Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe.
At present, commercial stun guns target one person at a time, and work only at close quarters. The new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances.
Sounds good, right? Better than a machine gun. Of course, not everyone agrees:
But human rights groups are appalled by the fact that no independent safety tests have been carried out, and by their potential for indiscriminate use.
The article goes on to describe some of the new developments in this area. Then it revisits the subject of the previous excerpt:
But the advent of wireless stun weapons has horrified human rights groups. Robin Coupland of the Red Cross says they risk becoming a new instrument of torture. And Brian Wood of Amnesty International says the long-range stun guns could "inflict pain and other suffering on innocent bystanders".
And there are safety concerns. Of the 30,000 times US police officers have fired Tasers, in 40 instances people stunned by them later died. The deaths have been attributed to factors such as overdoses of drugs and alcohol, or fighting with officers, rather than the electric shock.
Once again it's Happy Fun Math Time, boys and girls! Lessee, 40 out of 30,000 is 0.13 percent. Yes, that's thirteen hundredths of a percent, or thirteen ten-thousandths of the total. What are the other ways that the police can disable someone who is violently resisting arrest? They can club him with their nightsticks, they can dogpile on top of him, they can shoot him, etc. Pretty much any way they do it is going to involve some sort of physical restraint and probably violent physical contact. How many arrestees involved in such incidents later die for some reason? I'm willing to bet it's more than 0.13 percent.
In a statement, Taser International chief Rick Smith said: "In every single case the medical examiner has attributed the direct cause of death to causes other than the Taser." Amnesty is not convinced, however, and wants an independent study of the effects of all existing and emerging electric-shock weapons.
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to learn about the possible effects of such weapons, but let's not go overboard either. If it can be shown easily that they're safer for the police and for the target than other existing methods, we should put them into use.
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