rounds reusable, but also making them more deadly if they hit certain parts of the human body. Since the FN303 rounds break up on impact, there is less damaging forces being absorbed into the human body and the momentum of the round diminishes, scattered across the impact surface. No doubt Fabrique Nationale deserves some praise in attempting to make crowd control less lethal.