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American here.

As sickened and sad as I am by my country's inability to deal constructively with gun-violence, I am equally disturbed by a type of attack which - from my reading of the news - only seems to occur in India (can't find a link at the moment) and, with apparent increasing frequency, Britain: hurling acid at a target.

Examples:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-41566491
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-40927790

How frequent are these attacks, and - I must naively ask - how are persons getting access to the substance? Does the local chemist make it available for a small fee? For what purpose would the substance be made available to the general public?

Baffled and horrified.

Various corrosive substances are standard household cleaners, such as bleach and drain cleaner.

Yea it is becoming an increasingly common gang weapon apparently.
You can shake off possibly being stabbed or shot with a bit of male bravado, but a melted face rather spoils the bad boy image! Rather clever really.

I think you can just buy acids from a chemist atm, but the government has just announced new curbs on their purchase.

I've seen it reported in Africa as well, in fact I remember two English girls had acid thrown at them in Zanzibar. One ran into the sea and came away with only light burns so I guess that is the soft counter.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Various corrosive substances are standard household cleaners, such as bleach and drain cleaner.

Good point, I have some pretty strong looking acid under the sink for descaling my kettle.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Various corrosive substances are standard household cleaners, such as bleach and drain cleaner.

Exactly. Sulfuric acid is available for a minimal price in every hardware store. It can be corrosive enough to do this type of attack.
Nasty stuff like hydrofluoric acid (which can be deadly quickly, and can't be rinsed of with water) is obviously harder to procure, but it's vastly used in industry (it dissolves silica/glass), so it shouldn't be that hard.

To clarify its not 'Acid instead of guns' rather 'Acid used as a weapon.'

Specifically to disfigure and maim. In the cases above revenge is a prime factor. A popular weapon in asian 'honour' attacks. And those involving spurned advances. Usually the victims are female.

It had also been seen used in robberies, a horrifying prospect to potential victims, which is probably why criminals threaten with it.

There are various legitimate uses for "real acids" like sulphuric acid. They are used for etching and making printed circuit board, for example.

Some sensible proposed changes to the current law:

1. Limit sales to over-18s.
2. New offence of carrying a corrosive in a non-descript bottle -- criminals usually put the acid into a Coke bottle or something.
3. New offence of "carrying around acid without a legitimate reason" -- this is similar to the law on carrying knives.
4. Increased severity of sentence for using acid or corrosives as a weapon.

None of that is meaningful. Like homemade bombs, homemade acids can come from cleaning solutions, insecticides, farming supplies and farm byproducts (among other things)

Unless you station cops outside every farm, home improvement, drug store, grocery store and kitchen store, you aren't stopping this. A bunch of silly unenforceable laws aren't productive.

Anyone can weaponoze anything.

Theres half a dozen things in your kitchen or bathroom capable of being a effective chemical based weapon.

Yes: I was wondering mostly of sulfuric and hydrofluoric acid, and not bleach or drain cleaner which I assumed (always dangerous) were formulated to be not immediately face-melting.

Chemistry is not a skill of mine, and I just don't have enough... erm, bile... to think about using such a substance for anything other than its intended purpose. Which was not the point of the post - just morbid horror about some aspects of this reality.

*

I was wondering when the first "can't stop everything so don't bother with anything" post would appear. Sadly, much quicker than I expected. No prize will be awarded....

Laws are being draughted to limit this.
Acid attacks are being reported more these days, but have been a thing for a long time (Victorian times).

Voss wrote:
None of that is meaningful. Like homemade bombs, homemade acids can come from cleaning solutions, insecticides, farming supplies and farm byproducts (among other things)

Unless you station cops outside every farm, home improvement, drug store, grocery store and kitchen store, you aren't stopping this. A bunch of silly unenforceable laws aren't productive.

why have laws at all? amirite?

Improved legislation should result in harsher penalties for anyone perpetrating an attack using acid.

Making it harder to purchase acids will deter a segment who has criminal intent - makes it a tad harder for me to purchase acids and solvents but I can cope with that.

Scott wrote:
Yes: I was wondering mostly of sulfuric and hydrofluoric acid, and not bleach or drain cleaner which I assumed (always dangerous) were formulated to be not immediately face-melting.

Chemistry is not a skill of mine, and I just don't have enough... erm, bile... to think about using such a substance for anything other than its intended purpose. Which was not the point of the post - just morbid horror about some aspects of this reality.

*

I was wondering when the first "can't stop everything so don't bother with anything" post would appear. Sadly, much quicker than I expected. No prize will be awarded....

I wasn't wondering when a specific response to poorly thought out laws would be poo-pooed, but here we are.

Its great list if you want to hassle college kids who might have to carry something to Chem Lab, not for much else.

