9/28/2007

More People Turn to Stun Guns for Self-Defense

Stun Guns Rise in Popularity

A little warning here. The Taser shown in the video requires that you actually have to come into contact with the attacker (this is not the version apparently used by the police in Mississippi). For people who are weaker physically will take a great risk if they come into close contact. One must also realize that the version that the police are described as having does not work in a large percentage of cases because of the clothing warn by the criminal.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

After nearly two decades in law enforcement, I've found this sort of situation all too common. Too many people think that they can deter or stop violent criminals in lethal force situations with less than lethal means, and too many manufacturers are willing to market such products to those whose intentions are pure (they want to protect their lives, but don't want to really hurt the criminals who would gladly take their lives), but who don't know any better.

Devices like tasers are useful only for a very limited number of violent situations that come into being for two primary reasons: The police must deal with any and all circumstances that an average citizen would avoid or never encounter in the first place, and the police have substantial training, resources and superior numbers that make the use of a taser--often with fellow officers standing by covering the suspect at gunpoint should the taser fail--possible.

For civilians, tasers have almost no utility, and have the very dangerous potential of essentially encouraging them to bring a knife to a gunfight, as the saying goes.

9/28/2007 6:01 PM  
Blogger John Lott said...

Thanks, Mike. Your input is very valuable.

9/28/2007 7:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mike is exactly correct.

However, that news report is slightly disingenuous. Taser's and stun-guns are two very different devices. Although their principles are vaguely the same, they work differently.

Many, many LE agencies use Tasers but very few (if any) use stun-guns, because they aren't very effective in most cases. Tasers are effective in most cases (given optimal circumstances).

The use of a stun-gun by civilians should be discouraged (except for making "Jack-Ass" type videos) because they are more than likely to just piss a criminal off.

thebronze
(Kalifornia LE)

9/29/2007 12:56 AM  

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