Long-range Taser raises fears of shock and injury

[Soylent Brice]

INCREASING the distance between yourself and a potentially dangerous assailant is always a good idea - even if your ultimate aim is to render them insensible. That appears to be the thinking behind a Pentagon project, now in its final stages, to perfect a projectile capable of delivering an electric shock to incapacitate a person tens of metres away. It will be fired from a standard 40-millimetre grenade launcher.

The projectile, being developed by Taser International under a $2.5 million contract, is known as a Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation or HEMI device. Taser will deliver the first prototypes for testing and evaluation early next year.

Wes Burgei, a project engineer at the US Department of Defense's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD), says the self-contained cartridges should be able to hit targets 60 metres away - more than three times the range of the existing XREP shotgun cartridge (New Scientist, 29 August, p 20).

However, the impact force of the projectile remains a worry. "There is a known risk of severe injury from impact projectiles, either from blunt force at short ranges or from hitting a sensitive part of the body," says security researcher Neil Davison, who has recently written a book on non-lethal weapons.

read more: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427325.600-longrange-taser-raises-fears-of-shock-and-injury.html

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Fuck

Just fuck!

[Soylent Brice]

4. my sentiments exactly.

[gratuitous]

2. Yeah, it's got a HEMI

Something tells me this will be ruled out of bounds for use in war zones, but not for non-military use (i.e., police against civilians). But that will be okay, because there will be lots and lots of training to make sure that these non-lethal weapons aren't abused in any way, and anyone who does abuse them will be sternly dealt with in a secret internal investigation conducted by the offending party's closes compadres.

[RC]

3. It is OK to shoot holes in people, but they worry about impact injuries to sensitive part s of

the body? I gots an idea here. How 'bout we stop being so paranoid and stop treating every one like THE ENEMY!