The “Big Hurt” Riot Cannon For Crowd Control
When dealing with a large group of violent protesters or looters in a riot situation, law enforcement and military personnel have used a variety of equipment to help restore order. Such tools for crowd control include tear gas, high-powered water hoses, dogs and rubber bullets. Now, Bruce Lund and his company, Lund & Co Inventions have created a new weapon for the war on town and city riots. However, you might be surprised to learn that this is the same company who made the Tickle Me Elmo doll.
Bruce Lund himself recently designed a gas-powered, potentially lethal bean bag cannon that the Pentagon has taken great interest in. However, the technology for this riot cannon actually originated from a toy rocket that Lund created for the toy company, Estes. Lund & Co Inventions is actually a research developer that aids major toy companies like Tyco and they do not specialize in directly selling their own products. After the Tickle Me Elmo doll sold for millions, Lund was hired by Estes. The toy rocket designed by Lund works by converting regular tap water into Hydrogen and Oxygen gases, then recombining it into H20 to generate energy and expanding gases that cause this energy to launch the rocket upward for more than 200 feet. Then Lund applied this technology to the development of his Variable Velocity Weapon System, which he named “The Big Hurt”.
The idea behind “Big Hurt” is to solve the problems that exist with most projectile weapons for crowd control. Common riot weapons that use non-lethal rounds like rubber bullets and beanbags have a problem with their velocity. Such weapons are safe to use at fifty yards but become potentially lethal at five yards and weapons designed to be non-lethal at five yards don’t have an effective projectile velocity at a fifty-yard range. So, Lund solved this problem by designing his “Big Hurt” cannon to automatically measure the range of a target and adjust its muzzle velocity accordingly. The Pentagon loves Lund’s design but wanted him to add a manual override function that allows the user to switch from lesser than to a full velocity setting so projectile rounds can be used for lethal force. Other design modifications were made as well. Now, that’s quite an interesting progression. Lund went from creating new toys to designing crowd control weaponry. Maybe this inventor has a future in the research and development of new weapons technology.
Tags: Bruce Lund, Lund & Co Inventions, The Big Hurt Riot Cannon, The Variable Velocity Weapon System
