96 Resource book on the use of force and firearms in law enforcement Every use of plastic or rubber bullets, including the AEP, should be subject to independent oversight, which can assess both the circumstances and use. For the sake of effective oversight, it is important to be able to identify the bullets used. However it should be noted that rubber and other bullets do not have identification markings common in conventional ammunition, making it much more difficult to investigate their use.217 It is good practice to log the ammunition issued to a named individual officer, and all projectiles and cartridge cases should be forensically marked to make it possible to identify who fired them. Firearms Description and use While the BPUFF do not define firearms, according to the 2001 Firearms Protocol “firearm” means “any portable barrelled weapon that expels, is designed to expel or may be readily converted to expel a shot, bullet or projectile by the action of an explosive, excluding antique firearms or their replicas”.218 Note that firearms can be used to fire less-lethal rounds, yet some less-lethal launchers are firearms. Laws on firearms should reflect such distinctions. There are many different types of firearms, but law enforcement officials are typically equipped with either handheld guns, such as a pistol or a revolver, which are usually carried in a holster on the belt or under the arm. Officials might also carry long guns, such as a rifle, which need to be mounted against the shoulder when firing. Although more precise, they are more difficult to carry than a handheld gun. Both handheld guns and long guns can be single-shot, semi-automatic or automatic: • A single-shot firearm needs to be manually reloaded after each shot, in order to build pressure to ignite that shot. • A semi-automatic firearm shoots a single shot with each pull of the trigger but does not need to be manually loaded each time, as it uses the energy of one shot to reload the next. As a result, it can shoot much faster than a single shot device. • An automatic firearm will continue to fire as long as the trigger is pressed until the magazine is empty. However, it could also be set at single-shot mode. While certain law enforcement officials in some countries may be armed with assault rifles, such as AK-47s or M16s, in principle, law enforcement officials should not use their firearms in fully automatic mode. It is difficult to imagine a situation in civilian law enforcement where officers, other than the highly specialized SWAT unit, would need an automatic weapon in view of the great risk of death or serious injury to people that do not pose an imminent threat to life. As such, equipping officers with such weaponry is incompatible with the Basic Principles. Osse, A. (2006). Protocol Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Their Parts and Components and Ammunition, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, article 3(a).
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