With all the talk about mass shootings and police brutality, I can't help but think that every problem could be solved if people shot to disable and not to kill. Police brutality cases are always the same. A suspect reaches into his belongings for something that could possibly be a gun, and the cop shoots him dead preemptively. A lot of the time it's not a gun, so they kill an innocent simply for making a mistake. Of course the cop can't just do nothing and risk getting shot. So shooting the guy with a non-lethal weapon is IMO the best solution here. And for self-defense, it's also the same thing. People deserve the right to self-defense, especially since there are groups of people who are explicitly out to kill us (think ISIS). But what's the argument for needing lethal weapons for self-defense? In my mind only bad guys want to kill. Good guys want to disable criminals and bring them to justice. European cops have guns but hardly ever use them, they prefer riot guns that shoot rubber bullets. French or German cops kill about 2 people per year, compared to 1000 per year in the US. European cops also die significantly less on the job per capita than US cops. What's the reason for not using non-lethal weapons as your basic means of defense? Because they're not good enough? I'm pretty sure you can find long range, multi-shot taser guns on the market for less money than your average firearm. And as technology advances it will only get better. Once we develop a perfect non-lethal weapon, what's the argument for not getting rid of guns as a relic of a past barbaric age?
You need to get out of your americano-centric worldview my friend. Here across the Atlantic literally everybody is anti-gun regardless of their political leanings. In all the whitest countries in the world all the white people got together and decided to ban guns, no Jews involved. It's the shock of cultures I guess. Also I'm pretty sure even the non-progressive classical liberals hate my guts because I think gays shouldn't be raising children.
You don't get to tell me what worldview I need to have or not have. You're not an American but you're concerned about an American issue and have proposed a solution which is to disarm the American public. Get the **** out of here
Europeans cops - which is a big category - don't go to work every day in a nation filled with privately owned firearms.
So how do you plan to guarantee criminals only employ non-lethal tools in they're nefarious activities? Should I not have access to the same tools to defend myself, family, property and way of life?
I simply corrected you because what you said made no sense. You called me a liberal because I'm anti-gun but that's complete BS. Here in Europe *everybody* is anti-gun. Not just liberals. There is a world outside America. Guns are an American bubble, just like Christian Zionism. Foreigners tend to be pretty critical of these things and for good reason. So now Americans are the new group of people that can't be criticized, just like blacks, Muslims and Jews? Maybe we need hate speech rules on that.
Sadly, I don't think it's a legitimate answer to the thread. I'm pretty sure I asked what was the need for lethal weapons over non-lethal weapons and I don't think saying "boo I don't like foreigners who criticize America" answers my question.
My Second Amendment right is not up for debate. Me and millions of other Americans will die in possession of our firearms.
German cops don't kill many people because they are dealing with Germans who are rule following people (I say this as someone with a German mother). Non-lethals aren't nearly at the point of replacing guns with police officers, which means they aren't nearly at the point that I will even think about it. When any weapons technology replaces firearms with all federal police (including the Secret Service), the U.S. military (including all special forces, and all weapons), I will contemplate it. And, no, there are no multi-shot tasers available to civilians. There is a two shot taser available to police. A three shot taser was on the police market for a short time (about ten years ago), but it was too bulky, and wasn't selling well. Also, policemen don't use tasers on suspects without a backup with a firearm. It's not reliable enough technology to stake their lives on (hence, not reliable enough for me, without backup, to stake my life on. Rubber balls don't stop one on one attacks. They are mainly used to disperse riots. If we could develop a perfect non-lethal weapon available to civilians you would have a point. We are nowhere close to that at this time.
It' s true that crime rates are significantly lower in Europe compared to America but that's only by a factor 3 or 4. Meanwhile police killing rates per capita differ by more than a factor 100. Besides it's not just Germany but literally every EU country that has a ridiculously low police killing rate. So the difference is mostly due to vastly different police attitudes. They have zero representation in politics that I know of, even in the fringe parties. All gun owners I've ever seen in Europe do it as a sport and I have no problem with that. I completely agree that there's a technology issue since tasers are far from perfect. Also there are several type of rubber bullets, the riot gun types that fire tennis balls are indeed not a threatening weapon but there are guns that fire smaller rubber bullets that pack quite a punch and are classified as "less lethal" that would fit the self-defense bill pretty well. We can talk about technology, it's an interesting discussion, but for me that's a side issue since it will be solved eventually. The main issue is that once we invent a perfect non-lethal weapon the 2nd Amendment will be obsolete.
Once we have a perfect non-lethal weapon, lethal weapons will only be interesting to bad guys so you can safely ban them. And I'm pretty sure banning lethal weapons would be "infringing" the right to bear arms.
Do you know what they call a policeman in a gunfight who tries to only wound? Dead That's a no-brainer: it is our constitutional right to carry firearms
Are non-lethal weapons the solution? No, the bad guys won't use them and so it would be like bringing a stick to a gun fight.
To the OP, because the margin between "render someone harmless" and "kill them" is very, very thin. You mentioned TASARs. You know how frequently TASARs accidentally kill people or fail to work effectively at all? Many times. Remember Rodney King of the famous LA Riots? During his infamous arrest that involved his beating he was hit twice by a TASAR that didn't even slow him down which is one reason the three officers who beat him used lots of baton action against him.
Words like "always", "never", "only" are impossibilities when prediction human behavior infringing on the right to bear an arm, is an infringement on the right to bear an arm.
I'm a retired police officer. Before I retired I carried OC spray, a Taser, a baton, and I had a shotgun available to me loaded with bean bag projectiles. One time in training I took a shot of OC spray right in the face and eyes. It's painful to the eyes and makes you close them. Except you can still will yourself to crack them open a little. After taking the spray in the face, I ran about 100 yards through a parking lot and then loaded and unloaded my pistol using dummy rounds. I've seen people take a full dose in the face with no effect and fight like hell. A baton is the same way. It works on the pain principle. It your pain response is deadened by drugs or alcohol or sheer pain tolerance, it doesn't work. Tasers work great when they work. When fired, it shoots out two little barbs connected by wires to the taser. For it to work, both barbs must connect to the suspect, creating a completed circuit. If only one barb connects, it doesn't work. The barbs do not shoot out in a straight line like a bullet. They spread away from each other the further they go. It will only reliably connect to the subject inside of 10 feet. Bean bags also work on a pain principle. If you can take pain, or not feel it, they won't stop a person. So the bottom line is that if an officer is being attacked with a gun or a knife, and he relies on one of these non-lethal tools, most likely, that officer is dead. The reason police carry a lethal weapon is not to kill. It is to stop a lethal threat effectively and quickly. If the suspect lives or dies is not the point. Police don't shoot to wound, nor do they shoot to kill. They shoot to stop the person. European police did not use a riot gun with rubber bullets against the terrorists in France. The threat they were faced with was lethal, and they used lethal force to counter it. The most perfect non-lethal weapon that fits the bill that you want, ... was Captain Kirk's phaser set on "stun". But for now, there is no such thing.
