PMB-4M Russian Less-lethal Weapon

Via The High Road, another oddball Russian weapon, though this one is less-lethal. Comment from a native Russian member of The High Road:

Well, i do carry one like that for past 2 years. Weird it is, powerful – hardly. It fires rubber slug of about 180 grains in weight, ~ .60 caliber, for about 50 ft-lbs of muzzle energy. At point blank range and with light clothing, it may cause a broken rib or jaw, or other such impact damage, but with heavy winter clothing it effectiveness degrades severely.

As for flash-bang, it does work to some extent. It gives a muzzle blast couple of feet long, and sounds like magnum-caliber rifle or something like that. At night, when fired into the face of attacker, it will bling him / them for good several minutes, providing escape time. It also beats the sh*t out of roaming dog packs.

The problem with this weapon (and with any other less-lethal weapon IMO) is that people tend to consider them as toys, or at least non-life-treathing devices, which results in irrseponsible use (use of knuckles to settle some personal disputes here, especially among youngers, is almost “socially acceptable”, and less-lethal weapons often are considered just as long-range kickers, not real guns). Other problem is that police will often ingnore any minor damage to people and refuse to open the investigation case

The thing is electrically ignited; there are versions with Lithium battery or trigger-operated impulse generator (like mine). It also has a “smart” chip that runs low-voltage test through all chambers each time trigger is pulled to find the first loaded one, and fires it. I think it could be “hacked” to fire in salvos but see no reason for that. It also has a built-in laser pointer (with separate battery in the butt), which is useful due to almost non-existant sights; it also permits more or less accurate hip-firing.

Read on in that thread for information about the current Russian practice of converting conventional arms to fire rubber ball ammunition – such as the “condom-firing” Makarov – for legal use by civilians. According to the linked article gun laws were liberalized under Yeltsin to allow more citizens to own longarms, but few people are allowed to own, much less carry, handguns.