I had really sort of imagined the "real guns" being in the cars, locked up like some modern police cars keep shotguns--not so close that the cops would be able simply to change clips, but close enough that they didn't have to bring them to the scene from somewhere else.
I got some thoughts delivered by e-mail from someone who reads our forum faithfully but as far as I know never posts:
On the dart/paintball world:
You’ll need to think about how the system affects people who are neither police nor criminals. If criminals hold up a convenience store, do they paintball everyone or merely threaten to do so? I’m guessing that anyone shot must, by law, lie still or avoid using the painted limb until the police complete their investigation (meaning that if the police lose, they have to wait for more police). This would mean the cashiers might turn over the money to avoid losing business while playing dead, or they might fire back to force at least some of the robbers to surrender. (Could the other robbers legally drag their fellows away? Could they drag their victims away and demand ransom?)
Part of the incentive for the criminals to accept this is the possibility of defeating the police and getting away; this may set upper bounds on the technology level or lower bounds on legal privacy protection. (If there are cameras everywhere, getting one set of police to give up won’t help for long.)
If you do go with paintballs, color matters; wearing clothes which disguise the marks is a serious crime. (When I envision this, I imagine that only blood red counts as a hit, but people practice shooting with other colors so that stray shots won’t matter. You could have the police use a special color to mark criminals, though, or you could outlaw blood color entirely so real wounds are unmistakable.)
Is it a crime to paint someone except in law enforcement or self-defense? On one hand, citizens shouldn’t be punished too harshly when they stay within the rules; on the other, being shot is a serious inconvenience and may require a police investigation, so people shouldn’t be allowed to do it out of simple hatred unless wounds automatically stop counting after five minutes or something.
Does the honor system require that people pretend to fear guns or just that they acknowledge injuries? If someone tried to rob a bank with a paintball gun, would people act like the lives of hostages were at stake, or would they laugh because incapacitating everyone in the bank won’t open the vault and everything will be normal in twenty minutes?
I hope some of this helps.
Indeed it does. Just to touch on a few points:
I would say that civilians all respect the paintball system as well, and for similar reasons: they know that criminals could use lethal weapons and don't because they're willing to accept the honor system as long as everyone else does. I would also say that actually darting someone comes down as a criminal act, something on the order of assault with a deadly weapon, and not a mere inconvenience.
And yes, it would have to be a criminal offense to ignore a paintball marker if you were shot.
I would say that victims who had been darted could be moved by others legally. Obviously people would not take risks to drag injured persons out of the line of fire (in fact, an injured person makes a viable shield), but since darted criminals aren't dead there would be questions about whether they can be taken into custody and questioned--and the answer is probably yes, they can.
Probably the penalties for kidnapping someone who had been darted would have to be more severe than merely kidnapping someone, precisely because the victim is compromised: fleeing or resisting might be illegal.
The system disincentivizes shooting the witnesses, because that won't prevent them from testifying later and will be an additional crime.
I had been thinking about the color problem, and I'm actually inclined to go with something like hot pink or fluorescent lime green--something that would not be a usual color to wear, that would be distinct from real blood (for reasons already hinted in the thread), and would be visible to everyone.
I don't think it would be criminal to shoot each other with paint balls of other colors, provided everyone consents. There might be a problem, though, if criminals used wrong-color paint balls and shot victims in the back, hoping to escape criminal prosecution because they did not "shoot" anyone "legally" while still getting victims to believe they had been shot (feeling the impact but not being able to see the paint).
The honor system does not require that people pretend to fear guns, but I think that they would have some fear of them simply for the inconvenience factors raised. If I'm robbing the bank and you try to walk out the door, I can shoot you, and that means not only would it be a crime for you to leave the building now, you're going to be detained longer after the robbery is over, simply because you are a victim of the crime and no longer just a witness. But the problem of people not taking the threat seriously is a complicated one. I'm not sure how that would play out over time.
--M. J. Young