US and international law for determining what makes a weapon unlawful. First, the weapon cannot be indiscriminate by nature. This does not refer to how human combatants might use or misuse the weapon. It means only that the weapon itself cannot be specifically designed to cause indiscriminate harm. Second, a lawful weapon cannot “cause unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury.” This rule is intended to exclude, for example, bombs filled with glass shards that an X-ray machine could not detect in the human body. Finally, a lawful weapon cannot cause harmful effects that are incapable of
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