Taser Safety Issues - Comparison To Alternatives

Comparison To Alternatives

Supporters claim that electroshock weapons such as Tasers are more effective than other means including pepper-spray (an eye/breathing inflammatory agent), batons or other conventional ways of inflicting pain, even handguns, at bringing a subject down to the ground with minimum physical exertion.

Supporters claim that electroshock guns are a safer alternative to devices such as firearms. Taser International uses the term "non-lethal" as defined by the United States Department of Defense - which does not mean the weapon cannot cause death, but that it is not intended to be fatal, and in most cases is not. Non-lethal weapons are defined as "weapons that are explicitly designed and primarily employed so as to incapacitate personnel or material, while minimizing fatalities, permanent injury to personnel, and undesired damage to property and the environment."

It has been proposed that the Taser should only be used in a situation in which the use of a firearm is an absolute must, to which a person would choose to act with a Taser instead of a firearm. This is contrary to common sense as a firearm is used only in deadly force scenarios in which the immediate incapacitation is usually achieved by interruption of the central nervous system by exsanguination or destruction of the nervous tissue of the brain and spinal cord. Taser deaths in the U.S. has been linked to less than 530 deaths from the 2001 to 2012.