High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The vortex ring gun is an experimental non-lethal weapon in which a blank cartridge is fired into a gun barrel that has a diverging nozzle screwed onto the muzzle. In the nozzle, the short pulse of high pressure gas briefly accelerates to a supersonic exit velocity, whereupon a portion of the exhaust transforms from axial flow into a subsonic, high spin vortex ring (Figure 1) with the potential energy to fly hundreds of feet. Click here for an introductory video to the gun operation and click here to listen to a chest high vortex ring approaching a target.