Laughable

It's getting to the point where the national police organizations don't want the peasantry to have anything to defend themselves with except their pocketbook, a la Ruth Buzzi on Laugh In.

Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, is moaning about the news that the TASER company is going to be marketing a new line of "designer" TASERS to civilians. The new models are in colors and shapes that are expected to attract increased interest from women, who have been resistant to buying the bulkier older models.

Of course, Mr. Pasco has no qualms about letting the police carry them:

"Pasco, whose group represents 325,000 police officials nationwide, said the immobilizing devices should be limited to well-trained law enforcement professionals (emphasis mine)."

Do you mean the "well-trained professionals" in Vermont who TASERED two hippie protesters who were protesting by gardening on someone's overgrown abandoned lot, and who refused to leave, but offered no resistance to arrest?

Or the fine fellows who TASERED a UCLA student who refused to show I.D. in a computer lab that he was perfectly justified to be in, but who again offered no resistance to officers? The officers were found to have used excessive force and poor judgment in that incident, by the way.

Or the "highly-trained" officer in Ohio who was fired for TASERING a handcuffed female suspect in a holding cell, a person who again was not resisting?

Or the Florida police officer who TASERED a 12-year-old girl for skipping school? This one's really good. The officer "feared for his safety" from a middle school student who was running away from him.

Or the moronic Edina, Minnesota police detective who held a TASER to my neck because I exercised my legal right to carry my handgun in a Minnesota public library?

"'There's a tremendous amount of respect and accountability that goes along with a police officer using a Taser,' [Pasco] said."

Yep, sure sounds like "respect" to me.

The TASER was developed and is marketed to be a "less lethal" method of self-protection, not a "push-button" method of compliance with any old thing that the police want you to do, whether they legally can or not, but that's what seems to be happening more and more on the law-enforcement end of things. It's getting far too easy for a cop to just get irritated with a given situation and "make somebody twitch like a frog on a wire", as my good friend Joel Rosenberg puts it. Just because the police tend to misuse the TASER isn't a reason to deny it to the average person for the perfectly reasonable use of defending oneself from violent crime.

The FOP's main objection to civilian TASER use seems to be the worry that the populace will go around attacking the police with their TASERS, just like they (don't) do with their legally owned and licensed firearms:

"'It's just one more thing that law enforcement officers will have to face in their day-to-day activities,' said Wendy Balazik, a spokeswoman for the 20,000-member association."

I don't want to sound callous, but if the officers don't like it, they are free to find other employment. "Officer safety" is not a valid excuse to deny a free citizenry their inherent right to self-protection. Firearms are much more dangerous than TASERS; does the FOP want to ban their ownership and lawful use from the peasantry as well?

Oh, that's right, they already do.