Treat any kind of assault seriously, you don't need special acid laws to combat a symptomatic trend rather than the problem.

Scott wrote:
Yes: I was wondering mostly of sulfuric and hydrofluoric acid, and not bleach or drain cleaner which I assumed (always dangerous) were formulated to be not immediately face-melting.

Chemistry is not a skill of mine, and I just don't have enough... erm, bile... to think about using such a substance for anything other than its intended purpose. Which was not the point of the post - just morbid horror about some aspects of this reality.

*

I was wondering when the first "can't stop everything so don't bother with anything" post would appear. Sadly, much quicker than I expected. No prize will be awarded....

TBF Its not a reality for 99+% of the population.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

Scott wrote:
Yes: I was wondering mostly of sulfuric and hydrofluoric acid, and not bleach or drain cleaner which I assumed (always dangerous) were formulated to be not immediately face-melting.

Chemistry is not a skill of mine, and I just don't have enough... erm, bile... to think about using such a substance for anything other than its intended purpose. Which was not the point of the post - just morbid horror about some aspects of this reality.

*

I was wondering when the first "can't stop everything so don't bother with anything" post would appear. Sadly, much quicker than I expected. No prize will be awarded....

I wasn't wondering when a specific response to poorly thought out laws would be poo-pooed, but here we are.

Its great list if you want to hassle college kids who might have to carry something to Chem Lab, not for much else.

Treat any kind of assault seriously, you don't need special acid laws to combat a symptomatic trend rather than the problem.

Again. legislation will make it harder to purchase certain types of acid and solvents. Those purchasing for business small or large will likely not be affected. Individual purchasers will likely have a minor step to verify their purchases (hardly a problem for users, but a good roadblock for others).

Legislation will mean that an attacker using acid may face stiffer charges and penalties when arrested/charged/sentenced.

Just these two actions should make many think twice before considering acid as their weapon of choice. Committed criminals and the barmy are as likely as always to do what they want.

Of course poorly worded legislation will be a problem as will interpretations. If I was terribly interested id do some more digging, as it stands I should be able to purchase solvents for my needs.

Last decade it was knives. People were getting stabbed a lot, and the papers ran with it.

Now, a young couple setting up home together needs to get an 'adult" to buy their dinner set for them. Knife-and-fork set? Not unless you're over 18.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Last decade it was knives. People were getting stabbed a lot, and the papers ran with it.

Now, a young couple setting up home together needs to get an 'adult" to buy their dinner set for them. Knife-and-fork set? Not unless you're over 18.

This decade it's youngsters not being able to afford a home. Getting a sharp knife is the least of their worries.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
TBF Its not a reality for 99+% of the population

Thankfully.

Voss wrote:
I wasn't wondering when a specific response to poorly thought out laws would be poo-pooed, but here we are.

Still no prize for ya.

@ Skinnereal - So back in Victoria's reign was the first such attack, thanks for providing some context to this phenomena - for me at least.

Scott wrote:

How frequent are these attacks, and - I must naively ask - how are persons getting access to the substance? Does the local chemist make it available for a small fee? For what purpose would the substance be made available to the general public?

Baffled and horrified.

Americans can get dangerous acids pretty trivially for as infrequent as those kinds of attacks are here. I'd assume it's not much different there.

Hydrochloric acid is a common pool cleaner I believe.
Sulfuric acid can be used to etching, as KK mentioned. I have a container of that in my basement right now.
Nitric acid is used in fertilizers.

The world is fraught with peril.

Trying to legislatively control caustic chemicals that can be made from common household items is probably a losing game, to my mind at least. There's too many ways that too many things can be made, and carried in many ways before striking. Likewise, I imagine that age restrictions probably wont have a ton of effect, though I could be wrong, however my guess is that teenagers involved in this sort of thing arent showing up and openly buying sulfuric acid or other such substances, but they either have access to such (say through work or in the home garage or at school) or have access to the components and can fabricate the substances from relatively mundane things (e.g. its not hard to make a primitive chlorine gas irritant weapon from ammonia and bleach). You might be able to trim a couple incidents off the fringes, but probably wont see any major change. Most of these attacks sound preplanned in some way (even if the victim was not always explicitly chosen ahead of time) and ample opportunity for changing formulations, containers, mixing points, etc to bypass any laws as required or are cared about.

My guess would be, at best what one can do is tack on extra charges to make examples, and it sounds like the UK has had laws against the offensive use of caustic chemicals dating back to the 1860's.

Whats interesting to me is that most victims in the UK are male, while around the rest of the world they are overwhelmingly female.

 daedalus wrote:
The world is fraught with peril.

Truly.

