TASER X3 triple-shot stunner arrives, subdues population
By Nilay Patel 
posted July 27th 2009 6:26PM
posted July 27th 2009 6:26PM
posted July 27th 2009 6:26PM
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...Though the firing of this shit is probably mechanical, so maybe just setting off a nuke would be more appropriate.
From firehoses to tazurz... Such a beautiful history of law enforcement.
I'm sorry my skin's not the right color to drink your fine water. Please kill me for being thirsty.
Will do.
Get right on it.
Wouldn't mind having one of these at home instead of a gun as this gives much more latitude in case of accidental fire (i.e. all of those kids accidently shooting themselves or others with dad's handgun). But would rather have pepperballs for my marker.
Why aren't one of these in one of those engadget giveaways?
Oh that made me actually laugh out loud!
I am very anti-taser. Not because of civil liberties, not because of safety, and not because it's cruel. I hate tasers because it gives bad people a second chance. Chances are, if a cop feels the need to pull out a taser, the person about to be tased is probably not a model citizen. And I don't want these pricks around. A regular gun ensures that the perp is no longer a problem to society ever again. Don't want to get tased/shot? Cooperate with law enforcement. It's easy! Just do what they say, and explain your side of the story when everyone has calmed down and they aren't pointing a weapon at you.
Trouble with that theory is, most taser uses are in situations where eliminating the undesirable person isn't an option, so the taser's not giving them a second chance. It's used more as a baton alternative than a gun alternative.
And if you do want guns to be used for all those situations, because you feel that any level of belligerent non-compliance with a cop should actually be a capital offense, you should be pushing for a law to that effect instead; the cops can taser them, take them to jail, and they can get the chair _after_ a fair trial. That's a much better solution than the application of unnecessary lethal force by cops, who have to make decisions under high pressure and with limited information, and are thus _guaranteed_ to make more bad calls than a jury.
You're taking the piss, right? Because it almost sounds like you have no ability to make a sound judgement call based on the context of a risk situation. It almost sounds like you believe that whatever law enforcement do, they're always right...because as we all know, they're not like regular people who are fallible and who might not always make the best decision because they're under pressure or because that particular cop is just a dickhead with a bad attitude.
just in time. summer really brings out the crackheads in my neighborhood.
wow, what a bunch of libs
No. Not Liberal. Not Conservative. Human...which is what I'm guessing you aren't.
I'm sure you are very forgiving of Islamic terrorists, and extremely tolerant of all the Muslims in the US who would kill you without even thinking about it. I'm not human, but those people are right? You have been conditioned by the US media to think the way you do, and because of your overwhelming nature to want to "fit in" you are willing to believe whatever Al Gore or Sean Penn tells you to believe. You're a drone, you don' think for yourself, seriously why is a tazer so bad? Why are guns so bad? because they kill people? I will agree if you could get rid of all the guns in the world it would be a better place, but you can't and as long as there are guns, bad people will get them and use them. Any argument you present against weapons available to upstanding citizens is completely illogical, you know it, just just can't get rid of that liberal conditioning you've been exposed to your entire life, read a book and start thinking for yourself.
He eleich, god spoke to me, he told me you have to go drown yourself, no really.
Wwhat: Awesome comeback man, I guess when you have no arguments you have to resort to incompetent and violent comments (weird, I thought I was the violent non-human)
I think that dude gets off shooting girls. :(
This whole discussion made me curious as to how lethal these things really have been. A quick google turned up this article, describing a study done by Amnesty International:
http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/files/amnesty_international_156_deaths_in_u.S.%20after%20Taser%20use%20by%20police.pdf
The gist of it is this: They ran the numbers from (if I get the years right) 2001 - 2006. There were 156 deaths linked to tasers in the United States. Note that many of those are not directly ascribed to the taser, but are still linked to it. That number has risen from 3 in 2001, to 61 during the final year of the study.
In the year that 61 people died, Tasers were discharged by LEOs over 70,000 times. Running the math, that means the lethality rate of a Taser is slightly less than .0871%. So...eight hundredths of one percent of people die from getting Tasered by the police. And most of those (according to the report) are heavily intoxicated.
I'll agree, it's not a perfectly non-lethal weapon...but with those odds, it does seem reasonable to use them on a fairly regular basis.
The percentage sounds great. Until your friend dies. It's like winning a lottery!
If police know that most deaths have occurred while a subject was intoxicated why do they still use a taser on them? They should be doing everything possible to mitigate the risks of death to the subject instead of 'playing with their new toy' and 'accidentally' (is it really accidental if you're aware of the dangers?) killing good, innocent people who had a mishap at the local bar.
The correct term is: less-lethal
I did my dissertation on evaluating the cardiac safety of the taser. I looked at all of the research to date (2008) and presented my findings. Got my paper, so it was well received.
The sum up: The research establishing the safety of the taser is crappy. There is a chance that it causes injury. That chance appears to be incredibly low, but high enough that we shouldn't call the weapon a "non-lethal alternative".
With any weapon system in the hands of people, training is a critical component. Taser International advocates one to two 5-second discharges to subdue a subject. That is enough time to close with the subject and get them in cuffs. There are AMPLE examples of officers over-shocking their suspects, or incorrectly applying the taser. The big issue is the training.
The whole system needs to be examined. However, as an option WITH other tools (firearms, pepperspray, defensive tactics, etc) it really provides good solutions to problems that cops (guys with barely any college education) need.
See Kyelek's post. Right on. And using AI's figures, it's an overstated case (if anything). These are good tools to have.
Former fed, been tasered over a dozen times, still a big advocate.
