Tasers are supposed to disable people without causing long-term harm. In the US during the last 12 months there have been 260 deaths apparently attributed to Tasers.
The attitude of some is, “You shouldn’t be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tough.” Alternatively, others seem to think, “You must have done something wrong if you have one of those things pointed at you.” (This is the line Germans took when the Nazis carted off their neighbors to rot in concentration camps, but perhaps I am being a bit emotional about it?). Yet another point of view is that if Tasers did not exist many more people would have died in shoot-outs, and these gadgets are a relatively humane improvement over traditional policing methods.
What would Epicurus have made of Tasers, and what do you think?
They seem to be a bit indiscriminate and crude. It appears that if you have a weak heart Tasers can kill you, and a weak heart is not evident to police officers in the heat of the moment. The problem seems to me not the technical aspects of this innovation but that the public don’t seem to care overmuch if innocent people are accidentally killed. A coarsening of sentiment?