What Is a Rubber Bullet? Types, Injuries, and Legality

A rubber bullet is a large, blunt, low-velocity projectile fired from a specialized launcher or a modified firearm, designed to incapacitate a person through pain and blunt force rather than by penetrating the body. It’s classified as “less-lethal,” not non-lethal, and the distinction matters. A systematic review of injury data found that about 3% of people struck by kinetic impact projectiles died from their injuries, and roughly 15% suffered permanent disabilities.¹

What They’re Actually Made Of

The name is misleading. Pure rubber is rarely the main ingredient. Many modern designs use a polymer matrix that blends a soft elastomer (the “rubber” part) with a harder thermoplastic and a high-density filler like iron powder, tungsten, or bismuth to give the round enough mass to fly predictably. In some formulations, the elastomer is as little as 25% of the polymer matrix by weight. Older designs went a different route entirely, stuffing a rubber or synthetic casing with lead pellets to produce a heavier baton round.²

The shapes vary too. Some are solid slugs or spheres, some are flat-nosed cylinders, some are foam-tipped, and some are cloth bags filled with shot. What they share is a larger diameter than conventional ammunition and a reduced propellant load, which keeps velocity down and, in theory, prevents the round from piercing skin.

How the Impact Works

A conventional bullet is small, fast, and pointed. It’s built to pierce. A rubber bullet works on the opposite principle: it’s large, slow, and blunt, transferring kinetic energy across a broader surface area and producing a heavy wallop instead of a puncture wound. The difference is roughly that between being poked with a pencil tip and being hit hard with a tennis ball.

Older solid rubber bullets carried muzzle energy of around 400 joules, in the same range as some conventional handgun rounds.³ The U.S. Army’s Human Engineering Laboratory established that severe bodily damage becomes highly likely above roughly 120 joules of impact energy for a one-inch rubber sphere.⁴ Modern designs generally aim for impact energy between 80 and 120 joules, enough to produce compliance-level pain without crossing the threshold for catastrophic injury. Those numbers assume everything goes right: correct range, correct aim point, a round that flies true. Accuracy degrades with distance, and a projectile that tumbles or strikes an unintended body part can deliver concentrated force well above the design target.

The Main Types

News coverage uses “rubber bullet” as a catch-all, but the projectiles police actually fire differ sharply in weight, energy, and injury risk.

Solid rubber or plastic rounds. The original type. Dense, cylindrical or spherical, made of hard rubber or PVC. These carry the most kinetic energy and pose the highest risk of serious injury.
Foam baton rounds. Lighter projectiles made of foam rubber, typically fired from a 40mm launcher. A standard foam baton round is about 1.4 inches in diameter, weighs around 0.4 ounces, and leaves the barrel at roughly 325 feet per second. Some cartridges hold multiple foam projectiles that spread after exit.⁵
Bean bag rounds. A small synthetic cloth bag holding about 45 grams of lead shot, fired from a standard 12-gauge shotgun. On impact, the bag flattens and spreads the force.⁴
Rubber-coated metal bullets. A steel or lead core wrapped in a thin rubber coating. The United Nations has described these as “particularly dangerous” and recommended against their use.⁶

The type matters. A foam baton round delivering 55 joules is a fundamentally different weapon from a rubber-coated metal slug delivering 400 joules, even when both get reported as “rubber bullets.”

How Dangerous They Actually Are

The “less-lethal” label does a lot of work covering the actual damage these projectiles cause. A systematic review published in BMJ Open examined 1,984 people struck by kinetic impact projectiles. Of those, 53 died and 300 were left with permanent disabilities, a fatality rate near 3% and a permanent disability rate around 15%.¹

Common Injuries

The most frequent injuries are what you’d expect from a heavy blunt impact: deep bruising, lacerations, and fractures, especially in the arms, legs, and ribs. Soft-tissue damage beneath the skin can be extensive even when the surface wound looks minor. Torso hits can injure the spleen, liver, lungs, or bowel without ever breaking skin.

