[sillystuff]

GP isn't wrong though. Tear gas of the type used by civilian police forces against the general population is illegal to use in war. It is a war crime to use it.

Tear gas was developed by France and used on the battle field in WWI before being used for "crowd control".

https://www.kumc.edu/school-of-medicine/academics/department....

"Riot control agents, including tear gas and other gases which have debilitating but non-permanent effects as a means of warfare, is prohibited in armed conflict under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention."

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul...

And, if a government's leaders feel they need to gas, assault with sound cannons / water cannons / pepper spray, use flash bang grenades, beat with clubs, and/or fire rubber coated steel bullets at their population, it might be taken as a hint that the government involved has lost the consent of the governed.

[iudqnolq]

This is one of those sayings that's technically true but misses the point by a mile.

A wounded soldier is a greater burden than a dead soldier, so a possible tactic would be to deliberately wound. Some people thought that was especially amoral, so they added a rule against it to what they called international law.

So most police weaponry is illegal under international law, but it's illegal because it's less deadly than the permitted alternative.