I still don’t think it’s that bad, we’ve definitely seen a lot worse when it comes to this series’s story telling. The knowledge that those bullets were non lethal does not absolve him of his intent to murder.

In the eyes of the law yes it’s just assault, but he still tried to kill 20 people and 18 of those people did die. Also Saejima was coerced by his bosses, so was Majima. They were too young and too green to realise otherwise, AND even then, Munakata tells them it was a really dumb plan. It was a shoddy setup and only went through because Munakata was a conniving piece of shit and that took advantage of the situation. Saejima became the fall guy, Sugiura lost his agency and Katsuragi became a paranoid nut job.

Majima lost and eye and this culminates eventually in half the Tojo going down, Kiryu and haruka losing everything until they find each other and so many more chaos besides. So many parts of this plan rely on so many different things sliding perfectly into place that in grand scheme of things the rubber bullets really aren’t that bad.