!!TASERS ARE NOT TORTURE DEVICES!!

TASERS-ANOTHER NAME FOR TORTURE...REALLY?

Four days after a United Nations committee declared that the use of Taser's X26 stun gun by police amounted to torture, Taser has issued a strong response. In a release posted on its Web site today, the Arizona-based company claimed that the U.N. Committee Against Torture is "out of touch with the reality that confronts law enforcement officers every day worldwide." 

Taser's statement criticizes the committee's reference to "several reliable studies and certain cases," none of which are specifically cited. And in a moment of brutal honesty, the company points out that every tool used by police officers, such as pepper spray and batons, would fit the U.N.'s criteria for torture--they cause "extreme pain." 

Although the U.N. was presumably making recommendations to Portugal, which has purchased X26 stun guns for its police force, the anti-torture committee's statements followed a number of widely publicized deaths related to Taser products. Taser has fired back by posting the results of a study conducted by the U.K. Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, which appear to show that the jolt of electricity from an X26 is unlikely to stop or disrupt the heart. 

That's because Taser's devices aren't really electrocuting their targets. The company refused to discuss the U.N. report with me, but as a company representative explained to me earlier this year--shortly before hitting me with the civilian-marketed C2--the raw voltage isn't what incapacitates the target. After all, the battery on an X26 or C2 isn't much bigger than what's found in a standard digital camera. It's the current-generated pulse that locks up your muscles, causing them to contract and release hundreds of times per second--the rapid-fire equivalent of one of those questionable muscle-stimulating, ab-zapping belts. 

Unlike the effects of being electrocuted, the effects of the Taser wear off almost instantly once the device is turned off. I felt winded when the voltage was cut, but there was no lingering pain, no obvious residual contractions or convulsions. The only proof that I'd been hit, aside from the embarrassing video, were two tiny holes in my back, where the thumbtack-like barbs had penetrated. Perhaps the biggest threat that a stun gun poses is the possibility of an unassisted fall. That's why the Taser representatives made sure I was being held upright during the shot. But if the alternative is being brained with a nightstick, or even shot, simply hitting the ground might not be such a bad outcome.