Regarding which sex is attacked where, yeah: my mention of India in my original post was in reference to the attacks from spurned suitors or whatever upon women - disgusting behavior from some very pathetic men.

No matter who is the intended victim (or un-intended person in the vicinity, like in the English club), the aftermath is frequently horrifying - I think I'd rather be shot than suffer the disfiguration from acid, and I really don't want to be shot.

Scott wrote:


Truly.

Regarding which sex is attacked where, yeah: my mention of India in my original post was in reference to the attacks from spurned suitors or whatever upon women - disgusting behavior from some very pathetic men.

No matter who is the intended victim (or un-intended person in the vicinity, like in the English club), the aftermath is frequently horrifying - I think I'd rather be shot than suffer the disfiguration from acid, and I really don't want to be shot.

Agreed on all parts. There's a lot of things I would declare worse than death, and this is probably one of them. For all the violence we're (as Americans) admittedly rather inured to, this kind of stuff is one horror I'm glad we haven't had to experience.

Voss wrote:

Scott wrote:
Yes: I was wondering mostly of sulfuric and hydrofluoric acid, and not bleach or drain cleaner which I assumed (always dangerous) were formulated to be not immediately face-melting.

Chemistry is not a skill of mine, and I just don't have enough... erm, bile... to think about using such a substance for anything other than its intended purpose. Which was not the point of the post - just morbid horror about some aspects of this reality.

*

I was wondering when the first "can't stop everything so don't bother with anything" post would appear. Sadly, much quicker than I expected. No prize will be awarded....

I wasn't wondering when a specific response to poorly thought out laws would be poo-pooed, but here we are.

Its great list if you want to hassle college kids who might have to carry something to Chem Lab, not for much else.

Treat any kind of assault seriously, you don't need special acid laws to combat a symptomatic trend rather than the problem.

UK law does treat assault seriously.

The symptomatic trend of acid attacks is partly because acid is currently not recognised as a weapon and also its effects on victims are very different to say knife or baseball bat attacks, meaning that the current law does not take into account the special results.

Thus the need for new laws.

Scott wrote:
American here.
As sickened and sad as I am by my country's inability to deal constructively with gun-violence, I am equally disturbed by a type of attack which - from my reading of the news - only seems to occur in India (can't find a link at the moment) and, with apparent increasing frequency, Britain: hurling acid at a target.
Examples:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-41566491
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-40927790
How frequent are these attacks, and - I must naively ask - how are persons getting access to the substance? Does the local chemist make it available for a small fee? For what purpose would the substance be made available to the general public?
Baffled and horrified.

I have heard this from a few people I know from India.
It appears this can happen pretty much anywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_throwing

Something from the USA:
https://www.leahlegal.com/practice-areas/assault-battery/assault-with-caustic-chemicals

A bit of history:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2013/02/history_of_acid_violence_when_did_people_start_throwing_vitriol.html

There are so many materials one would not want thrown on them.

Selenides and Telurides: "Imagine 6 skunks wrapped in rubber innertubes and the whole thing is set ablaze. That might approach the metaphysical stench of this material.".

Putrescine: "is a foul-smelling[1] organic chemical compound NH2(CH2)4NH2 (1,4-diaminobutane or butanediamine) that is related to cadaverine; both are produced by the breakdown of amino acids in living and dead organisms and both are toxic in large doses."

This is a handy list of varying degrees of "discomfort":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_warfare_agents

All I can say is anyone performing ANY kind of chemical attack is looking to see their victim suffer.
My wife had an industrial accident of a light spray of HCL acid, she was able to use a tub sink and rinse as best she could but for 4 days her face was purple and her cheeks and eyebrows swelled till they touched.
Luckily she had chemical goggles on, she has some acid scars on her arms but she was lucky and not disfigured. (BTW, you never know how much you care for someone until you see them this hurt...).
I would not wish that pain on my worst enemy.

That is why I go a bit crazy with random strangers deciding it is funny to fire squirt-guns at people: you have no idea what is in them.

The first case I ever think of is Linda and Burt Pugach of Manhattan. When she wouldn't date him, he hired three men to throw lye in her face, which blinded her, and he served fourteen years in prison. They later married. Because she had always been fashionable, he helped her try on outfits every day by describing them to her.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Last decade it was knives. People were getting stabbed a lot, and the papers ran with it.

Now, a young couple setting up home together needs to get an 'adult" to buy their dinner set for them. Knife-and-fork set? Not unless you're over 18.

Anybody under 18 is w-a-a-a-a-a-a-y too young to be worrying about flatware or setting up a home. Who the feth settles down that young!? Only ISIS terrorists and their child brides, that's who!

Pakistan is pretty bad for acid attacks. In most places its generally linked to male attacks on women. This the first I've heard of the UK situation, where it is mostly used in male on male violence.

