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Interesting Taser development
Taser has brought out a version as a 12 gauge projectile. Range is about a hundred feet. The prospect of having a Taser, with four rounds of buck behind it in case the Taser fails, is interesting.
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Don't taze me, bro!
For PD use, officers would doubtless be required to use a dedicated less-lethal shotgun, and would not be able to back it up with buckshot. PD protocols are designed around the LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) and must consider how to arm the stupidest member of the department. Based upon the horror stories I have heard about tazing gone awry, I think that such a limitation would actually be a good thing. No one should ever "forget" or be "confused" about whether they are pointing a firearm at another human being.
I tend to agree with Jeff. What's more, I think the "lowest common denominator" is usually "whoever is facing down the bad guy". I don't think many folks can be trusted to keep track of what kind of rounds are in their gun in a firefight.
I took a tactical shooting course from a battle-scarred street cop who said that the bean-bag gun in his trunk had its barrel wrapped in blue tape and that it was a serious violation of department protocol to ever, ever, put anything other than bean-bag rounds in the magazine. Not even for practice.
Bad idea. Tasers are abused by some police already. Seen as being "less deadly" than a bullet
or the danger of a fight; tasers are often used as a punishment in situations where they should not be used at all. Of course being"disorderly"
should not be a death sentence as tasers have frequently been. I will never forget seeing a video of a cop using his foot to push a woman even though she was already groveling on the ground in pain---her crime---a non-violent mis-
deamenor. Police state stuff in my opinion.
"tasers are often used as a punishment in situations where they should not be used at all." GP, I agree. There is something about the Taser that I find viscerally insulting.
It's a tool for livestock handlers and prison guards, not peace officers dealing with free men.
At what point do we start to realize that we're giving police the ability to immediately dispense punishment without a trial?
Tasers are not implemented as a defensive weapon. They are part of the pain compliance continuum. Officers are trained in pressure point and other techniques to cause pain in the resisting person and achieve compliance with the officer's direction. Tasers are part of that continuum and have actually become a first choice since their use is at a a distance and doesn't require the officer to endanger himself in a physical engagement. A shotgun taser would be of use in taking down a fleeing suspect but mixing lethal and non-lethal rounds would lead to tragedy and excessive risk either by not protecting the officer when he thought he was using a lethal round for defense or by a reflex second shot killing a suspect incapacitated by a taser shot. Research shows that in extremis situations several rounds are fired before the impact of the first shot registers in the shooter's awareness.
Just like pepper spray. After all, what could be more fun than handcuffing a perp to a cuff rail down at the station, where you are safely out of sight of pesky civilian video cameras, and pepper spraying the hell out of him because he made you grumpy?
Why tazing him too, of course.
The shotgun tazer is interesting, it most likely be used for good and for bad depending on who holds it.
The Tazer-Claymore though, that's completely useless. No military or homeland security function (those purposes involving shooting to kill), and no legitimate police function. Scary as all hell.
Wasn't the whole point of making the Taser blocky, and with yellow stripes and such to make sure it couldn't be mistaken for a firearm?
I wouldn't trust this unless a barrel was developed that could only fire the Taser rounds, and not standard 12 gauge cartridges. Maybe make the Taser rounds with a slight 'neck' near the base, and a barrel with a corresponding profile, that would prevent a standard 12 gauge round from loading.
Most shotguns produced today have easily changed barrels, so this should be reasonably cheap to implement.
Wrapping the barrel in blue tape and making it a serious rule that only non-lethal rounds can be used in it is going to fail at some point. We are talking about human endeavor, and humans make mistakes.
Besides which, I can't tell if you have a non-lethal projectile loaded in that shotgun or not. How am *I* supposed to know what the blue tape on the barrel means? Even if I know, what guarantee do I have that the rules have been followed?
Think about the implications of that in an armed society.
On the other hand, a barrel with big yellow stripes and the Taser logo on it would be pretty obvious, and again if the barrel/round combo is designed to prevent a standard shotgun round from being chambered it would go a long way to preventing both accidental tragedies and intentional ones.
Yeah, just wait till some one "forgets" which type shell is up the spout!