Less-Lethal Weapons

Overview

Less-lethal weapons, often incorrectly referred to as non-lethal weapons, are any weapon designed to injure or incapacitate a target while having less likelihood of death than most weaponry. This kind of weapons can be dedicated weapons such as blunt weapons and net guns. Perhaps the most common are electrical stunguns, cattle prods and tazers. Sometimes rubber ammunition is used in normally fully-lethal weapons like shotguns and grenade launchers.

Gameplay uses

Less-lethal weapons tend to appear in video games to fulfill a pacifist option, or as part of the stealth genre, providing an explanation for how the player can knock out or incapacitate enemies quietly without killing them. This is often presented matter-of-factly, with most games treating less-lethal weaponry as simply non-lethal weaponry.

Less-lethal weapons in games sometimes come with drawbacks, such as reduced functionality, weapon restrictions, specialized ammo, or the potential to accidentally kill a target anyways. However, some games portray less-lethal weapons as functionally identical to normal weaponry, save the narrative difference.