I think everyone who is mentally capable of owning a gun should have one. Yes, that includes felons, because I also think that if you’re still a danger to society, you should still be locked up.
Anyway, while I think everyone should have one, that’s never going to happen. Not everyone feels capable of taking a human life, which I get. That’s never something anyone should consider lightly, though I personally argue that the moment someone comes after me or mine, they’ve forfeited their humanity.
But that’s just me.
For folks like that, though, they might still want to protect themselves, which means using some kind of less-lethal weapon might be an option. Yes, they can still kill someone, but that’s not the intention, and most people are fine with that. Kind of like Ivan Drago. “If he dies, he dies.”
A bill passed the House a couple of weeks ago that would increase access to these less-lethal weapons, but the usual suspects are still kvetching about it.
Supporters say the proposed law would help popularize the technologies and thereby reduce deaths from gun violence by law enforcement. The topic has dominated headlines after the killing of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration officers in Minnesota.
Critics counter that the bill would create a new market for people to buy powerful weapons without typical safeguards, such as a background check, or even to transform the devices into weapons that could kill.
“What it’s about is not law enforcement. It’s creating consumer markets for average, everyday people to go and buy these kinds of weapons,” said Kris Brown, president of the gun control group Brady.
Tasers are marketed as non-lethal, but can still be deadly. An Arizona Republic investigation in 2004 tied Taser stun guns to multiple deaths.
More recently, a 2019 investigation by Reuters found more than 1,000 people have died after being hit by a Taser since the weapon became popular in the early 2000s. The company attributed most of those deaths to other aggravating factors, such as police force or drug use by the person killed.
…
Addressing police violence or new ‘ghost guns?’
Right now, many kinds of Tasers are commercially available and sold to the general public. But others — like the newer, explosive-based Taser 10 — are subject to the nation’s gun laws and sold primarily to law enforcement.
Supporters of the bill say it would prevent police violence by making it easier for state and local law enforcement to get Tasers and other “less-than-lethal” technology, rather than guns.
Axon promotes its weapons as an opportunity to “stop a threat without taking a life” and has a public campaign to lower gun deaths between police and the public by 50% within a decade.
The bill also includes a provision that would exempt those weapons from gun taxes.
Overall, the reforms reflect supporters’ argument that Tasers and similar technologies aren’t guns and shouldn’t be taxed and regulated as such.
The truth is, they’re not guns. They’re weapons, sure, but they’re not firearms. Not in the traditional sense, anyway, and because they’re less-lethal, they should be in the same category as things like pepper spray.
The fact that people are salty about this may be heartfelt concern for criminals moving to less-lethal firearms for many violent crimes, but it may also be a bit more…pragmatic.
After all, if people who can’t or don’t want to carry guns are carrying tasers instead, and then protect themselves from violent criminals, the number of violent crimes goes down without any kind of gun control taking hold. That looks bad for gun grabbers, and they’d much rather have dead victims than live champions of self-defense.
Now, I tend to take the view that a taser is, at best, what you use when you can’t pull the trigger on a gun. I’ve seen too many cases where the taser fails to drop a suspect the police are trying to apprehend. Usually, it’s because the probes don’t hit right or something. Either way, it’s not something I’d personally trust my life to if I had any other option.
But the police use it as a first line of force, and that’s a solid use for it.
Private citizens using it because they simply can’t bring themselves to take a life is fine, too. After all, I’d rather someone have some means of protecting themselves than nothing, just so long as the company selling the product doesn’t overstate what their product does.
Why is this so controversial? Considering I’ve already pointed out why Kris Brown objects to it, that’s rhetorical.
Then again, Brown celebrated a Star Wars show because it didn’t feature blaster. Lightsabers were everywhere in the trailer, which was what Anakin Skywalker used to slaughter all the younglings in Episode 3, but sure, at least there wasn’t a gun.
To call her a mental midget is an insult to mental midgets the world over.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.
Read the full article here
