Do I want to be tasered? No, although I will be as part of my training.

Would I prefer to tase someone over shooting him in the chest with a 9mm? Absolutely.

Police in other countries don't seem to need tasers to subdue people (I don't often hear of suspects getting beaten so police can bring them in*), and the small minority of people who would, basically, need to be beaten to be subdued are almost certainly the group you don't want to taser. For starters, because they're quite possibly full of drugs, and secondly, because it's not likely to help much. Someone who is resisting that much is not going to go down easily, even if they get tasered.

Tasers cause extreme pain, but don't do much actual damage (unless you're unlucky). That sounds like an instrument of torture to me. The lack of damage is actually an advantage. It means that you can keep tazing someone without worrying about killing them (Once again, unless they're unlucky).

Jtgibson wrote:

Would I prefer to tase someone over shooting him in the chest with a 9mm? Absolutely.

Problem is that too many officers don't think of the taser as replacement for a gun, or even a nightstick. It's too easy to use it inappropriately since it's "non-lethal", and it doesn't even break bones. For example, "after one officer handcuffed her and pinned her with a knee, another zapped her with a 50,000-volt charge from his X26 Taser."

I wouldn't say it's that painful, though. I've been shocked to the point that I could no longer stand as I had no muscle control. It it wasn't really painful. Not pleasant by any means, but pain is not how I'd explain it.

Yes, using a taser to extract information would be torture. Funny thing about tasers, for the most part, size and mental condition don't matter to how they drop. It's not something you can just will over. It directly affects your nervous system, causing your muscles to spaz out, and basically end up hardly moving, and you fall to the ground.

I know it sounds rough, but it's rather harmless, and if used correctly (this is a mater of training) it can defuse tough situations leaving nobody hurt. But you must teach cops how to use them correctly, that simple. You don't hand them a gun and say "Go get'em tiger".

Well, tasers do hurt, according to what I've looked into. Most of the officers I've read about or talked to directly who went through taser training (and thus who were shocked by a taser) have said that it is rather painful, like sticking your finger into an electrical socket that's 100 times more intense and then having the pain suddenly stop when the application ends, where your nerves begin tingling as they wonder what the hell happened. Based on that I do find it amazing that a lot of officers who are taser-trained don't actually think twice about inflicting that pain on others -- it makes me wonder how they managed to go through the process if they have such a small amount of empathy.

The big problem, I figure, is that officers are resorting to them out of turn. You should only use a Taser in a situation where you would ordinarily use physical injury or hard open-hand techniques to force compliance against a suspect who is actively resisting arrest (as opposed to not cooperating with arrest). Taser Intl's idea that you can use a Taser for any situation is obviously biased for their own profit.

Amnesty Intl. and the U.N. should be saying that Tasers are instruments of peace that are presently being abused, instead of blanketing them all as worthless devices. I'd rather not have to smash someone across the face with a baton or a closed fist when a Taser can bring them down by hurting a lot but not actually causing them lasting injury. The instances where people die from Tasers are probably more rare than the instances where people die from being smashed across the face with a baton or closed fist...