@Static,
It's good to hear that studies have been done showing the ill effects of poor training and I'm glad that you brought it up to your superiors about how important it is. I agree that training is part of the problem. What about the 'bad cops' who use this 'tool' as a weapon to hurt people? The department still stands by these bad cops and that's why there is a real debate about the use of these devices. They're killing people when they're already in good hands; can you imagine what happens when the wrong officer abuses it (Officers in Moines ID tased a man's bare ass holding taser near rectum). There is almost no discipline involved when an office violates the law themselves and when someone you care about dies as a result of their homicidal tendencies/inadequate training it is small comfort and ultimately makes your job much, much harder.
Btw, I think it's great you were tased to experience what it feels like...but did you have a medical problem...heart murmer..?
3 lab rats down!
These things look like something from out of reboot...
@nrb
This right here is the problem:
"If the taser were to go away, serious injury or death would actually increase. But then you don't give a shit about that."
We fundamentally disagree on whether removing the Taser would result in more serious injury or death. For centuries (imagine!) police have used regular force (hands and feet!) to disarm their suspects with a gun being used in serious situations. Because the Taser is more lethal than the use of regular force, it should only be used sparingly and appropriately. When the odds are that an innocent man will die because the use of a non-lethal device is mis-used; you're right I don't give a shit about those odds when their shouldn't be any in the first place by using regular force. Civilian casualties continue to climb and, yes, that worries me.
Hey, I got an idea. How about at the age of 18 everybody gets a handgun. Within a couple years two things will happen.
1. The gene pool will be a lot cleaner.
2. Wanna be criminals will think twice about breaking into grannie's house.
An armed society is a polite society.
Make that
1. the gene pool will be all ignorant morons
2. all people are on sedatives, all decent people will flee or be dead, all kids don't play on the street no longer.
I can prove my predictions by field tests done.
Try tazing 3 300 pound guys instead of 3 girls.
This is a really great idea, until that 4th guy unmercifully mauls your ass for tazing his 3 bros.
We can only hope.
um... is it just me or are the guys holding the girls meant to be electrocuted as well?
I mean i know for a fact if you grab someone holding an electric fence you get electrocuted as well.... what's the deal with the guys being able to stand?
Great, another stun gun for police to put up people's anus'.
It is a citizen's duty to restrict the power of authority to within reasonable limits. One never knows when authority will turn against the innocent. Or decide that one is guilty for being: Black/ Jewish / Gay / anything against the moral majority.
In the meantime:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqRUSgSvxLE
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3l5p3_utah-police-taser-driver-who-wont-s_news
Am I the only one wondering why their demonstration involved 6 guys holding 3 girls - Freudian much?
You see all the employee's wearing eye protection.
I wonder how many people have lost their vision due to the probes being shot in their eyes.
No guns or "non-lethal" weapons are going to solve a society's issues. They are designed for increasing Taser's profit, which seems to work fine. Still, both before and after taser: the US have more people dying from violence than any other civilised nation. Only a handful of 3rd world countries top them - I find that more than questionable
murmermer
There is nothing you can do that forfiets your fundamental human rights, even convicted criminals and prisoners of war maintain basic human rights. Police are required to use a proportional response to a threat, so physical force can only be used to subdue a physically violent person. A taser is supposed to be an alternative to a gun, a last option before lethal force to subdue a violent person, sadly what the police are actually doing is using it as an obeidience tool to beat people into line when they don't jump fast enough at a command.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmByfTKKUV4
Here's a guy who is fully compliant at all times and never threatening actually being told to lie down so he can be tasered
He even does so, displaying absolute compliance and is still tasered!. That's not a professional police officer, that's just a vindictive idiot who can't wait to use his new "toy"
I'd rather carry one of these... if it's possible to conceal it. Infinitely lower chance of killing the perp and / or losing everything I own in the lawsuit.
On a completely different note, who doesn't love watching people running from the cops getting tazed? It's one thing when the stupid cops taze protesters and bullshit like that, but if someone raises a fist or tries to get in their car to run (ie that bitchy old lady) then light 'em up! As long as they weren't already knocking on heaven's door, the damage / torture is significantly less than mace.
"Don't taze me, bro! Don't taze me!"
THIS needs to be on the Recession Relief give-a-way.
I'll take two, BTW. Akimbo, baby!
arm everyone with bubble guns......the world will be a better place!
Taser tag anyone?
@crrp6501
Thanks. Yeah I'll give you that. I decided I'd get a professional opinion on the whole taser thing and I e-mailed a buddy of mine from the Corps who went into LE in Orlando. Here is what I got from him.
"...simply put tazers are for pussies. Yeah I know they have their uses but if half of these jackasses were in any kind of shape, detaining some of these people is not a real problem. You would be real suprised how many of the men and women I work with who don;t do any kind of real PT. I actually had to go pull one of my guys out of a ditch that was maybe 2 meters deep at the most that he could not climb out of...
... THe real issue here is that they just apply the damn things all wrong. If I run into a guy twice my size flying high on some real serious shit then yeah I'd zap him, but if your rolling 3-4 guys deep on some skinny college student just slap his ass around some and restrain him. There is no reason to taze kids, drunks, old people and pregnant women. A lot of these clowns just can't do there jobs. Wrestling a guy to the ground will net you about the same amount of scrapes as mcmap sparring dude."
Now I'd take this with a grain of salt. He only does street patrol because they are short like everyone else. He is actually on their SWAT team. Even so it looks like among the LE community they have differing opinions on the matter.
am I the only one who is slightly turned off by the testing of this weapon on 3 women? Who are being supported by men?
or you can just play the iphone game tase-a-hippie http://bit.ly/11mW65