Rick Perry sez: ‘Come on down to Texass, Bizness iz booming! Yeeehaw!’
Hopefully never?
You can’t get a can of mace in Boston without jumping through a dozen hoops. Who in the hell does that help? Big men get to walk around with big arms that are great for holding down people and beating them. People wanting to do harm who are not so equipped can easily grab a kitchen knife or a club. Why on earth would you want to prevent someone from having an effective (relatively) non-lethal weapon? I can understand why you don’t want everyone and their dog armed to the teeth with lethal weapons, but if a woman is afraid her former abusive partner is going to break into her house and beat/rape/kill her, shouldn’t she have SOME freaking defense?
Ok, fine, but this tasering goes on for almost a year and the guy only files suit 2 weeks after he is let go? WTF?
Do you think refusing to classify a taser as a weapon will help this situation? If they can be bought at Walgreens with no show of ID does that make your hypothetical woman safer? Or is there a pretty good chance an abuser would go right out and stock up on batteries?
The problem with “stand your ground” fantasies is that we all think we’re the good guy, and we all keep on shooting each other. Bullets, tasers, mace or whatever. What if arming everybody who wants arms makes us less safe?
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Does it make her safer? Uh, yes? The abuser doesn’t need batteries. They need a common kitchen knife, a beer bottle, or more often than not, simply their fist. What the fuck does an abuser need a $400+ taser for? If an abuser is going to select a taser for some insane reason instead of a knife or a club, um, good?
You are missing the asymmetry. An abuser doesn’t need anything. If they decide to do more harm than what a fist can bring, which is a lot of fucking harm to begin with if you are beating on someone smaller than you, they only need to grab a random blunt object or common kitchen knife. They don’t need to drop a few hundred dollars on a fancy taser. If a 110 lb woman on the other hand is afraid of a 250lb abuser, fists, a knife, or a random blunt object is utterly useless. A taser on the other hand is not useless. A taser at your bedside really could fend off an intruder seeking to do harm.
This is not the gun debate. There is a pretty solid downside to having the streets awash with guns. Guns make killing vastly easier. There is no downside to people being armed with tasers. A criminal with a taser is vastly preferable to one with a knife or a gun. A taser probably isn’t going to kill you, and it isn’t going to go off accidentally and kill anyone. Further, if a person is afraid for their life and wants at least a chance, it lets a small person incapacitate a large person long enough to escape.
There isn’t a reason in the world to limit the dispensing of tasers, other than maybe to not let stupid kids getting them and start shocking each other, and reflexive and unthinking nanny statism. I’ll take a criminal with a taser over one with a knife or club any day of the week. Hell, I would hand the damn things out to criminals if they promised not to use knives and clubs anymore.
Everyone is already armed. You have arms, right? You can beat a person with fists attached to the end of your arms or you can grab a household object and beat or stab with it. A large person has plenty of options when it comes to making themselves stronger. A smaller and weaker person has very few. They can get a gun, get non-lethal weapon, or accept that if someone larger than them comes after them, they are going to be beaten/raped/killed. Personally, I think that if a person thinks they need a taser, there is a solid chance they probably do. The worst case scenario is that you hand it to a criminal instead of a victim and the criminal uses that instead of a common kitchen knife or gun. Uh, good. Sounds like a win win for everyone.
So, you’re saying “To clarify, I’m not blaming the victim. I’m just saying it wouldn’t have happened to me, because I have the self-respect to not be a victim. If he had this superior level of self-respect, it wouldn’t have kept going on.”
Isn’t that still kind of blaming the victim?
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Mister44 has been here a long time; I’ve noticed that he has often had to put up with people sneering at his attitude - which favors old-school American values like self-help and self-sufficiency, rather than demanding that others (such as cops or lawyers) solve one’s problems.
I guess all the people killed by tasers can’t exactly speak up to disagree with you.
Hypocrisy of the complainant does not invalidate the complaint.
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I’m fine with people having defenses. My motivation for wanting tasers regulated is so that when they’re abused, the penalties are stiffer.
There seems to be a lot of “if it says nonlethal on the label, I get to use it whenever I want!” going around.
There are some types of people who swallow a lot of shit as long as they get a paycheck. Did you miss the point where his boss was filming and laughing at it?
You do what you have to get a paycheck. And if they paycheck dries up, maybe then you look into taking care of all the shit you swallowed.
Are you seriously this surprised? The tasee does not have the option of assembling a crew to build the raddest new website and offering it for free.
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