Just as a point of interest, all of the above weapons would be prohibited in Victoria, Australia. Either illegal to possess, or illegal to have for the purpose of self defence. Including body armour.
If I were a teacher caught in a school shooting rampage, what would I want to have with me… Mace? Taser? Nope, until someone invents a device that works as well as a firearm but leaves the person alive, the only thing I know of is a gun. There aren’t any good candidates to replace firearms because firearms are the threat, and they’re more effective at stopping people than anything else. It sucks, but it’s true.
High pressure water hoses. From another thread - it’s the first line of defense on a Navy ship to repel borders. You might not have one in your house hallway.
Big CO2 fire extinguisher? It covers a wide but manageable area. You can block the intruders punches with it. And go on the offensive is absolutely necessary.
Over in the non-lethal section of army research - there is a super slippery spray. You can’t get up. Just have hardwood floors - probably is less effective on shag carpet.
I, damaged good’s, have the only true answer. A condom.
Must not be too familier w/Il… You gotta use a shotgun,no rifle’s allowed.Which would bring up the debate "Why should rifle’s be sold in a state you can’t use them for what they’re for,supposedly hunting? But let’s not go there cuz this aint ‘The Mundane something something’ board. Beside’s,everyone should own a 2ple.Rifle & shotgun.
A random thought I had a few days ago:
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If any of the parents and schoolteachers in Newtown have purchased or plan now to purchase a firearm since the assault;
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If the answer to that question were yes, and that became known, how the overheated gun-control “debate” would make use of the information
This is obviously not GQ.
I am familiar with shotgun-only hunting regulations. If memory serves, +/-10 states are shotgun-only for deer hunting and several other states have shotgun-only counties, mostly near densely populated areas. My point remains: mammal hunting is generally done with a rifle in the majority of the US and a great many deer hunters who do make use of a shotgun use slugs of one type or another. Does anyone have national numbers for deer taken with shotgun vs. rifle?
Moderating
If you are aware that these comments are not appropriate for General Questions, then why even make them? Let’s try to stick closer to the question asked in the OP without getting into debates about gun control.
This goes for everyone, not just those I quoted.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Exactly. And most killings are isolated events, not sprees.
Perhaps a true defensive weapon would incapacitate both the target and the user to some degree. I’m thinking of something like a nausea-inducing stink bomb. Not something a rapist or serial killer would want to use.
I agree. Such a weapon, like tear gas without the mask, would swiftly separate victim and attacker, or two fighting parties (think gang wars). That would end the conflict immediately and give both the time to rethink if there actually was a conflict, and if so, if it was worth it. It would also lower the threshold of starting a fight.
Less than lethal weapons are resonably effective against violent unarmed opponents. They are designed so that if you are going up against an unarmed person it is a way to attempt to incapacitate someone before you have to put hands on someone. A situation which often leads to injury.
As a police officer I am given several less than lethal options. If I am against an opponent with a weapon, any weapon, I am shooting. There is currently nothing less than lethal that is effective against someone with a weapon.
Thanks for offering a professional opinion, Loach. It’s nice to hear someone with experience and who actually has used non-lethal weapons discuss when/where they are appropriate.
Appropriate and “effective” are only that in the world that is already rife with weapons. The whole idea is that there could be a parallel USA where no-one but the police has guns, and the rest has either non-lethal weapons or none.
In short, the situation that exists in most countries outside the US.
Pee is a good self defense weapon for women. No joke. My wife attended a womens course on preventing rape. They covered things like being more self aware in parking lots, keys in the hand (makes a good weapon). If grabbed, pee your pants. Wet cloth is disgusting enough to deter some would be rapists. Hey, it costs nothing and is worth a try.
You live in a world without knives, tire irons, hammers, bats, meat cleavers, etc.?
“Weapon” emphatically DOES NOT jut mean “firearm” - didn’t you read what Loach wrote?
If you ever find yourself facing a determined aggressor who’s armed with a knife or a club, have fun with your pepper spray. There’s an excellent chance you’re going to get badly hurt (or even killed). If your country is safer than the US, it’s because you have fewer citizens there who are willing to attack outher people; it’s not because they lack for weapons.