 BigWaaagh wrote:
Anybody under 18 is w-a-a-a-a-a-a-y too young to be worrying about flatware or setting up a home. Who the feth settles down that young!? Only ISIS terrorists and their child brides, that's who!

Won't somebody think of the children attempting to make a terrible, terrible mistake?!

Kids buying knives because they're committing to a relationship and home under the age of 18 probably ruins more lives that street thugs buying knives because they might try and stab somebody.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Voss wrote:

Scott wrote:
Yes: I was wondering mostly of sulfuric and hydrofluoric acid, and not bleach or drain cleaner which I assumed (always dangerous) were formulated to be not immediately face-melting.

Chemistry is not a skill of mine, and I just don't have enough... erm, bile... to think about using such a substance for anything other than its intended purpose. Which was not the point of the post - just morbid horror about some aspects of this reality.

*

I was wondering when the first "can't stop everything so don't bother with anything" post would appear. Sadly, much quicker than I expected. No prize will be awarded....

I wasn't wondering when a specific response to poorly thought out laws would be poo-pooed, but here we are.

Its great list if you want to hassle college kids who might have to carry something to Chem Lab, not for much else.

Treat any kind of assault seriously, you don't need special acid laws to combat a symptomatic trend rather than the problem.

UK law does treat assault seriously.

The symptomatic trend of acid attacks is partly because acid is currently not recognised as a weapon and also its effects on victims are very different to say knife or baseball bat attacks, meaning that the current law does not take into account the special results.

Thus the need for new laws.

It really shows that you should legislate against actions and not tools used to commit said actions.

Killing someone with a gun is not worse than killing them with a knife. So it is rather silly to have laws regulating either of those tools as both have legitimate peaceful uses. Just have stiff penalties for assault and murder regardless of what was used to commit the crime.

If you focus just on the tools, all it accomplishes is causing people to use different tools. And we're never going to run out of clever ways to cause each other harm, so it's ultimately wasted effort. Instead you should focus on the causes of violence, thats where real differences will be made.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Killing someone with a gun is not worse than killing them with a knife. So it is rather silly to have laws regulating either of those tools as both have legitimate peaceful uses. Just have stiff penalties for assault and murder regardless of what was used to commit the crime.

If you focus just on the tools, all it accomplishes is causing people to use different tools. And we're never going to run out of clever ways to cause each other harm, so it's ultimately wasted effort. Instead you should focus on the causes of violence, thats where real differences will be made.

But knife is much less capable of causing massive death. Do you factor your chances of outrunning bullet better than knife? I know which one I would prefer to run away from.

Fact is guy with a rapid firing gun is going to take down lot more targets than guy with a knife in same time. That's something only fool would dispute.

tneva82 wrote:
But knife is much less capable of causing massive death. Do you factor your chances of outrunning bullet better than knife? I know which one I would prefer to run away from.

Fact is guy with a rapid firing gun is going to take down lot more targets than guy with a knife in same time. That's something only fool would dispute.

Call me a fool if you want, but if planned, a knife attack could harm many victims in seconds.
Someone standing in the crush of a train platform, and stabbing everyone around them.
In a nightclub, with people waving around and lots of loud music. The panic wouldn't start for a while.
Similar with being on a packed bus or a train.
Knives are silent, and people often don't realise they've been stabbed straight away. Supposedly, a stabbing might feel like a punch, or a rough jostle.

 Skinnereal wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
But knife is much less capable of causing massive death. Do you factor your chances of outrunning bullet better than knife? I know which one I would prefer to run away from.

Fact is guy with a rapid firing gun is going to take down lot more targets than guy with a knife in same time. That's something only fool would dispute.

Call me a fool if you want, but if planned, a knife attack could harm many victims in seconds.
Someone standing in the crush of a train platform, and stabbing everyone around them.
In a nightclub, with people waving around and lots of loud music. The panic wouldn't start for a while.
Similar with being on a packed bus or a train.
Knives are silent, and people often don't realise they've been stabbed straight away. Supposedly, a stabbing might feel like a punch, or a rough jostle.

And if the same guy had a gun he'd kill a lot more people ceteris paribus. There's a reason we don't send phalanxes and hoplites to stab each other to death when fighting wars anymore.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
And if the same guy had a gun he'd kill a lot more people ceteris paribus. There's a reason we don't send phalanxes and hoplites to stab each other to death when fighting wars anymore.

A gunman is surely easier to wrestle down than someone with a knife. In confined spaces, the chances of grabbing a gun and pointing it away from people are quite good. Grabbing a knife hurts.

But, this is about acid...
Once that's been thrown, it's probably safer to let them get a few steps away before dealing with them.