this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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First: Stun guns are ineffective. I've used one on myself; it tickles. The basic principle of a stun gun is pain compliance, and if the person you're using it on has a high pain threshold, they're utterly ineffective A taser has, at best, two shots. Thick clothing, bad contact, or simply missing means you're SOL. It's pretty easy to find video of cops trying to taze someone, and failing. Pepper spray works--depending on the brand--but it very dependent on things like wind speed and direction, and how old your canister is. ...And you're pretty likely to end up pepper spraying yourself if you don't practice with inert canisters.
Guns just work. Period.
And no, it's not a false equivalence. Cars have utility value, as do firearms. Cars can be used legally, and they can be used illegally, as can firearms. There are millions of cars that are used legally and safely every day, much like firearms. It's not a precise parallel, but it's sufficiently close for the purposes of this argument.
Guns also mostly end up harming the owner, but with a side effect of death, unlike the stun gun. Immediate Google results shows stun guns to be about 90% effective, which I'll take over your anecdote.
It's a false equivalence in this context which you keep ignoring. The question is about a place that explicitly doesn't allow guns. Again, to make the equivalence work you have to compare me walking on a road that doesn't allow cars to me walking on one that does, and obviously I feel safer on the one that doesn't, even if someone can break the rules and bring a car.
Google is 100% wrong. A Taser--not a stun gun--shoots barbed darts that are connected to the handset by thin wires. When you have good contact--that is, they aren't stuck in clothing instead of piercing the skin, and they're far enough apart--they're going to create strong muscle spasms, like a whole-body TENS unit. (Which, BTW, isn't that painful either, IMO, but you do lose a degree of voluntary movement. ) A stun gun works only when it's on contact with bare skin, and only works through pain-compliance. E.g., it "hurts", and the idea is that a person will want the pain to stop. Except that they don't really hurt.
This is a Taser.
This is a stun gun.
Ask any person that actually does serious self-defense training for high-risk situations, and they're going to say the same thing; you can not rely on a stun gun. A Taser will work, but you have exactly two shots, and getting both darts to make solid contact can be very iffy. Oh, and they only work as long as you keep your finger on the trigger; as soon as you let it go, the assailant is back in business. Tasers work in law enforcement because they usually work in teams and groups rather than singly.