Handgun Lite or the lazy man's handcuffs -- it's difficult to characterize the product of Scottsdale-based Taser International. According to police, it is to the would-be perpetrator's advantage to have police officers equipped with the Taser.
Police and spokespeople for the company claim that the 50,000-volt shock a Taser discharges is an alternative only to using a firearm. Meaning that you get zapped, in theory, instead of getting shot.
When the issue is presented this way, I think most people would take their chances with the shock over a bullet.
But a few incidents have tainted the "magic wand's" short, sordid history.
In January, 41-year-old Jeffrey Turner died after police and guards in an Ohio jail shocked him nine times. In mid-February a 14-year-old Chicago boy was rendered unconscious for two days after he fell into cardiac arrest from a Taser shock.
In Minnesota earlier this month, a 15-year-old girl was put down with a Taser. She was suspended from school on Monday but returned on Tuesday and, according to school district spokeswoman Sally Latimer, "refused to leave and became unruly."
Perhaps police are too quick to use force, resulting in unwarranted injury and death. Or maybe 14- and 15-years-olds these days have gained such supernatural strength that it now takes 50,000 volts to accomplish what a good backhand could not so many years ago.
No, the real tragedy is obvious to anyone who reads The Wall Street Journal. The image that tugs at the heartstrings is Taser stock plummeting -- losing more than half of its value since the beginning of 2005, as a chorus of whining has raised doubts about its "less-than-lethal" nature.
How many more mortgages must be lost, how many Bentleys seized? How many more yachts will be foreclosed upon before they come to their senses?
Tasers are being yanked out of police officers' hands because it is only the officers who realized the tremendous convenience that a Taser offers in this barbaric age.
Taser International has a division that markets the device to civilians, but the company has been negligent and acted in bad faith with its shortsightedness and lack of innovation.
To date, their best attempt at pushing the envelope of technology has been to combine a Taser with a flashlight. What staggering genius.
For the company's own good, I plan to break into the research and development department at the Scottsdale headquarters, open the cage marked "top secret" and free the chimps that have been passing for engineers.
I find it hard to believe that some Taser executive hasn't been talking on his cell phone and seen the obvious connection. I was standing in line at Blockbuster the other night, when a blustery beast of a woman cut to the front of the line. I reached for my phone to rectify the situation, but all I could do was snap her picture when she deserved a 50,000-volt reminder of common courtesy via the Taser cell phone.
You are lucky I don't have a greater sense of intellectual property.
How many of us have been contently flipping through channels when our stinky roommate plops down on the couch and begins belching, farting or making lewd remarks about our girlfriends? I won't believe that the eggheads at Taser could find a way to mate a Taser and a flashlight, but not a Taser and a remote control.
Something is very wrong here.
The critical flaw in the Taser business plan was to prioritize the wrong market. Doubtless, if only we had a taste of the sweet, sweet convenience that our police are allowed to enjoy, we would consider the people who have been unnecessarily brutalized acceptable losses.
Arthur Martori is a journalism junior. Direct shocking remarks to arthur.martori@asu.edu.
