More Tasers Sucking

The other day I wrote about an emotionally disturbed man being killed by a taser. Today, I find this article:

(CBS/AP) MERRICK, N.Y. Two men used stun guns on a couple in their 80s and a home health care worker during a failed attempt to rob a dwelling on Friday, police said.

The three victims were treated for minor injuries.

The home invasion and assaults occurred just before 2 p.m. at a home on Leonard Lane in Merrick, said Officer Michael Toich, a Nassau County police spokesman.

After shocking the three people in the house with Taser guns, the men demanded jewelry and money but ended up fleeing empty-handed, he said.

Coincidentally, a site I love had a discussion on Tasers the other day. Some of the commenters rushed to the defense of tasers, even though the effectiveness of tasers is questionable (police are trained to use multiple taser hits and application often needs to be longer than 5 seconds). It was creepy to read self-identified progressives foaming at their keyboards like gun nuts: losing all willingness to consider anything but the bumper-sticker wisdom they typed and resorting to name calling.

I put out the idea that if tasers are really, really great, then assailants now have an easily accessible assailing option. The article I posted above lends credence to that, except that tasers aren't really, really great. Tasers aren't phasers set to stun. Frighteningly, they are a deadly force now routinely used in law enforcement (even on children having tantrums in the library or shouting for Jesus on the street).