NationStates Jolt Archive

I will soon be proposing a ban on guns to be replaced with Tasers. These Tasers will shoot darts that charge electricity into the the enemy or "perp".

This Act will stop killings dramatically and stop alot of violence. I did not want to propose anyting until I knew that some people would go for it. Is anyone interested in such a thing?

The nation of Rehochipe, where private firearm ownership is illegal, police carry soft yet whacky truncheons and infantry must train for five years before being allowed to touch a gun, is nonetheless inclined to poke a hole or two in this suggestion.

Let's break out them Good Ol' Time Pro-Gun arguments, shall we?

1. National Defence. A big argument in favour of private gun ownership is defence of the nation. While this is a really, really stupid argument in the case of nations with a strong, established military, many younger nations can't afford this and have to rely more extensively on armed militia. Tasers, though relatively effective in law-enforcement or self-defence situations, are really useless as a military weapon.

2. Fightin' Off Critters. You know, not all NS states are urbanised. For some of our diverse and fun-loving peoples, it's not unheard of to bump into a bear on the way to the garden shed. Being able to carry a shotgun around is kind of essential. A taser that can take down an adult grizzly is going to require a battery pack the size of a small fridge.

3. Personal Protection. The big thing here: fear. The usefulness of actually killing a guy is not much compared to the threat of death. A criminal's more likely to attack anyway and take his chances of getting stunned than he is to charge down a bullet. That said, we consider the whole argument of personal protection to be false, but we're pointing out that this won't appease the gun lobby.

4. Guns Are Really Cool. Hey, man, check out my new taser. No, it hasn't featured in any slick Hollywood action movies. This is because it looks kind of lame and isn't very dramatic and is kind of limp-wristed generally. (Summary: people want guns because they're a prestige possession. Tasers are more rape-alarm than penis-extension. Nobody brags about how rockin' their rape-alarm is.).

Elsepeth R. Nibbling
Ministry of Being Nice

The shockingly zippy yet mostly nonlethal nation of Berkylvania thinks this is a great idea...in theory. In theory, it would be a great idea ot replace guns with, oh, I don't know, great big bunches of daffodils. However, we see no way to enforce it in any meaningful way in reality. While the idea of international wars being fought with tazers streaking across the battlefield to only stun opponents fills us with as much humanitarian well being as pure sci-fi, "Star Wars"-esque thrills and chills, we feel almost certain that someone would be uncooperative and bring a real gun to the party. The same holds true for police forces. How, exactly, are you going to take the real guns out of the hands of criminals? Do you have any figures to offer that show the police are going out and willy-nilly shooting people or is it the criminals themselves who are doing the killing? In other words, you claim to stop a lot of killings, but how much is "a lot"? It sounds like this might be an internal police problem within your own country and, therefore, not applicable to the UN.

However, it might make a great Issue for individual nations to decide for themselves.

Guns, like it or not, are here to stay. Instead of trying to get rid of them, we should concentrate our efforts on making sure they're properly understood and, hopefully, never used.

OOC: If your interested, the next generation of 'less-than-lethal' weapons is likelt to be done using sound.

An accurate beam of sound at the right frequency is capable of completely disabling a person. And it is a lot safer then attacking them with electricity.

How about banning all offensive weapons to the public, that's how most civilised countries drastically reduce their murder rates

What is the effective range of a tazer ? Long enough to knockout a hostage taking lunatic from an adjacent rooftop through a window?

I think not.

It would embolden the criminals if they knew police were carrying only tazers. We would support the idea of carrying both, and using tazer 99% of the time. But there is no way the most Holy Church of Psychotropics will disarm it's SWAT teams of their "widow-maker" sniper rifles.

Bishop Heston, Minister of Firearms for all Psychotropics