Posted: 3/5/2008 11:38:16 PM EDT
| I think this would be a good commercial for Taser splodetv.com/video/taser-vs.-bull |
That bull is PISSED OFF!!!
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I had one of my local cops tell me the other day that the latest thing to hit the rich areas of KC is "taser parties" where a dealer will have a party and invite a bunch of women who are afraid of guns to come see the latest offerings from taser. They'll do it at one of the women's homes and have food and cocktails, put a scary movie on the TV like "Halloween" and then watch an instructional DVD from Taser Corp. and start making the sales. Its like a tupperware party, but the tupperware also shocks people. He was talking it up to me about how much extra money I could make apart from selling guns if I wanted to diversify into civilian tasers. My problem with them is, I see use of the civilian taser as leading to a very high risk of being sued sucessfully in tort. Even trained police officers who have progressive force doctrines shoved in their faces constantly are having problems with deploying the taser at appropriate times, in appropriate situations. They have a certain amount of immunity from civil suits that comes with their job description, which is not to say that many departments aren't sucessfully sued for improper taser use every year even with the laws the way they are. As a civilian, considering the possible scenarios a civilian is likely to encounter, I'm having a hard time imagining a situation where my life is threatened enough to justify use of a taser but not enough to justify use of a firearm. If I buy one of these things and carry it instead of a firearm, I'm severely limiting the amount of force available to me and placing my life in the hands of an electronic device with a fairly high failure rate. If my life is geniunely in danger a pistol is a much better tool to keep me alive, there is no question about it. If I buy one of these things and carry it as well as a firearm (who carrys that much crap around with them, but lets just say), then when I get sued over the debilitating back and neck injury sustained by the guy I tased, from when he hit the curb hard with all his muscles spasming, I'm going to have to explain to a civil jury that whatever he did justified me putting thousands of volts through him and injuring him, but that my life really wasn't in real danger and the situation really wasn't that serious, because I had the firearm but chose to use the taser instead of just shooting the sonofabitch where he stood. If you're in the jury, are you believing that? I think that would be a very fine line for a civilian to toe. Frankly its a fine line for cops to toe and tasering incidents frequently make the news and cost departments thousands of dollars in legal fees and judgments each year as it stands right now. Do you guys see what I'm saying? Its hard for me to explain without writing a damn book about it, I'm so wordy. 
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There was a recent article in one of my gun rags about just this topic. Let me dig it out over the weekend and relay the wisdom contained therein to y'all.  Basically, the author (I think he is a civvy) was in favor of the practice. Go figure. |
The authors of gun rags are always in favor of whatever product they are reviewing. If I carried everything they told me I just had to go out and buy over the years, I'd look like a mix between Neo in the Matrix and Billy Connelly from the Boondock Saints. If you're a civilian with a taser, you can't use it to coerce people, you can't use it to get them to comply with you, you can't use it to gain control over someone so you can take them into custody--all the stuff that cops actually use tasers for. If a cop is being attacked he doesn't go for his taser or his OC spray, he goes for his firearm or his asp baton, depending on range and severity of the attack. Why should civilians carry the taser intending to use it solely for a role that cops almost never use it for? Because the things that the police DO use tasers for are not really applicable to civilians. |
