@Pil
Okay, but if you shoot someone at certain point in the leg, you may kill off their ability to use that leg for the rest of their life.
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Yes, you managed to survive from getting tased, but you went down - correct? That's the point. Tasers are only meant to stun or disable the opponent to give the police enough time to go in and detain them, or atleast get close enough to use melee tactics such as electric batons and those two martial arts I mentioned - and by using those, they can detain them.
Police are meant to detain, not kill. That's the issue here.
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I understand that tasers most likely won't be used by everyone instantaneously. I understand and favor the concept of
gradual change. However, the point is that no one's even thinking of using tasers as the main weapon of police. Because of this, they aren't focusing on training with tasers and, as such, there isn't enough funding going into taser development - which would decrease the weight of the barbs, etc.
Which is why I get to...
@Slayr
Jack Cover, the creator of Tasers, based the design off of one of his (fictional) childhood hero's adventures:
Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. This is why it was called
Tom A. Swift's Electric Rifle - aka TASER.
The original rifle could do the following:
"Of foremost notice is Swift's invention of the
electric rifle, a gun which fires bolts of electricity. The electric rifle can be calibrated to different levels of range, intensity and lethality; it can shoot through solid walls without leaving a hole, and is powerful enough to kill a rampaging whale, as in their steamer trek to Africa. With the electric rifle, Tom and friends bring down elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffalo, and save their lives several times in pitched battle with the red pygmies. It also can discharge a globe of light that was described as being able to maintain itself, like
ball lightning, making hunting at night much safer in the dark of Africa. In appearance, the rifle looked very much like contemporary conventional rifles." - Wikipedia
Jack Cover, having studied Tom Swift extensively during his youth, understood that "range of lethality" included non-lethal, and so he based his Taser development on the idea of non-lethality. Now, Tasers CAN be adjusted in terms of lethality - from non-lethal degrees to lethal degrees. In other words, everything that Swift's rifle could do can eventually be done by tasers, ideally. That was the point.
Absurd range included.
If you want to see the difference between how Tasers are now and how they're meant to be, watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crzYlQUKkEY (0:50-1:20) < It just shows different abilities of the electric rifle, and then starts repeating them >.> It's from the game
Pirate 101 which took the electric rifle concept and applied it to the game.
In other words, electric rifles should be able to do this: Fire balls of electricity, of which the intensity, range, and lethality can be adjusted. It can be used on multiple targets at once, either going sideways or even in a straight line. Electric Rifles should also be able to glow, which isn't a hard thing to add now, and may even be able to use electromagnetism to "burst fire" the electricity. As development progresses, the accuracy and size of the electric balls would be more controlled, even by the user. And plus: Instead of it having to reel in, it just has auto-fire. Seeing as it uses electricity, it can just self-recharge, when means auto-reload.
And rather than being as instantaneously lethal as a gun, it can be put on a non-lethal setting which can be raised if the opponent can resist.
But the above WON'T be done in taser development if no one takes tasers seriously. They could very well usher in a new age of non-lethal law enforcement, but only if police stop using guns at literally every turn.
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Police, for now, use guns because they are trained to do so in the majority of situations. In the situation listed in the OP, they were only doing what they were taught to do.
In the U.S., police changing to taser use must be orchestrated by the government. Police themselves have no say, unless their policies allow them to use tasers in the majority of situations - and those policies don't.
Normal people should have access to guns if they are not trained in other ways of defending themselves, to the extent of police, soldiers, martial artists, etc.
Taser use should be the norm for police from now on, though for a time - as Pil said, perhaps a decade - having a gun just in case WOULD be justified.
The tragic incident we had in the OP could (COULD) have been avoided if the police were told to use tasers in such incidents, instead of guns. Instead, they were told to use guns.
^ Those are my points.
