Comment by GravitasFailure | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GravitasFailure | Hacker News Reader

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GravitasFailure

This is definitely an interesting line of thought worth exploring, but I do take issue your central point: There is no such thing as a non-lethal weapon, and even good less lethal weapons struggle to effectively stop determined assailants.

A human truly determined to inflict harm on someone is astoundingly difficult to stop. The starkest examples I've come across are two officer-involved shootings: First was in Oregon, where a soldier going through a nasty divorce kidnapped his kids, got pulled over for speeding, got into a gunfight with the officer, injured the officer who proceeded to land a shot through his heart, then he continued shooting back, got back into the car, drove half a mile, pulled over, said goodbye to his kids, and died. The second was a man that got into a gunfight with multiple officers and didn't stop until he had about thirty bullets in him, so of course everyone assumed he was hopped up on PCP until the coroner report came back with negative results on the drug panel.

Tasers are about as good as it gets right now if you want something that can decisively stop a person, but even then they're badly hampered by any kind of heavy clothing and rain. Their direct lethality is heavily debated, but people getting head injuries when getting zapped is pretty common, not to mention deaths tied to heart conditions and being under the influence of stimulants. Their ability to stop an assailant behind any kind of barrier is completely nonexistent as well, and if you do find a technology that can decisively stop someone through a sheet of plywood it will definitely be able to kill.

Even trying to physically restain someone has a lot of room for injury and death, regardless of training and manpower, so I'm not confident that a weapon that can both compete with a gun in its ability to stop a threat and is guaranteed to not kill will happen before Tesla full self driving exits beta.

> people getting head injuries when getting zapped is pretty common

This scares the shit out of me, more than getting shot by a cop. Cops use tasers a lot more freely than guns, very frequently using them when there is no plausible threat to themselves or anybody else. They're allowed to get away with it because tasers are "less lethal." All it takes is one bad fall to turn you into a brain scrambled imbecile who can't tie your own shoelaces anymore but much of the public doesn't seem to understand this and are unsympathetic to these sort of concerns. At least with guns, people understand the gravity of the matter.

This is why I’m kind of surprised to see the use of stunners (taser with out the gun part, and usually with longer, usually spring loaded for safety, electrical contacts, yea you have to be closer. But you also are now in range to ensure the delivery of the electric shock and to grab them in order to ensure they don’t hurt themselves when they collapse. Walk in arms up doing the de-escalation stuff and then if shit hits the fan try and quick draw the stunner and jab them in the chest like it’s a knife. Just as non-leather as a taser but with much less risk of injuries to the person being shocked and also much less risk of failing to work since up close making physical contact is something you can train someone to do well, no inherent inaccuracies involved.

Stun guns are pain compliance weapons and won't incapacitate like a Taser will. They do have their place, and like you said give you more control over placement, but can be completely useless against people that don't care about pain because of adrenaline or drugs.

Oh your right about adrenaline and drugs changing the effectiveness, but I could have sworn they made stun guns that were designed to function as takedown devices exactly how tasers are.

They will disrupt muscles the same, but the contacts are only a few cm apart and apply voltage for a second or two while a proper Taser will send the current through several hundred cm for 5 to 30 seconds. They're in completely different leagues.

> no such thing as a non-lethal weapon

The jargon du jour is "less lethal" for this reason.

And since every weapon from a stick to a stun gun is possibly lethal, your adversary can claim "self defense" when he shoots you dead with an actual firearm.

I would be afraid to carry only "less lethal" weapons because they can get you killed faster than being completely unarmed.

Fair point, though after working with the full range of options, there are situations where carrying pepper spray is perfectly adequate. It depends on what threats you need to deal with.

>The jargon du jour is "less lethal" for this reason.

Exactly. The point is that a really motivated person with an automatic rifle and that same person with a butterknife represent completely different levels of danger.

I think the "anyone motivated to kill will kill" narrative collapses instantly for this reason.

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