Eye Injuries

Eye injuries are disproportionately common and devastating. A study of ocular injuries during protests found that 27% of those struck in the eye suffered a ruptured globe, 23% had orbital fractures, and 33% were left permanently blind in the affected eye.⁷ No layer of tissue or bone protects the eye from a direct hit, which is a major reason medical and human rights groups have pushed for stricter controls.

Head Injuries and Death

Head and neck strikes account for a large share of the fatalities in the medical literature. A rubber bullet to the temple or forehead can cause skull fractures and traumatic brain injuries. Death is most likely when rounds are fired at close range, when rubber-coated metal bullets are used, or when projectiles strike the head or neck. UN guidance on less-lethal weapons states explicitly that kinetic impact projectiles “should not be targeted at the head, face or neck.”⁶ Studies of protest injuries nonetheless document a high proportion of head and face wounds.

What to Do If You’re Hit

Any rubber bullet impact warrants medical evaluation, even if the wound looks superficial. Blunt-force injuries can cause internal bleeding that isn’t visible from outside and may not produce symptoms for hours. Seek emergency care immediately if you experience dizziness, shortness of breath, an increased heart rate, confusion, abdominal swelling, or a worsening headache after being struck. These can signal a Class II hemorrhage or internal bleeding that needs urgent treatment.⁸

For a chest impact, watch for difficulty breathing, chest pain, or coughing up blood. Abdominal hits may cause swelling, a feeling of fullness, or blood in vomit, urine, or stool. Head impacts are the most urgent. Any vision changes, confusion, or weakness on one side of the body after a strike to the head means you need emergency care without delay.⁸

How They Compare to Regular Bullets

The core difference is velocity. A typical solid rubber bullet leaves the barrel at roughly 70 meters per second, about 230 feet per second.³ A standard 9mm handgun round travels at around 370 meters per second, more than five times faster. That speed gap is what separates a weapon designed to bruise from one designed to penetrate. A conventional bullet’s small diameter and high velocity concentrate energy into a tiny point and punch through tissue. A rubber bullet’s larger diameter and lower velocity spread the energy over a wider surface, producing blunt trauma.

The gap narrows more than most people assume. Some older rubber bullet designs carried around 400 joules of muzzle energy, compared with roughly 500 to 600 joules for a 9mm round. The energy is delivered differently, through a wide blunt impact rather than a penetrating one, but 400 joules is still enough to shatter bone and rupture organs at close range. Modern foam and sponge rounds have brought the energy down substantially, often under 120 joules per projectile, which is where the “less-lethal” label starts to carry more weight.

Are Rubber Bullets Legal

In the United States, there is no single federal law governing when or how police can use rubber bullets. Regulation happens mostly at the department level through internal use-of-force policies, which means the rules vary considerably from one jurisdiction to the next.

After the widespread 2020 protests drew attention to injuries from these weapons, several cities and states moved to impose restrictions. Some jurisdictions banned their use against nonviolent protesters, others prohibited indiscriminate firing into crowds, and others barred aiming at the head. Not all of these measures survived legal challenges. The patchwork of local rules means the legal framework you’re subject to depends entirely on where you are.

Internationally, UN guidance on less-lethal weapons recommends against targeting the head, face, or neck with kinetic impact projectiles and specifically warns that rubber-coated metal bullets are dangerous enough that they should not be used at all.⁶ That guidance is not binding on any country, but it represents the international consensus on minimum standards.

1
PMC. Death, Injury and Disability From Kinetic Impact Projectiles in Crowd-Control Settings: A Systematic Review – Section: Results
2
Google Patents. Less-Lethal Ammunition Projectile – US7614349B2
3
ResearchGate. The Rubber Bullet in Comparison to Conventional Munitions
4
Lethal in Disguise 2. Kinetic Impact Projectiles
5
Defense Technology. 40MM Foam Baton Smokeless Powder Round
6
OHCHR. United Nations Human Rights Guidance on Less-Lethal Weapons in Law Enforcement
7
UCSF Department of Ophthalmology. Increasing Eye Injuries During Social Justice Marches
8
Cleveland Clinic. Internal Bleeding