Journalist Test Drives The Pain Ray Gun

Fantastic Lad writes to tell us that journalist Michael Hanlon recently got the opportunity to experience the Army's new not-so-secret weapon, dubbed "Silent Guardian". The Silent Guardian is essentially (even though the creators prefer you not refer to it as such) a ray gun, emitting a focused beam of radiation similar to your microwave tuned to a specific frequency to stimulate human nerve endings. "It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile. Because the beam penetrates skin only to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury. But anyone in the beam's path will feel, over their entire body, the agonizing sensation I've just felt on my fingertip. The prospect doesn't bear thinking about. "

Comments

Re:Bullshit

[Brandybuck]

Part of this recent spate of tasering (and lethal raids on wrong addresses) can be attributed to the Iraq war. Iraq soldiers are trained to behave this way to Iraqi civilians, and they carry their training with them when they muster out and join a police force.

Re:Bullshit

[The Living Fractal]

All you had to do was a LITTLE BIT of research into the NKVD to see how fucking completely wrong you are about that.

From the Wikipedia article:

[NKVD] was the leading secret police organization of the Soviet Union that was responsible for political repressions during Stalinism. It ran the Gulag system of forced labor, deported nations and peasants labeled as "Kulaks" to unpopulated regions of the country, guarded state borders, conducted espionage, and political assassinations abroad and was responsible for subversion of foreign governments, and enforcing Stalinist policy within Communist movements in other countries.

But we taser people too often, so we're worse. Seriously, fuck you.