Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
See, I'm more likely to nerdgasm over that than an actual gun :P
I probably should have brought this up earlier.
Also, there is the Taser X3.
The bright colours give them a toy-like quality. They're also quite blocky, like sci-fi weapons. While it's certainly reasonable to expect they'd sometimes be mistaken for real guns, I don't think they stack up effectively against the real thing in intimidation value, nor in application.
I feel that violence for violence's sake should be avoided, but preventing violence to oneself with limited violence isn't something I'd feel guilty over, nor look down upon anyone else for. Being gentle and compassionate towards violent criminals is something I agree with when they pose no threat, as it can help rehabilitate them and they can get a step closer to establishing a stable life. But the blame for violence, I feel, generally lies with the instigator. If one begins a violent engagement, then they should be prepared for the consequences of that.
While people more experienced with real violence than myself might hold a different view, I consider it to be disturbing, and it's left me with a cooldown period that's lasted hours. Thoughts and considerations are extremely difficult to make when violence starts, especially when weapons are involved. No-one should be blamed, within reason, for what they do in self-defense. Being on the receiving end of violence is frightening and damages rational thought.
I agree that the ideal solution is one that prevents deaths and lasting injuries, but it also has to be effective on the part of the defender. A taser isn't a match for a gun, which can fire multiple times in quick succession and be smaller and more darkly coloured. If civilian issue guns were restricted to one round in the chamber and no magazine, then the story might be different. And I certainly believe that restricting guns is the first step towards removing them from non-military, non-police use.
I did pick those ones out so you could tell they were tasers without me explicitly pointing it out.
See the first Taser I posted, which actually does look like a gun.
As to the multi-shot issue, see above.
How safe is the most recent fancy taser you just posted?
A lot safer than a gun that shoots bullets :x
It's a lot safer than the X26, which was declared safe for use. Police use the X3, if I'm not mistaken, but I couldn't say where.
Is there a safety?
Three shots is a more reasonable amount, but there's still the issue of range. A gun's ability to fire multiple shots over a longer range is a stacking advantage.
What's telling about this kind of comparison is how the police work. Against criminals with guns, the police themselves use guns for practical reasons. Tasers are usually reserved for those who try to close and engage at close range, or for people exhibiting disturbingly aggressive behaviour without having hurt anyone yet.
-shrug-
Anyway, I would say that a Taser is preferable to a gun simply because a Taser is very unlikely to kill, whereas a gun can maim or kill very easily. With Tasers like the one in the video, they have fairly long ranges and can hit multiple people.
And a range of fifteen metres is all you should need. It's unlikely that you have an empty space in your house that is over fifteen metres, really, and such.
Try reading up on the police standards for taser use.
21 feet is too short a range, if you ask me. That's about the range where close combat becomes a consideration, so the maximum range of those things only cover an area where an aggressive person without a gun becomes a considerable threat. An effective weapon that aims to prevent closing should have a range of more than 21 feet. Tasers probably don't because the police use guns for longer ranges, but those without a gun are left without a longer range open.
Or, in short, a taser with a 21 foot maximum range opens you to aggressive action. That range only really makes sense when paired with a gun rather than when considered as a replacement.
It doesn't even mention how far the X3 fires.
The other one I linked has a 50 foot maximum range, though.
I think it's also good to note that the X3 can do warning shots.
The X26 and M26 only get 21 feet, though, which are the ones mostly used by police forces (according to your link). Not sure about self-defense, but I would recommend something more along the lines of 50 feet.
I believe the link is fairly old. The X3 is a fairly recent innovation.
And we don't need to stick to just the X3 when there are other Tasers available.
-shrug-
Whatever the best option is, honestly.
Something I found recently...here's a brief analysis of police misconduct in the US. About halfway down, they compare the FBI's per-capita violent crime rates between the police force and the surrounding general populace. One thing they mention (shortly after what appears to be an embarrassing misplaced decimal point -- that should probably be 10.6% instead of 1.06%) is that if excessive force cases involving fatalities were prosecuted more reliably, the police would be on average almost five times more likely to commit murder than civilians.
For that matter, all of those bars ignore the usual cases of carpet-sweeping that plagues law enforcement abuse.
So yeah, there's another dimension of why the U.S. might be paranoid about letting them be the only ones with decent weapons.
There are circumstances surrounding that. Police are a lot more likely to encounter violent situations than regular civilians.
To an extent. IIRC about 3/4 of police brutality cases leading to fatality are from firearms, and a good deal of them are against unarmed victims.
To an extent. IIRC about 3/4 of police brutality cases leading to fatality are from firearms, and a good deal of them are against unarmed victims.
That's far from unsurprising, considering that many police officers seem to be trigger-happy and a policeman's most-used weapon is a gun.
(Agreeing with Nova here, reusable taser guns are far better weapons than regular guns since you have a far lesser chance of causing death or debilitating injury with it.)
Not a non-zero chance, though. Tasers have killed plenty of people and caused permanent damage in more.
As a practical matter, the US has enough firearms among the general population to make banning firearms a non-starter; even if all law-abiding citizens gave them up, all the criminals would still have them, and be emboldened by that.
I'd rather support a car-like requirement for registration and licensing, but alas many will see that (not without cause) as step 1 towards attempts to ban -- catalog all the weapons and owners so the guns can be confiscated.
The early poster that said that the 2nd Amendment was not about individual possession of firearms is rather wrong, though it was generally an issue the courts tried very hard not to face; the Amendment has rarely been tested. The language is pretty clear, and it requires a lot of twisting of logic and grammar to have it say anything else.
I'd say the real problem with the US constitution was that it wasn't supposed to be the rules for all time, chiseled into stone tablets as the immutable word of God; the original drafters thought they were just doing the first round, and envisaged regular alterations to the constitution as the state evolved. Unfortunately, the thing ossified.
So have guns. In fact, I'd say that guns have killed plenty more people and caused permanent damage in more than tasers have.
For that matter, even mace has risks, if used on people with allergies/with asthma, etc.