Yeah....no lawsuits or nasty side effects there. Just lase them.

At least with the high price tag they won\'t be handing them out to every cop like tazers and pepper spray. Too many of them don\'t seem to understand that non-lethal is not the same as non-harmful and shouldn\'t be used just because they\'re frustrated. However I don\'t think they\'ve thought this through very well. The only thing I can think of worse than an angry violent mob is a blind angry violent panicked mob. I instantly foresee trampling deaths and injuries. And it\'s not better just because the police didn\'t inflict them directly.

I bet there will be health side effects here. And I bet that managing director of Photonic Security Systems is not willing to be \"temporarily\" laser blinded once a week to demonstrate that there are no side effects.

An Australian company invented asimilar blinder in Brisbane in the 1980's but there were efforts to stop it. I agreed at the time because the blinder did irreversible damage. We now have lasers that don't do permanent damage. A riot blinder that has a 3 second residual effect will work for a while until someone came up with a pair of anti-laser glasses. I can see how someone might make them work.

Test this in good old South Africa as well

So, am I really the first one who though of mirrors within 3 seconds of reading the title?

Countermeasures: Sunglasses or laser protection glasses won\'t do, if it\'s white light they are directing at you. You\'d need the Things you wear to watch a solar eclipse, and they are pretty dark if looking somewhere else.
Mirrors wouldn\'t help either, because of the spread. The the weapon illuminates an area of 3 Meters. Lets say those results in 3 square meters. If you have a 50x50cm mirror (0.25 sqm) You return less than 10 % of the light which will be spread again and reduced by another 10%. That is, if you can redirect the light successfully at all, which won\'t be easy. You can either aim at the light-gun and be blinded after the first flash or hide behind it and don\'t aim at all.
That said, the definition of \"riots\" is somewhat vague and sometimes gets extended to include demonstrations. As with non-lethal weapons, a light-gun that doesn\'t cause permanent damage might be used more often.

Maybe they should look at why people are so unhappy instead of looking for ways to subdue them. I think the guy who came up with this should be shot in the eye with it.

Nowhere in the article does it say whether rioters would be blinded only when looking the direction of the rifle, for life, or temporarily. Just putting up a wall of intense light from the rifle would work well. Temporarily would certainly leave wandering rioters not sure of which way is out of the situation and possibly running into something, like traffic. Permanently could possibly be grounds for lawsuits if an innocent bystander were blinded.
The article should have been more descriptive that just saying \"blinded\".

As we saw during OWS, most protesters are already blinded.