That is exactly what I meant. If someone has any kind of weapon and is a threat to me I am shooting him. Less than lethal is for unarmed combative suspects. You have a knife or a club you better drop it quick.
We use less than lethal (yes I am using that term for a specific reason) in order to* temporarily * incapacitate someone long enough to detain them. So if you use pepper spray or a taser on someone I hope you have hand cuffs and a couple of friends to help you. Because in a short time you are going to get your ass kicked or worse.
The idea, for those of us who aren’t police, is to run away in the meantime. And call the police. Defensive arms are to buy get-away time or get-help time.
Running away is often not an option. And those less than lethal methods often don’t work. They are used by law enforcement but we always have more lethal methods available if need be.
I understand that the internet believes these things, but the internet rarely provides citations. What do you mean that “Tasers are lethal weapons fairly regularly”? Lethal weapons are weapons that are designed to cause death. Tasers are not designed to cause death - they are classified as less-than-lethal weapons. If you mean that Tasers regularly cause death, could you provide a citation? I think the best anyone has done is Dr. Douglas Zipes, and he found about 6 cases where he blames a Taser as a cause of death.
Could you provide a credible citation that Taser invented excited delirium? My understanding is that it is a syndrome that was first identified in the 1800’s. The phrase gained popularity in the 1980’s when people started dying from cocaine use. Taser didn’t start selling its modern product until 1999, so it seems unlikely that Taser invented the syndrome.
You say that “Taser sues any medical examiners who assert in an autopsy that Taser was the cause of death.” How many of those cases can you list? I know there was one case in Ohio. The medical examiner couldn’t convince a judge that the cause of death was correct and then lost again at the appellate court level. That was years ago. What other medical examiners have been sued? How did they fare in their cases?
If I Google dziekanski, won’t I learn that the original coroner did not blame the taser as a cause of death?
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You later assert, " It’s crazy guys high on PCP or other aggressive irrational types- and often the taser does not work, even after multiple shocks, not until they’ve been hit enough times to go into cardiac arrest. " Do you have a citation for this? A Taser is likely to incapacitate a PCP user more than 90% of the time, do you have a credible citation to the contrary?
Taser sued the inquiry into the Vancouver death to prevent the weapon from being listed as the cause of death. CBC at the time ran a program about how many other coroners had been sued, and often Taser won, to remove the finding that the Taser caused death. IIRC the program, at least half a dozen cases were mentioned, plus the point that Taser made a campaign of suing any coroner who blamed their weapons.
To explain Taser deaths, the Taser maker uses the term “excited delerium” and apparently has its own stable of paid “experts” to back up that finding.
Of course, up to and during the Robert Dziekanski Inquiry, every Taser death was news in Canada. There were several.
the taser is not designed to be lethal. It just can be. It’s like a nightstick over the head; odds ar it’s not dangerous, but the results can be fatal. Another flaw is that it is sold as harmless except for stopping people. (How many news shows have you seen where some volunteer is tasered?) Instead, it’s a form of Russian roulette and also, because some people think it’s harmless, they will apply it over and over again, or apply it in inappropriate situations.
Robert Dzeikanski, for example, was tasered repeatedly (5 times) because he wouldn’t lie still while being tasered, that is while being shocked with 50,000 volts. Then they stood around and pretended he didn’t need rsuscitation as he turned blue, and waited for an ambulance team from town… then blatantly lied to the inquiry. All this would have been swept under the rug if some guy hadn’t recorded it on a cell from from the other side of the glass wall.
In another case, an unruly teenager was tasered in a jail cell because she wouldn’t stop peeling the paint off the wall. She was subdued by two large men - was it necessary to taser her too? No. They did that for the pain and punishhment value to teach her a lesson. “Don’t taze me bro” is calssic. A security guard tazed someone who wouldn’t give back the microphone at a John Kerry event - despite the fact they ahd already pinned him on the floor. In those circumstances it’s not a control weapon, it’s a sadistic punishment. (Don’t think these guys don’t know that they have a free license with this thing to inflict excruciating pain…)
From Wikipedia:
same article: