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UN Says Tasers Are a Form of Torture
The use of Tasers "causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture," the UN's Committee Against Torture said. "In certain cases, they can even cause death, as has been shown by reliable studies and recent real-life events." Three men — all in their early 20s — died from after tasering in the United States this week, days after a Polish man died at Vancouver airport after being tasered by Canadian police. There have been 17 deaths in Canada following the use of Tasers since they were approved for use, and 275 deaths in the US. "According to Amnesty International, coroners have listed the Taser jolt as a contributing factor in more than 30 of those deaths."
Bullshit. Because tasers are supposed to be nonlethal they are often abused and used on people who have broken no laws at all. See the recent case of the man who went into a diabetic coma and was subsequently tasered while lying helpless. See the case of the 87 year old woman who was tasered at her rest home for yelling at a police officer from her wheelchair. Neither broke the law, but both were put in danger.
I fail to see how something that is painful and has a non-zero chance of death is automatically torture and should be outlawed. By that measure we should outlaw the average daily commute.Have you ever been tasered? I volunteered to try it. It really hurts, a lot more than a punch to the face even. Have you ever seen the TV show Cops, where they'll hit a guy multiple times while they're laying on the floor. Tasers make muscles contract, and you fall down. That's great, since then they can subdue and cuff a violent offender. Hitting someone more than once, however, is simply torturing someone into compliance. That is torture, unlike a daily commute. Don't believe me, go to a store that sells them and ask for a test shot, a regular 500K stun gun is pretty similar, if tasers are not available to civilians in your state.
For a start, don't call me kid. If you did a tiny (itsy bitsy) bit of research you would see how old I am.
I've actually been beaten by police in a "peaceful protest". Our sit down was broken up by police and someone I didn't know hit one of them. That was all they needed to beat down all of us. I tell you, the only thing I was thinking was that if I could get one of the batons off them I could have an even shot at taking a few of them out.
They don't call it "fight or flight" for nothing. Some people run, some people fight.
In retrospect the whole thing (included the reasons why we were protesting) seems kind of stupid.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Cops get tased in very controlled circumstances (spotters, padded floor with ems on hand) and only for extremely short durations and only once. They then feel like they can tase people who are standing on concrete, in poor health, for as long as they want, and as many times as they want. Just once I'd like to do some real world testing on cops like they do on citizens routinely. If they got pissed at how much I was enjoying it, well I'd just give em another jolt to calm them down. This would continue until they saw my the logic of my superior reasoning.