Comments on: How do Tasers work?

By: Joel B1

Joel B1 — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:35:18 +0000

@Evamary,

I agree with you. Frankly the sight of a 20yo Police Officer armed with a deadly weapon scares me.

However, there’s no need to get a taser if you’re a criminal, most competent electronic people (that’s me) can whip one up for about $30. And if you don’t know a electronics person you can go to a local agricultural show and get a hand-held cattle prod (same shape and size as a taser) for about $150. Admittedly, they don’t fire darts but I considered getting my wife and teenage daughters one each. They’ll shock through clothing.

(As an aside, last year a police officer was chasing an “offender” outside my wife’s work-place with a drawn semi-automatic pistol and tripped and dropped the weapon. This was in a car-park in one of the busiest districts in Hobart)

By: Altakoi

Altakoi — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:53:57 +0000

The usual rationale for Tasers is that they are a non-lethal alternative to the use of a firearm. I think this is valid, but it means that each use of a taser should be justified as a situation in which the use of a firearm would have been appropriate if the taser was unavailable. Since the criteria for shooting someone are fairly tight, the ones for tasering shoud be also. Otherwise it moves more into the territory of being like a baton or capsicum spray and it is clearly more dangerous and a more serious infringement of civil liberties that either of those weapons.

By: evamary

evamary — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:29:04 +0000

Tasers are instruments of torture and should be outlawed. I cannot believe that Australia has normalised the use of these lethal weapons - or that Australian citizens are not horrified at this kind of treatment of their compatriots. Where is the debate on this? Where is the outrage? The use of Tasers obviates the need for working with a disturbed person to gain his/her cooperation. It is also a knee jerk response to a police officer when someone gets stroppy. Yes, police have a hard time and have a dangerous job - but train them better and pay them more, don;t resort to modern methods of extreme punishment. My other objections to Tasars are 1) they make the arms manufacturers very rich 2) they fall into the hands of criminals where they are used for more than torture and 3) like the electric chair and the noose, they are modern equivalents of the Inquisition and pollute the culture of any democracy. Evamary

By: stephen martin

stephen martin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:11:23 +0000

Tasers should be a weapon used only as a penultimate response to a threatening situation,( not as in the case in Texas recently of a 72 year old grandmother who refused an officer’s instructions after a traffic violation) and if it is used an inquiry into it’s use should be conducted by senior officers in the same way as an officer discharging his firearm during an arrest.