Tupperware and Tasers

This is an interesting article on the increasing popularity of tasers among women, looking for a way to protect themselves. Now, those of you reading may be thinking, "oh, that liberal Jeff is going to rail on against tasers and how they should be banned, and how we shouldn't have the right to protect ourselves." Which is only half-right. I think having a taser to protect yourself is pretty cool, I totally support that. It sounds much more effective than old stand-bys like mace.

But the 2nd half of the article shows a very interesting societal flaw in the use of tasers. There weren't any tasering incidents described that involved its use by a private citizen. So that tells me the people buying them for personal use are being very reasonable and showing reasonable discretion before using them. But there is a large group who aren't using them reasonably. They are using tasers as a purely abusive and humiliating measure, and in the worst cases, it's ended in death. These are the people who the Taser was originally invented for, law enforcement. You just see example after example of police officers totally abusing their discretionary powers in using these tasers. Every situation described in the article wasn't a life-and-death emergency situation. All that was required in order to defuse the situation was a little calm and reason by the officers. But I guess that's too difficult and time-consuming for them. Better to just tase the person.

The police officer is typically one of the pillars of the average community, a person we can trust to do his job in a fair manner. So when you can trust a housewife with a potentially deadly weapon before you can trust the police officer, something smells rotten in Denmark.