:: to the teeth ::    thoughts on social justice, medicine, race, hope and beats

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." :: Arundhati Roy ::

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." :: Alice Walker ::
Friday, July 02, 2004  

Mommy, can I have a Taser for my birthday?

Justin Podur's The Killing Train and Zeynep Toufe's Under the Same Sun discuss the horrifying news of taser guns.

"Coming to an electronics store near you: high-voltage stun guns. I couldn't make this up if I tried. Wall Street-darling Taser International, maker of "nonlethal weapons" (that have been shown on at least 40 occasions to contribute to death), said recently it is in talks with electronics chain Sharper Image, among other retailers, to sell "consumer-friendly" stun guns in the U.S. and Canada. For those of us not near a Sharper Image, Taser also plans to sell a "consumer-friendly" version of its 50,000-volt weapon on its Web site -- just a shock and click away."

I just saw the movie Minority Report last night for the first time (yup, i'm catching up with some must-see movies). Boy, that was a great movie. Anyway, I was thankful that it wasn't the year 2050, and we didn't have a department of PreCrime. Oh, but we have a department of pre-emptive strikes, that's for sure.

Reading the posts about the taser guns really hit me hard -- we're already in the business of precrime. And the tasers are doing exactly what they're meant not to do -- actually increasing the amount of violence (because officials who are using it believe that they can punish with it without killing, even though it's caused a whopping number of deaths). I read something a year or two ago about what these tasers do, physically, to inmates in prisons where they're used. Awful.

posted by Unknown | 7/02/2004 11:29:00 AM | |


Comments:

Post a Comment
cure this!
what's "to the teeth"?
hot links
dope orgs/sites
to the teeth archives
poem: history
Willing to Fight
subcity
the revolution will not be televised